ShopBack drives in-app gaming adoption in HK

Online cashback portal ShopBack has unveiled a new localised gamification campaign, titled "打機揾真銀", aimed at driving mass awareness for its in-app casual games category, ShopBack Play.

The campaign centres on the insight that earning extra rewards does not require significant planning—it can happen naturally during the small pockets of idle time Hongkongers spend on their smartphones every day.

Sky Lee, head of marketing, ShopBack Hong Kong & Taiwan, said, "Hongkongers aren't waiting on one big windfall — what actually lands is small luck. An extra dollar you didn't expect, earned in time you were going to spend anyway. '打機搵真銀' isn't a punchline to us; it's a real and very Hong Kong kind of win, and ShopBack Play is built around it. This campaign came out of our Hong Kong team and it shows — the humour, the scenarios, the language are all ours."

To capture consumers during these idle moments, the campaign focuses on high-traffic physical locations across the city. The out-of-home (OOH) execution includes MTR lightboxes across the rail network, alongside completed placements at a Causeway Bay bus shelter and a Sham Shui Po poster wall. The OOH presence is supported by in-app promotions, owned social media channels, and CRM initiatives.

While the ShopBack Play feature is available across multiple regional markets, this specific execution was tailored exclusively for Hong Kong, using local behavior, language, and humor to resonate with mobile-first working adults and everyday commuters.

ShopBack evaluates the campaign's success through brand awareness and recall lift in the region, alongside performance metrics such as user acquisition and post-engagement behaviour within the Play category. While specific figures were not disclosed, the company confirmed that the campaign has outperformed internal benchmarks, prompting the extension of its MTR out-of-home leg.

The initiative builds on ShopBack’s localised marketing efforts in Hong Kong. Previously, the platform partnered with travel booking platform HopeGoo to launch a cashback campaign offering up to 20% rebates on hotel, flight, and train bookings.

That campaign reimagined the classic Chinese idiom "Seven steps to verse" (七步成詩) into the tagline "Three steps to travel" (三步去旅行), illustrating how modern travelers could easily secure rebates in three simple steps within the ShopBack app.

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