DUBAI, UAE – Lavazza has officially entered the metaverse by launching a football videogame designed to raise awareness among youngsters about one of the most urgent environmental issues, deforestation. Lavazza Arena enables the community to have fun and at the same time understand the extent of the phenomenon: everyday, the Amazon Forest is losing over a million trees, equivalent to the area of a football pitch every 20 seconds.
On the Amazon Day, September 5, two football greats – Claudio Marchisio and Giorgio Chiellini – were special guests during the live Twitch streams of Marcy7 (https://www.twitch.tv/marcy7) and of ilGattoSulTubo (https://www.twitch.tv/ilgattosultubo) to challenge all the gamers who join.
Lavazza is well known for its dynamic and innovative communication but also for preserving a heritage that goes back over 120 years. It is vital for the brand to monitor new idioms, styles and communication channels so that it can talk about projects and issues of interest to the community, because innovation is a key value for the company. For Lavazza, all its communication activities are designed to create an emotional, value-inspired bond with consumers, going beyond the brand itself to engage and stimulate thought, as in this case with a young Gen Z audience. The company firmly believes in involving the new generations by using various platforms – digital, experiential events, music – to stimulate dialogue on cultural and social topics relevant to the community.
Well aware of today’s environmental problems and the urgent need to make as many people as possible aware of the serious situation in the Amazon rainforest, Lavazza wants to help young people understand this issue by engaging them on Roblox with an entertaining football videogame and using straightforward and emotionally involving language. The game was inspired by one of Lavazza Foundation’s many projects (*), working in this specific case with Cesvi to support native communities in the reforestation of the Peruvian Amazon, in Tambopata province in the Madre de Dios region (**).
Lavazza Arena is a virtual world to discover and explore, completely different from ordinary football pitches. Players enter and find themselves on a completely ‘clean’ field. Once there, they can start participating in the various areas in the Arena: the more matches they play, the more the game map fills up again with green spaces, nature and trees. Players can compete on the field or simply have fun in the Practice Area, where various practice drills will put their skills to the test. Alternatively, they can spend time in the Lavazza Cafè or in the Learning Area, where they can find out about deforestation issues. Amazon-specific skins and power-ups are also available to personalize your avatar.
Lavazza Arena is available on Roblox, the online platform that recently reached 50 million daily users. Also involved in the launch, in addition to footballers Claudio Marchisio and Giorgio Chiellini, were the game’s creators Marcy7, ilGattoSulTubo, Queen_Giorgia and OwengeJuiceTV, who will explore the Lavazza Arena and organize a full-fledged tournament with their community during a live Twitch stream. And throughout the week, Slends and Rupthy will use Tik Tok to share their experiences in this new Roblox world created by Lavazza.
The initiative grew out of an idea by We Are Social, which provided the strategy, creativity and production. The game was developed by Dubit.
(*) Lavazza Foundation – Reforestation Projects:
In 2004, the Company set up the non-profit Giuseppe e Pericle Lavazza Foundation to coordinate and manage sustainability projects. Today, the Foundation supports and finances, both independently and through public and private partnerships, 32 projects in 20 countries across three continents, benefiting over 136,000 coffee growers. The main goal of the projects supported by the Lavazza Foundation is to improve coffee yield and quality, promoting both entrepreneurship among growers and improvements in their living standards. In the last few years, the Lavazza Foundation has stepped up the development of projects that support reforestation, a growing problem in all coffee producing countries. In partnership with non-governmental organisations and international institutions, the Foundation is now active on this front in Ethiopia and Peru with specific initiatives, and in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Colombia with sustainability projects involving reforestation, among other things. In this way, the Lavazza Foundation has so far enabled the planting of over 15 million coffee bushes (2015-2020).
(**) Lavazza/Cesvi Foundation – Project in Peru:
This project will plant 1,000 walnut trees a year to restore the Amazon rainforest ecosystem. The collaboration has so far enabled the protection of over 30,000 hectares of forest and four local communities, the reforestation of 295 hectares of land and the improvement of the nutrition and socio-economic conditions of 570 people in native communities.
