When MrBeast and Mark Rober quietly published an unlisted YouTube video in the summer of 2025, few outside their inner circle knew what was coming. What followed was one of the most remarkable social campaigns ever created by a non-profit — a global movement that raised over $41 million in a single month, mobilised more than 10,000 creators across 144 countries, and has now been recognised by the industry’s most prestigious communications body as the world’s best influencer campaign.

On May 13, 2026, at a ceremony held at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in London, WaterAid’s #TeamWater was awarded the Global Influencer Campaign of the Year at the PRWeek Global Awards — the communications industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. For the Montreal-based games studio Meta4 Interactive, that win carries special meaning: our PowerUP team was part of it.

The Campaign That Changed The Conversation On The Water Crisis

The global water crisis has long been one of the world’s most chronically underfunded development challenges. In August 2025, WaterAid partnered with YouTube’s two most powerful philanthropic voices — Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson and Mark Rober — to launch the campaign. By August 31, 2025, #TeamWater had raised over $41 million. 

Where Gaming Came In: PowerUP By Meta4

The campaign’s reach wasn’t limited to YouTube, TikTok, and traditional social media. One of the more distinctive dimensions of #TeamWater was its integration into the gaming world — specifically into the Fortnite Creative ecosystem, where Meta4 Interactive’s PowerUP platform played a meaningful role.

PowerUP is Meta4’s platform for NPX (Native Playable Experiences) which embeds interactive brand storytelling directly into gameplay across UGC worlds in Fortnite and Roblox. PowerUP’s platform integrates three critical layers: proprietary gameplay mechanics; a network of top UGC developers and a plug-and-play deployment model that allows brands to activate natively within existing high-traffic game environments. This eliminates the need to build standalone branded worlds, replacing fragmented, one-off executions with a repeatable system.

During the #TeamWater campaign, developers across the Fortnite Creative ecosystem used PowerUP to bring the campaign into their games, exposing millions of active players to the #TeamWater message in the environments they already loved.

The results speak for themselves. Meta4’s contribution to the campaign generated over 700 million impressions, 70 million interactions, and 4.9 million hours of gameplay — numbers that underscore just how significant the gaming community’s participation was in amplifying a global cause.

“What made this campaign special wasn’t just the scale,” Caroline Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer, PowerUP division of Meta4 Interactive shared in reflecting on the win. “It was seeing the gaming community rally around a cause that truly matters. Together, developers across the Fortnite Creative ecosystem helped bring #TeamWater into some of the platform’s most played experiences, proving once again that games can do more than entertain — they can mobilize people toward real-world impact.”

A PRWeek Win That Validates A New Era Of Impact Communication

The PRWeek Global Awards recognition confirms what #TeamWater demonstrated in practice: that creator-led, platform-native campaigns, designed with strategic intent and ethical delivery, can achieve impact at a scale and speed that traditional PR and advertising cannot match.

PRWeek’s judges recognised the campaign as one of the most ambitious and effective ever delivered by an NGO, noting how it transformed a neglected development issue into a global cultural moment by placing influencer-led storytelling at the heart of a PR-driven strategy.

For Meta4 Interactive and the PowerUP team, this recognition affirms something we’ve believed for a long time: that gaming communities are not just audiences to be reached — they are communities capable of mobilising around real-world causes with extraordinary energy and generosity.

We’re proud to have played a part in a campaign that will change lives for generations. Congratulations to Kelly Parsons and the entire WaterAid team, to MrBeast, Mark Rober, and to every developer, worldbuilder, creator, and donor who made #TeamWater a campaign the world won’t forget.

The water crisis is not solved. But the world showed up — and that matters.

To learn more about how NPX can help brands and causes connect with gaming communities at scale, visit meta4.games/powerup or get in touch.