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Brief
To hit the market with yet another breakthrough advergame, just weeks after wrapping up Doritos’ award-winning iD3 campaign. The challenge this time; to spawn a nation of rock gods and groupies in a high-octane collaboration with Guitar Hero® and Xbox®.
Strategy
A TV ad starring Alan by creative agency AMV BBDO was designed off kick off the campaign, alongside a special on-pack promotion created by Initials.
Launched this October, the game revolves around the life, loves and fashion crimes of "Alan", a regular Joe who finds himself transformed into a bonafide rock star whenever he plays Guitar Hero 5. Doritos fans picking up a Guitar Hero® pack simply need to visit www.doritos.co.uk and enter the code which will allow them to bid for Rock God status themselves.
If the user is skilled enough to get past the threshold time limit, they automatically get entered into the pack-code draw to win one of three types of Xbox®/Guitar Hero® kits per day across 80 days.
Aside from creating Alan’s TV slot, AMV BBDO was also responsible for overall digital strategy. Strategic planning centered around maximizing the socialness of the competition beyond the game microsite, which they secured via a secondary competition calling on Facebook users across the UK to become Rock Gods and groupies.
Following the huge success of iD3, digital production shop rehabstudio were
re-commissioned to bring the advergame to life. Interactively, their strategy was to design and build another compelling game play experience incorporating a rich mix of live action and highly personalized interaction. Coming up with the original game site concept and mechanic, they designed and produced all of the site’s 3D/ motion graphics and sound design.
Pete Charles, Doritos' Marketing Manager said: "Following on from Dodgeball and iD3, Doritos Guitar Hero offers consumers the chance to get involved in another really exciting and engaging promotion.”
"As our core audiences are increasingly spending more nights in, the promotion not only provides them with entertainment to make their nights in even bigger, but cutting edge online content to truly engage them."
Tim Rodgers, Interactive Creative Director at rehabstudio, says: “We consumed our own body weight in Doritos chips & dips working on this one. Not to mention the 9,000 brown M&M's... Rock on out!
Execution
The Doritos Guitar Hero, like the FWA-winning iD3 is a blend of live video action with 3D interaction; opening in Alan's living room which then transforms into the ultimate rock stadium. The premise of the game is simple – players have to try and out-rock Alan by matching his guitar chords with keystrokes on the keyboard.
The most masterful players of all who out perform ‘Rock God’ Alan not only get entered into the daily draw, but earn themselves a special spot prize.
A secondary game calls on users to become Rock Gods by entering the Score a Suite competition. The game is built on Facebook connect, users create a Rock God Profile on the site and create their own Rock God Avatar by morphing their face into a classic rock album cover through an online avatar creator. They then have to canvass as many groupies as possible by getting them to take and upload a photograph of their pants. The Rock Stars with the most pants are in with the chance of winning a night at the Ultimate Rock & Roll Royalty Party in a luxury Central London hotel suite.
rehabstudio also engineered the backend of the game/campaign which is connected to their CMS and moderation module allowing agency and client to monitor activity on the site. The groupie game utilises Facebook Connect functionality to push and pull personal content from players’ Facebook profiles to auto populate the site at
http://guitarhero.doritos.co.uk/rock_gods
Jurgen Prause, rehabstudio’s Interactive Technical Director explained: “Technically our greatest challenge was creating a funnel to allow multiple social networks to integrate with the Doritos rock star page making it as simple as possible for rock stars to gather groupies.”
A grassroots seeding and exclusive blogger outreach programme will drive the campaign socially, with a live Twitter feed and Facebook fan page keeping Doritos fans up-to-date with winners’ Rock Hero and Groupie status.
Results (Campaign still in progress)
Players Overview
30K Game players 150 Rock Gods
200K visits
Guitar Hero cements Doritos’ reputation as one of the world’s leading innovators in digital branded content.
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