Mobile Experiential Campaigns
The Brief
We’d already helped Mocha create their very own brand identity, so they didn't hesitate in asking Gasp to support on becoming an extension of their creative team across the hemispheres. The briefs came from a diverse array of Mocha’s clients, but they all had one thing in common; come up with an imaginative creative concept and strong call to action to get people clicking through and engaging with the brand. All the ideas had to be brought to life in Celtra software - the leading creative management platform for producing, distributing and optimising digital ads.
Mocha was an Australian-based team of mobile experts, who partnered with Havas to create fully-managed campaigns for global brands by marrying the targeting capabilities of mobile with brand messages and programmatic technology.
The Response
Arguably the most exciting project from a selection of very rich pickings was for the video game, Tom Clancy’s The Division, published by Ubisoft. The release of this action role-playing game had been highly anticipated for years, so our solution had to help magnify that anticipation.
The video game is set in a near-future Manhattan that’s been placed into quarantine after a mysterious virus sweeps through the city, so our idea went heavy on gamification and story-telling, creating a smartphone game built on geo-location technology. Switching Manhattan for Sydney, we targeted the smartphones of Ubisoft’s key gamer demographic within the vicinity of ‘check points’, placed at prominent points of interest in the city.
If they took on the challenge to activate their phones and ‘join’ The Division, the game would be a race against time across the city to make check points, with branded QR Codes placed on posters enabling the players to register at the check points and replenish their health points. Knowing that rare weapons are a rich currency for gamers, we came up with the idea that the more check points they hit, the more weapons they collected, which could then be used in the game itself if they went on to make a purchase.
Another cool feature was the use of augmented reality; when someone held their phone camera up to a prominent landmark to register at a check point, they would see a dystopian landscape such as a completely destroyed Sydney Opera House. All of this helped to create a more immersive experience that echoed the free-roam landscape of the game itself.
We must have earnt our video game stripes, as we also created an ad for Electronic Arts for the Star Wars: Battlefront game. Cross-screen ready to be delivered across smartphone and tablet, this teaser banner ad had a ‘buy now’ call to action. Once tapped, the ad expanded to full screen, making rich content available simply by scrolling, including a trailer and exclusive insights into the iconic Star Wars characters you can play as.
As fun as working on video game ads was to bring out our inner child, it was great to be asked to develop an ad to support the world-renowned charity The Salvation Army for their Christmas appeal. Again, we devised a teaser banner with a curiosity-inducing, emotive piece of copy. The banner ad expanded once tapped before panning left to right and coming to rest with a play button for video content and a ‘donate now’ button.
We love the flicks at Gasp, so we nearly exploded with excitement when asked to get involved with the promotion for the movie Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Dame Judy Dench and Samuel L Jackson.
An animated logo moved up within the banner ad to reveal the click through. From this homepage you could explore all the different characters and their unique ‘peculiarities’, as well as watching the trailer. But there was more! Uploading a photo of yourself via a very cool animation sequence meant you could take on a character’s particular peculiarity (that’s a mouthful). You are then prompted to share the peculiar result on social media with your friends.
The Results
This was a collection of diverse projects where imagination was the key to all of them. Happy clients for Mocha meant we in turn had a happy client too. It was very fulfilling to gain their trust as they came to us regularly for some great story telling and creative flair.
Tom Clancy’s The Division went on to break Ubisoft’s record for the highest number of first-day sales, so it’s nice to think we may have helped a little with that, but one thing’s for sure; all of these projects created meaningful, app-like brand experiences for the client.
