Electronic Arts: Let's All Be Mayor

Credits & Description:

Award: AME Silver Medallion
Competition: AME
Competition Year: 2014
Agency: DraftFCB
Agency Country: USA
Agency City: San Francisco
Competition: 193 2014 AME Awards
Category: UD06 interactive
Category Group: use of discipline
Brand/Sponsor: SimCity
Item Company: FCB West
Item Country: USA
Creative Director: Tony Vazquez and Colin McRae
Production Company: N/A
Production Company Producer: N/A
Product Type Video Game
Campaign Start 02 / 26 / 2013
Campaign End 03 / 04 / 2013
Campaign Ran US
Campaign Description new product launch
Marketing Context When SimCity first launched in 1989, it found modest success, ushering in a new genre of city-building video games and spawning several iterations that followed. But its popularity didn’t last. As the gaming industry exploded in size and became decidedly more mainstream, city-building games lost their following, overshadowed by blockbuster action games.
After ten long years, SimCity was ready to be relaunched. But how could we make an old franchise with niche appeal relevant to a new audience that thrives on high-octane action games?
Compounding our challenge was the fact that no game demo would be available prior to launch. Most video games offer a free demo to drive purchase interest and win over new or skeptical audiences, but SimCity developers were racing to finish the game and couldn’t divert attention away to create a demo.
Campaign Planning
Through research, we arrived at the insight that SimCity is not a city-building game, it’s a god game – and needs to be experienced to be appreciated.
Consumers were at their most animated when they talked about the creative ways to destroy and manipulate their city. It became clear: it’s not just a game about infrastructure, it’s about the intoxicating fun of playing with power on a massive scale.
Marketing & Media Strategy
Our strategy was threefold:
1. Spark a conversation among gamers. The one source gamers trust above all else is other gamers. We wanted to use SimCity’s existing fan base to help us reach a broader audience.
2. Encourage exploration of the game. Since we couldn’t drive people to a demo, we wanted to draw people into an immersive experience that gave them a chance to experience the depth and breadth of the game.
3. Contribute to an ambitious sales goal. We wanted to ensure that whatever experience we provided would translate into tangible purchase intent.
Creative Strategy
To let people experience the fun of SimCity, we had to do something unprecedented. We developed “Let’s All Be Mayor,” the first-ever live, interactive, global video game demo where the world could join in the creation (and destruction) of a new SimCity every day for seven days.
Timely poll questions let people determine how each city should be built (or destroyed). SimCity developers played out the world’s decisions in real time, while two comedians provided cheeky ad-lib commentary (a la Mystery Science Theatre) and engaged the audience over Facebook and Twitter.
Each day and each city had a different theme: disaster city, casino city, green city, etc. At the end of each day a highlight video was posted on YouTube for those who had missed the live event.
Evidence of Results
1. Spark a lively conversation among gamers: During the seven days “Let’s All Be Mayor” was live, SimCity Twitter impressions tripled from 7.1M to 21.3M, averaging 4,000 tweets per hour.
2. Encourage exploration of the game: In seven days, “Let’s All Be Mayor” garnered over 1.3 million video views. Close to 500,000 visitors cast 363,000 votes and spent an unprecedented average of 27 minutes on LetsAllBeMayor.com, in stark contrast to the three minutes visitors spend on average on SimCity.com.
3. Contribute to an ambitious sales goal: LetsAllBeMayor.com drove nearly 25% of its visitors directly to SimCity.com’s preorder page. And people who came from “Let’s All Be Mayor” were over 700% more likely to convert on the buy page than people who came from other sources.
“Let’s All Be Mayor,” in conjunction with the larger launch campaign, contributed to SimCity exceeding its sales goals and we effectively reached beyond the strategy and simulation audience to mainstream gamers, as at least 45% of SimCity buyers were action gamers and new to the franchise.
Target Audience
Male gamers 18-35, including our core audience of existing franchise and genre fans and an acquisition audience of action gamers and hit buyers.
Talent 1: Tony Vazquez|SVP, Group Creative Director
Talent 2: Colin McRae|SVP, Group Creative Director
Talent 3: Scott Drey|Associate Creative Director
Talent 4: Elaine Cox|Sr Copywriter
Talent 5: Heidi Arkinstall|SVP, Group Managing Director
Talent 6: Dirk Herbert|SVP, Planning Director
Talent 7: Ryan Riley|Senior Account Planner
Talent 8: IV Tench|VP, Integrated Production
Talent 9: Jeremy Arth|VP, Sr Broadcast Producer
Talent 10: Will Egan|VP, Account Director
Talent 11: Alexis Lovett|Management Supervisor
Talent 12: Dan Sharkey|Sr Account Executive