Category: Best Use of Screens
Advertiser: EA
Product/Service: MASS EFFECT3
Media Agency: MEDIACOM, London, UNITED KINGDOM
Associate Director: Michael Thomas (MediaCom)
Associate Director: Tom Whitaker (MediaCom)
Senior Planner & Buyer: Robert Jackson (MediaCom)
Head Of Entertainment: Chris Shepperson (IGN)
Innovations Account Managger: Allison Mcbride (Pearl & Dean)
Marketing Coordinator: Daniel Kilby (IGN)
Media placement: DIGITAL - IGN, - 14TH FEBRUARY 2012
Media placement: OUT OF HOME - NATIONAL - 8TH FEBRUARY 2012
Media placement: SOCIAL NETWORK - TWITTER, FACEBOOK - 16TH FEBRUARY 2012
Insights, Strategy & the Idea
It’s not a role playing game, it’s a sci-fi entertainment event.
Mass Effect 3 is a role playing computer game - a genre seen as geeky, with niche appeal, which doesn’t usually break out of the hardcore gaming community.
Our strategy to escape this gaming ghetto was to use media to place the game alongside the all-time greats in sci-fi entertainment, a genre which appealed to a much broader audience. We wanted to position the game as a Star Wars for the 21st Century.
So we engaged the sci-fi fans in a quest to find their favourite Sci Fi film of all time, with a promise to bring that film back to cinema screens, providing us with the perfect platform to take the game to a broader audience.
Creative Execution
A first in interactive screen technology helps people vote for their favourite sci-fi film.
We used an innovative interactive touchscreen voting matrix on digital screens in cinemas to get people’s votes. People could download a trailer for the game from those sites to their phones via a QR code.
We asked the users of IGN, an online gaming community, to vote through their website, and used the cinema contractors’ digital and social CRM programme to promote the competition.
Aliens won the vote for best sci fi film ever. We put it back on screen in cinemas across the county, taking over the cinema foyer with Mass Effect demo pods and posters. And cinema goers were treated to five minutes of footage from Mass Effect 3 before the film started.
Results and Effectiveness
We went far, far beyond expectations.
We took Mass Effect 3 out of the role playing game niche and into the number one slot.
The game sold 186,306 in the first week - more than double the rest of the top ten combined.