Mattel: TWITTERSCRABBLE

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Use of Social Media

Advertiser: MATTEL

Product/Service: SCRABBLE

Agency: DUVAL GUILLAUME MODEM

Copywriter: Jan Schoofs (Duval Guillaume Modem)

Art Director: Toon Leysen (Duval Guillaume Modem)

Client Service Director: Dimitri Mundorff (Duval Guillaume Modem)

Developer: Thomas Klein (The Parking Lot)

Media placement: Social Media - Twitter - 1st March 2012



Summary of the Campaign

TwitterScrabble, a Twitter only game, as a solution to introduce Scrabble Trickster, makes the Scrabble brand less old-fashioned and engages the Scrabble community in a completely new way, using nothing but social media and PR.



So we set out to solve a new product launch and a brand rejuvenating issue with a PR-approach by getting friends, followers and press to share and talk about it, with no paid media at all.



The Situation

In Belgium, Scrabble is considered an old-fashioned board game. To let the people rediscover the legendary board game, Mattel decided to rejuvenate Scrabble with Scrabble Trickster, a new and more playful version of the board game. To launch and promote Scrabble Trickster, we invented TwitterScrabble: a new way of promoting a new game to a new audience. And so we killed 2 birds with 1 stone: introducing Scrabble Trickster and rejuvenating the brand.



The Goal

2 goals:



1. Launch Scrabble Trickster in Belgium



2. Take away the dust and make sure Scrabble is perceived as less 'old fashioned' in Belgium



So we had to find a ‘rejuvenated’ idea to launch and introduce the brand new Scrabble board game ‘Scrabble Trickster’ – a ‘rejuvenated’ version of the original Scrabble – in Belgium.



We set out to do this challenge with a PR-approach by using nothing else than conversations and press releases to get people to talk about it.



The Strategy

The strategy was to launch and promote Scrabble Trickster through social media only. At the same time to rejuvenate the Scrabble brand we invented TwitterScrabble and turned the entire Twitterverse into one big Scrabble game.



After all TwitterScrabble highlights what Twitter and Scrabble have in common: limited characters.



Execution

We’ve created TwitterScrabble. A social idea and a whole new contemporary way to get people engaged in the Scrabble game. Purely via Twitter, because for a new Scrabble game based on limited characters, what better than the idea to launch a Twitter based Scrabble challenge? The gameplay is simple: write the highest scoring tweet with a set of 100 random characters. Once you’ve nailed it, you hit the ‘Tweet’ button which posts your Scrabbletweet to the entire Twitterverse. Every day the highest scoring Scrabbletweet wins the new board game ‘Scrabble Trickster’.



Documented Results

People wrote thousands and thousands of Scrabbletweets, and Twitterscrabble instantly became talk of the Twittertown. For several weeks TwitterScrabble and Scrabble trickster became a trending topic, resulting in a gross reach of over 5m people on Twitter only. (In Belgium that is a huge result.) TwitterScrabble was by far the best (and cheapest) Mattel product launch so far, without using any paid media. Today people are still Scrabbletweeting. So it is clear that the idea survives long after the actual game launch is over.



‘TwitterScrabble’ got covered in all major media-channels and blogs in Belgium, each not merely reporting about the game, but reporting about the fact that TwitterScrabble proves that Scrabble is ready for life in the digital age. (Goal 2: Make the brand less old-fashioned).



We clearly managed to generate and leverage PR-value to solve a brand and product launch challenge in 1 campaign