With assassin's creed black flag, we had to disrupt the classic video game industry approach which consists of stretching a video game licence into pop culture to reach a broader audience.

Our challenge was to address edgy gamers, influencers within the industry to raise the credibility of the brand and cement it's reputation as the most authentic and epic history-based game ever made.

To raise up Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag from being ”just” a video-game, we created a digital art project that enabled fans to become part of an authentic 1700-century masterpiece, hand-painted by the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

Set on an innovative digital platform that fully immersed the viewers into the epic work of art, we let the fans become actors in the painting. The most voted fans had their faces immortalized in the artwork that was later exhibited in prominent museums across Europe.

With no media spending we achieved: 275 000+ unique visitors with an average of 5 minutes spent on the site exclusively on the European market. Much thanks to over 6,000 shares on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, 49% of new visitors came from social media.

But most importantly, over 200 fans were immortalized in something that will hopefully be around for the next 200 years.”

This operation happened without any media support. Instead, we decided to leverage Assassin's creed community online through community management on Facebook & through a VIP program called "the watch", where hardcore fans could apply for the painting before the rest of the audience. They drove a large part of the traffic on the web site, more than 48% on the overall.

The website reached more than 170,000 visitors in 3 weeks without any media buy, far beyond the hardcore fan audience from many European countries. Few of the main “face spots” were disputed by more than 500 gamers, generating discussions on social media platforms. It helped drive users to the experience: 28% of the traffic was generated only by Facebook. The average time spent on the experience was around 5 minutes, much higher than the standard of the category. In terms of qualitative response, the experience reached not only the video game community, but also edgy art bloggers & magazines.