Most games are marketed by showing people how much fun they are to play. Our campaign would do the opposite. We’d tell people they will lose so badly that they shouldn’t even bother.

Our idea for centered around giving the game’s villain – the great Dr. T – a super weapon that would be impossible to beat. We orchestrated a complete media takeover on Christmas Day Until the super weapon launch on January 15th, Dr. T spent his time doling out sick burns on broadcast, out of home, and through social media channels including youtube, twitter and Facebook.

The game is global so executions were created in nine different languages and ran in markets all over the world. All of the work launch globally on Christmas day and the promotion continued through the in-game event on Jan 15th until the 22nd when Dr T was defeated. Work ran on TV, online video, websites, and social channels (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and even Craigslist).

Boom Beach jumped from the 14th highest grossing app to the 6th highest grossing app. The Campaign garnered over 30 million video views on YouTube.

Most integrated campaigns communicate an idea across a variety of media. Our campaign went one step further - integrating the campaign idea into the product itself. To draw new players to Boom Beach we worked with Supercell to create a new super weapon for one of the game’s villains that would launch in game. Our advertising campaign was then built around this in-game event and we communicated with our audience through a mix of traditional media and existing online communities and social channels.

Mobile games face two concurrent challenges - attracting new players and keeping current players engaged. Therefore, we needed to create a campaign that could speak to new and existing players alike. We conducted social listening on Boom Beach communities to identify what they loved about the game, and one thing stood out - weekly events where the nefarious Dr. T would invade the archipelago. We extended this affinity for Dr. T to the public in the only manner befitting a Super Villain of his caliber: a media takeover. For prospective players, Dr. T was everywhere, challenging them to outsmart him at every every corner. For existing players, Dr. T popped up in unexpected places within the Boom Beach community to taunt and trick them. Everything culminated in-game in an ultimate showdown where new and existing players alike banded together to take down Dr. T’s super weapon, the Mega Crab.

More than 400 mobile app games are released every day and today’s downloads are tomorrow’s deletions. In this extremely competitive, disposable market we had to help Boom Beach carve out its own niche on a global scale. We also needed to create an emotional connection that led not only to people downloading it, but to continuing to play it.