This is a brand experience promoting „Army of the dead”, a heist movie with zombies in Las Vegas. Would you expect it to be conventional?

We recreated Army of the Dead with the best action shooters we know: gaming streamers. We built a massive stand-alone brand activation and let “Army of the Streamers” fight zombies in a LIVE airsoft battle. Yes, the streamers won, but only because their fans controlled their faith with live comments – more exactly with over 20.000 of them (5x bigger than the channel’s benchmark) in a watching time of 4949,3h(5x bigger than the channel’s benchmark).

“Army of the dead”, a movie about a gang of mercenaries trying to heist Las Vegas zombies had great watching premises for the audience in Romania. However, there wasn’t much social conversation around this genre.

Our task was to generate buzz around the movie and find ways to introduce people to its universe and to create interest. We were looking for a disruptive and immersive way to do that, a way to get the adrenaline pumping - just like the movie does.

That’s how “Army of the streamers” came to life. The first fully live streamed brand activation in which the viewers had full control over the outcome of the live game that replicated the plot of the movie, but this time with Romania’s Top streamers as players. The streamers were not only playing a game, but they were also IN the game, proving that in the fight against zombies, their biggest weapon were their fans.

We set up a live streaming event, so the premiere on Netflix was doubled by a premiere in the gamers’ community - community that has a great affinity with the genre. We recruited six of Romania’s biggest gaming shooters and gave their communities full control: to help them overcome obstacles and complete the robbery or… to troll them.

We created this immersive brand experience with 3 main strategic coordinates in mind:

o The need to find ways to connect with true action movie fans in an organic way, reaching to relevant communities.

o Generate valuable and authentic conversation by focusing on social & activations vs. media buying.

o Elevate local insights & pop culture to spark conversation.

The gaming community in Romania is one with loyal audiences, so it was a strategic territory that could provide us a receptive target, which would watch the movie after the activation and become its brand ambassadors, to take it to the mainstream.

A scary big production that turned out scary good. We wanted to create an as impressive experience as possible. We recruited six of Romania’s biggest gaming shooters in our “Army of the Streamers” and set up a real life airsoft battle, with 40 zombies, the arch nemesis in Army of the Dead. Everything was devoted to the movie: the props, the theme, the music and even the skilled zombies. And all was broadcasted LIVE – on the channel of the biggest streamer: Jaxi.

Therefore, we brought together the communities of 6 streamers on one YT live, where the audience got wild. From actual help for the streamers to find clues to get to the vault – to the end goal, to knock down obstacles and zombies, to trolling or pranks. Everything happened in real time, depending on the decisions made by the community on the live chat.

For a niche movie genre in Romania, „Army of the dead” managed to be in TOP 10 most watched movies on Netflix during that period.

On the Instagram amplification, the players had 650.000 organic reach on their assets, with over 670.000 impressions, meaning that they managed to make the audience engage with the content multiple times and arouse their curiosity and the appetite for such films...and experiences.

On YouTube, the live stream had 18% more views than the channel’s benchmark, resulting in 328k organic impressions. People not only watched the content, but also interacted with - in real time. The streamers won, but only because their fans controlled their faith with live comments – there were over 20.000 live chat messages (5x bigger than the channel’s benchmark) and a watching time of 4949,3h (5x bigger than the channel’s benchmark).