Xbox made it participative by turning an advertising channel into an entertainment channel. Survival Billboard was a billboard in central London on which eight gamers stood in a test of Lara Croft-like inner grit, endurance and inner strength, to win a trip inspired by the game. The contestants, who made up the billboard headline, faced blizzards, downpours, harsh wind and heat – all controlled by public participation via a live stream on a dedicated microsite.

Survival Billboard was a single billboard that reached the world, as the action taking place on it was live streamed on Twitch, the Xbox dashboard, banner ads, digital OOH and a dedicated microsite. The public gave up on sleep to watch the billboard, to control the weather that the participants were enduring, as well as to support, discuss and speculate about alliances and romances. The winner lasted 22 grueling hours, yet In that one day, the oldest advertising medium was reinvented as a gripping, interactive reality show.

8 minutes average dwell time (vs. 8 seconds for a regular billboard)

£3.8 million in earned media

11000 viewers for 22 hours straight

1000 weather votes per hour

3.5 million views

32000 comments in 22 hours

Survival Billboard was both a promotion and a brand activation.

One part was the competition, where the contestants on the billboard had to find the inner strength to endure harsh weather, to win the Tomb Raider game and an epic trip inspired by it.

The other part was about interaction between consumers and the billboard. Their participation helped bring the product message (the new Tomb Raider’s grittiness) to life by controlling the weather conditions, making them as testing as possible for the contestants.

The aim was to target gamers who were otherwise distracted by the imminent launch of bigger games with bigger budgets, such as Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront. Our approach was to create a single, interactive experience that tapped into the gamer mentality of total control in order to increase engagement levels. In essence, the strategic approach was to treat an ad for gamers as a game in itself.

Big video games, like big movies, launch with a huge outdoor presence. It’s become the battleground for new game launches. Yet most gaming outdoor consists of old-fashioned, passive billboards that are glanced at for just 8 seconds. So how could Xbox get gamers to engage with the launch of the gritty new Tomb Raider reboot during the busiest game launch period in history?