In Horizon Zero: Dawn, humans are confronted to a new species that is a cross between animals and machines. As the game is taking place in what is supposed to be our future, we decided to let people think that the advent of this new species had already begun.

We created a real model of a boar carcass that was half machine and produced a fake amateur video content of two cyclists crossing the path of this beast during their bike ride. This video content then was released on social media, letting people think it really happened and obviously went viral.

A few days later PlayStation released a new video in which the masquerade was explained, surprising everyone that had been exposed to the fake content.

We worked in partnership with a famous content website which released as well the fake video as the reveal, allowing us to easily reach a massive audience and initiate variety.

- The fake boar video was release one week prior to the game’s launch (22/02).

- During a week the video was viewed and shared intensively on social media.

- The day before the game’s launch (31/02), PlayStation revealed the masquerade on their Social Media networks and on our partners content website

- 10 million media impressions were reached on social Media

- The video was shared over 700 000 times

- Awareness around the game reached 55% (vs 26% in october 2016)

We use a 2 phases campaign. A trailer then a reveal.

It triggered curiosity and raise awareness to an active social media audience which is mostly not target by mass media.

In an environment that is overcharged with movie and video game trailers it becomes difficult for a new game franchise to stand out. Our strategy was to catch our audience’s attention with an unexpected format: infotainment.

We identified that content websites reached up to 300 million views a month with their infotainment content. Thus, our target audience was constituted of heavy infotainment consumers, mostly aged between 15 and 35 years which more than 80% are also identified as video game consumers.

The approach was to reach our target audience by communicating directly on the infotainment channels they were usually using, without them noticing they were exposed to our message in the first place. With this approach, our content could not be perceived as intrusive or mainstream.

On march 1rst, PlayStation were releasing their brand new game “Horizon Zero: Dawn”, with its new story and new hero: “Aloy”. The game is set in a post-apocalyptical world taking place a thousand years after our era, in which human kind has almost disappeared and nature has regained its rights.

Despite the fact that the game’s quality was assured, we had to raise awareness around it as this is a major issue when launching a new game franchise.

Objectives were to catch our audience’s attention in an unexpected way and raise the game’s notoriety from 26 to 50%.