Disability charity Leonard Cheshire Disability wanted a digital agency that could create a viral game package for their ‘Creature Discomforts’ campaign which features Aardman animations, and seeks to change the way people see disability. They were ultimately looking to increase public awareness and the amount of website traffic through viral activity.
Following the success of their first campaign, which managed to address over 50% of their target market of 35-55 year olds as well as large sections of other markets, Leonard Cheshire Disability had cemented the familiarity of the well-loved ‘Creature Discomforts’ characters, the purpose of the charity, and the campaign’s message amongst the British public. For their second ‘Creature Discomforts’ campaign, they were looking to build on generating more public awareness through the television commercials, as well as investing in the power of the internet and spreading the message digitally.
Solution
MCM Net created a simple four-game viral package for Leonard Cheshire Disability, with one game being released every two weeks consecutively. The four most popular characters from series 1 and 2 of the television campaign were used, and the integration of our viral seeding partner’s gold seeding package ensured that the games were distributed to editors of relevant blogs, websites and social-networking communities frequented by Leonard Cheshire Disability’s target market.
The 4 games were created using the Aardman characters Callum the Chameleon, Millie the Mouse, Tim the Tortoise and Sonny the Shrimp, with one game being submitted every two weeks between October and November 2008. The first game, featuring Callum the Chameleon, was created in visual format as well as in an additional revolutionary audio format, making it easily accessible to the visually impaired. The audio format relies on the players' speakers and the player must guess when the fly is nearby depending on the volume of its ‘buzz’. When the player believes the fly is close, they must click the mouse to extend Callum the Chameleon’s tongue, which grabs the fly to gain points.
Using 3d software, our designers brought the ‘Creature Discomforts’ characters to life using pose-to-pose animation. Modelling the characters from scratch using only screen shots for reference was a major aspect of the design process. Our designers created high-resolution polygon models, then textured and rendered them out to ensure the characters were as accurate to the television characters as possible. Experimenting with different lighting techniques, the designers managed to manipulate the character’s surface to achieve a plasticine style effect, and the colours of each character were then adjusted in Photoshop.
Each game offered a ‘Send to a friend’ and ‘submit high score’ facility to encourage users to submit their score along with their email address, enabling Leonard Cheshire Disability to capture this email data for future campaigns. Incorporating a bulk ‘Send to a friend’ facility into the games ensured maximum viral activity as this allowed users to import all their contacts from their Yahoo!, Hotmail, gMail, AOL or Rediff accounts in order to pass the game on.
So that players recognised the games from the television commercials, MCM Net made sure the individual backgrounds from the television commercials were integrated into the corresponding online games, and heavily focused on using similar storylines for the games.
MCM Net also integrated a prize draw into the game, as an incentive for players to enter their email address and high score. Each game offered a competition of a signed and framed print of the Creature Discomforts character featured in that game as well as the opportunity for the player to be entered into a prize draw to win a special 'money-can't buy' Aardman Animations related mystery prize.
Result
By the end of the campaign, it was evident that the campaign was a complete success. The games had received worldwide fame, with game plays recorded in the UK, the USA, Australia, Italy, Canada, Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany and Brazil. On top of this, daily site visits rose by 50% on the day of each game’s launch, and to date total plays is approaching 600,000, obliterating the guaranteed minimum of 175,000.
Half of the players entering the competition agreed to be contacted by Leonard Cheshire Disability in the future, and 66% of users who played the games had not visited the ‘Creature Discomforts’ website beforehand.
In April there was cause for celebration as the games were awarded the 2009 Drum Marketing ‘Best Online Strategy’ Award, and were shortlisted for the ‘Most Outstanding Marketing Strategy’ award. The panel of esteemed judges from Nike, Playstation, Cancer Research and more described the games as “compelling and refreshing displaying in depth thought and bringing a unique perspective to the arena”.
Below are some examples of how the games were featured in magazines, websites and blogs:
What the client says
I am delighted to be working with MCM Net on our Creature Discomforts viral games. Their expertise and creativity should ensure that many thousands of new people become aware of our campaign, and change the way they see disability.
Stephen Elsden, Marketing Manager.