® EXPLORE BEYOND LIMITS - PITCH

This a project I did, last year, together with AKQA Berlin. They were invited to pitch for the assignment of developing a global social media activation for Acer's new positioning "Explore beyond limits." The brief in a nutshell was to demonstrate, through the launching of the new Acer Aspire P3 Ultrabook, how social media could play a major role in their communication platform. Acer computers are very known and appreciated by all those seeking for excellency in processing power. Acer computers are the weapon of choice especially for Gamers, IT experts and performance aficionados.

With that in mind, we came up with a concept to stress the pure portable power of the Aspire P3. Inspired by a classic game: Battleship, we took it to the next level, to a whole new dimension, blurring the lines of the virtual and real world. Instead of just rectangles representing your fleet of Cruisers, Destroyers,  Armored Warships drawn on a piece of paper, how about using the true power of social media and combine it with the real power of Acer computers?

Down here you will find in detail, how one could invite his friends all around the world, through social media channels, to set up their own drone fleet and engage in amazing dogfights, battling in a real-world-live-arena, against the fleet from your opponent.

Even though this was a project with a really quick turnaround - we had only 6 days to put this whole presentation together - and after more than year this project didn't ended up being produced for real, I'm really proud of the work we managed to put together, and that's why I'm now sharing it with you. Once again, thank you so much AKQA Berlin for letting me take part in this project. :D

It is the 2D grid from the classic battleship game, however, taken to the next level. Adding a third axis,
we get a 3D grid. Making the game even more challenging and giving the drones free space to fly.

The players arrange their drones around their half of the arena.

Once positioned, the virtual grid is removed.
Now you need to figure out in which boxes are your challenger's drones.

The players can not only customize the color of their drones, but also the arena itself.
Projections on the walls set the battlefield.

Not in the mood for an invasion of Manhattan? You can always go for an intergalactic battle.

The game is ready to start. It is time to do the first move.

Each player can choose different camera angles, and try to discover in which box of the grid he should aim.

Once you have your best guess, it is time to fire and hope it is not a miss. :D

He shoots, we see the brief laser beam, and this time it is a hit. The drones are equipped with old school visual effects and when tagged by the laser, smoke comes out of it .

The walls of the arena show the score.

Whoever has more drones still flying at the end of the 5 minute battle, is the winner.

To build momentum, we would tease all social media channels, using close-ups of the drones
and posting images of the grid, asking all of our followers to: "Prepare for Battle."

After the teasing, then we would take by storm, not only the digital platforms,
but also unconventional offline channels, inviting people to take part in the battle.

A trailer with in-game footage would be produced, to inspire and excite everyone to play this innovative game with their friends and experiment the true power of the Acer Aspire P3. To kick it off, seeding would be done with the major portals, and probably later being picked up by the other media outlets.

Aiming to get even more PR and free media coverage, to spread Acer's Battleships, as part of the activation,

a swarm of our drones would invade a huge show of the DJ Tiësto, who would be their main celebrity asset on its global communication for the campaign: "Acer. Explore beyond limits." (important to note: the Above the line communication, including the Tiësto spot, was done by another agency, we were only briefed to activate it.)

To bring even more people to the battle, rich media ads,

using them as homepage takeovers were planned on the major games, tech & trends websites.

Through a website, you could set your fleet. Incase you haven't seen before, at the home page, you could watch live footage of the arena or the trailer. To start playing, the deal was quite simple: connect with your facebook account, give Acer a like and get started. After that, you choose the friends to join you in this battle, you could also look the stats of the games that have been played so far and also check who are the leaders, which nations are ranking at the top... and, of course you could setup and schedule your match, chosing a date where all your friends could be online and play with you. In the hopes of this activation to become a big success, having to queue a little bit would be expected. But this side was covered too. In a players' lounge, extra entertainment would be provided. From tutorials explaining best tactics to win, to only following live the matches that are happening at that moment, the time would pass by really fast and also generating more time of the user interacting with the brand on the page.

LANDING PAGE: watch the trailer and get inspired to play.

FACEBOOK CONNECT: the activation would drive likes and engagement for the social media channels.

SHARING: and also spreading it all over everyone's news feeds.

DESIGNING YOUR FLEET: tagging your wingmen to join you in battle.

SET UP YOUR MATCH: Schedule with your friends, look for the next vacant spot and check game stats.

PLAYERS' LOUNGE: tutorials show the best formations and how to do the perfect Barrel Roll. :D

Now is time to play, once you are all set, it is just the waiting to get in the arena. The playing platform is originally planned for tablets and desktop computer, but also being able to be optimized for mobile, so that you don't miss your dogfight even it you are on the go. Once in the arena, it is up to the player, if he will need to use the 5 minutes limit for each game, of if he will devastate the other fleet in a blink of an eye.

This idea produces enormous quantities of content, that we can always activate in the player's

social medias profiles. From snapshots of the match to be posted on his Instagram account,

to funny stats regarding the perfomance of the players (your friends), and jokes about their role in your

fleet during the match, all can be shared and help the activation to go viral.

The production of interesting content in this project is a constant. Even before it starts until after the end of activation, there will be content opportunities to engage with all those new fans we acquire: for example an exclusive youtube channel with making of videos of the arena, showing how was made possible to be done,

or exploring the math behind it, and the huge processing power that only one Acer Aspire P3 Ultrabook had

to deal with, or also talking about the backstage of how this whole swarm of drones were controlled in the real world through your tablets, computers and mobiles. Besides all that, since we are using Facebook connect,

we could play with all the Social Graph info that we would get, and make weekly reports showing how many people are battling in the Acer arena, where they come from, their genders, ages, who is better, on what...

you name it. A lot of interesting content at the disposal of our new and old followers.

As a business opportunity, it was also planned to have a special edition bundle, where one could buy the new Acer Aspire P3 Ultrabook with an Acer Arena Drone, and through the computer or his smartphone control it. Of course, this would also be targeting to get some extra media coverage, and expose even more the activation.