#WhosGonnaWin Super Bowl XLIX
ROLES:
CLIENT FACING : GAME CONCEPT : GAME MECHANICS : OVERSEEING LOOK & FEEL : OVERSEEING PRE-ROLL PROMOTION : OVERSEEING OLA & SOCIAL
CLIENT FACING : GAME CONCEPT : GAME MECHANICS : OVERSEEING LOOK & FEEL : OVERSEEING PRE-ROLL PROMOTION : OVERSEEING OLA & SOCIAL
In 2014 Verizon launched the #WHOSGONNAWIN campaign for Super Bowl XLVIII. That year New York was the host city. The Empire State building was used as a beacon of fan sentiment, lighting up in the colours of the trending team.
Verizon wanted to do the same campaign for Super Bowl XLIX. They still wanted a light-show, the problem being the new location was downtown Phoenix which provided less incentive for fan engagement.
The Solution
We sold in a much bigger digital campaign and launched it during the play-offs instead of 4days before the Super Bowl. Time was very tight as we were only given a month to pull it off. We partnered with the amazing team at North Kingdom to help us build our vision of a site experience that allowed fans to share their vote and their fandom in a unique way partnering with Google Maps.
This was the first of two pre-roll videos I created the concept for and worked with North Kingdom to bring to life
The Site Experience
Below is an image of the microsite landing page where fans could place their vote and see it appear on the national map.
They could also use Google Street View to select an address, decorate it in team paraphernalia of their choice and share it with friends.
Promote your fandom...or antagonize a friend!
Our main goal with this idea was to tap into the age old fun of rivalry. By allowing fans to decorate the homes of friends supporting rival teams with the team colours of their own, a new form of football banter was formed.
The Game
Fans can't control the outcome of the games their teams play, so our goal was to give them something they could influence and create victory for their team regardless of the outcome on the field.
Originally we were trying to develop working within the Google Maps API using Web GL to allow fans to travel around in Street View and decorate the environment around them in their chosen team's colours to take over territory across the nation to win prizes.
See what Zip codes are curently captured by which teams
Join the game at street-view level
Select targets along the way and decorate to claim territory and points.
When a fan base captures a city, unique content would be supplied to share. Imagine Dallas taking Philadelphia and what an impact it would have for fans showing a cowboy's hat on the Rocky statue.
With smart media buys, the idea was that the game results would start to leek into other territories. So fans could effectively capture territory of another team in spaces like their ESPN Team landing pages.
Where the game ended up
As time was not on our sides, we changed the game mechanics we'd originally created, replacing it with a much simpler, but highly addictive tapping game. So addictive in fact, in the month the game was live, fans tapped over 17Million times to claim territory for their teams!
We created customised content for fans to automatically share whenever they achieved something like Voted, Decorated or Captured territory.
Utilizing sponsored players
We capitalized on players like Drew Brees to spread awareness and rally fans.
Dynamic OLA
We created dynamic ad units to push the latest results
The final push to Super Bowl Sunday
The week before Super Bowl Sunday we switched our messaging to drive awareness of the upcoming nightly Phoenix light show. It helped inform fans their votes directly influence the outcome of the light-show.
The light-show ran for 4 nights before Sunday, each night announcing the national vote.
A Livestream of the light show in Super Bowl Central, Downtown Phoenix took over our usual site page for fans to see how their votes influenced the outcome
