Case Study - Singularity (DDB)

Activision's Singularity was the first new IP from the publisher in more than 5 years. And in an economy this tough, the stakes were extremely high. How do you generate awareness and immerse gamers in a previously unknown storyline - with no paid media? Send gamers down the rabbit-hole with an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) involving murder, conspiracy, and classified weapons research on a remote Soviet island.

We created a detailed storyline involving a beautiful assassin, an evil Russian scientist, and a rich cast of supporting characters introduced over the ARG's 2-month life span. We started by seeding a viral video, which pointed gamers to clues all over the web: a conspiracy blog, a news station website, a Russian government website, 2 Facebook profiles, 2 Flickr pages, Google Maps, multiple Twitter accounts, 4 webisodes, and a 1-800 number.

Gamers helped shape the narrative by translating and interpreting classified "Russian" documents. We monitored blogs and forums, tweaking ARG elements as consumers unraveled the mystery.

The viral video received more than 1MM views on a variety of blogs and YouTube, and 200k+ gamers visited the conspiracy blog. The ARG was featured in The New York Times and dozens of blogs.

When it came time to fully reveal the game, the anticipation we generated delivered digital banner CTR's which were 7x above industry average. Proof positive that even with tight budgets and challenging market conditions, great ideas and hard work can still produce amazing results.