This fully-integrated campaign was shortlisted for Titanium at Cannes, where it won two bronzes for digital advertising. It went on to win gold at the One Show, Clios, and was further recognized by every major award show in the industry.
Agency: FCB San Francisco
Based on the insight that “A mom’s disapproval will always be an accurate barometer of something cool,” we were able to advertise one of the year’s most grotesquely offensive and gratuitously violent video games by barely showing any of its explicit content. As you can probably guess, all we had to do was show the genuine reactions of unsuspecting middle American moms to actual game footage. At the time, the Dead Space 2 campaign created a nearly unprecedented amount of content. Television spots led to a microsite which housed long-form videos. Online chatter led to the release of more videos, an online contest had people all over the country showing the game to their mothers, and more.
It should be noted that this was not all frivolous; this game doubled the sales of its predecessor.
Suddenly, the Dead Space 2 campaign took on a life of its own. Random people made their own videos and posted them online. These are just four of dozens of videos that fans of the game (or just the campaign) left online.
Adult Swim is the influential late-night programming block on the Cartoon Network. They created an unsolicited bumper calling our campaign the “Best Marketing Idea of 2011.”
So of course we responded….
About a month after launch, brought back two of the most popular moms from our original series when EA released the game’s expansion pack. With a modest bit of fame, they were able to have a little fun actually playing the game…which ended up not being as reprehensible as they first thought.
And lastly, we revealed the method to our madness. As a testament to the resonance of the campaign, this video received over a million hits despite being released weeks after the campaign’s launch.