Agency: Noise Digital
Client: Nokia
In early 2009, Nokia released the game Resident Evil: Degeneration for its mobile gaming platform, N-Gage and was looking for a fresh and innovative way to engage and leverage the game’s fans. Also, due to the fact that it used a proprietary hardware and software platform, the promotion needed to generate awareness for the platform, as well.
Research showed that the largest zombie and horror followings were located in North America and Spain. The site was built bilingually for these two markets.
With a budget of just $100,000, Noise Digital was charged with selling 10,000 units within the first two months of the campaign, obtain 1,000 unique zombie profiles and 250,000 page views. They chose a web-based campaign.
The user experience on the site centered around “The Zombifier,” a custom flash application that allowed users to create a realistic custom avatar with wounds, incisions and other gory zombie aspects, as well as a zombie profile replete with personality traits. The grand prize was a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show, and a meeting with Resident Evil creators at Capcom.
To achieve objectives, Noise Digital developed a contest that required viewers to regularly visit the site, interact with their profiles, and share it with friends to boost their chances of winning. To encourage repeat visits, users could collect friends or “fiends”, rate pictures based on their “Bore or Gore” factor, and “bite” (i.e. poke) other zombies. A social media seeding campaign targeted Resident Evil, zombie and horror fans.
Zombie Singles generated 104,310 game downloads within the first two months, placing Resident Evil: Degeneration as the top-selling game on the N-Gage platform. As of November 2009, there were 27,000 unique profiles on the site and over 3 million page views. More than 50% of registered users returned to the site at least once per week during the contest time period.
