‘MY LIFE AS A NPC’ - Ubisoft’s High Performance Marketing Campaign
‘MY LIFE AS A NPC’ - Ubisoft’s High Performance Marketing Campaign
As gaming becomes more prevalent in the creative marketing community, marketing campaigns have seen increasing importance and they have been gaining more consideration around the world. The campaign ‘MY LIFE AS A NPC’ for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey advertised by Ubisoft and created by DDB Paris, was recognised by Cannes Lions, Eurobest and many others for its excellence in audience engagement and branded content.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a 2018 action role playing adventure video game played from a third-person perspective. It is the eleventh instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series and like its predecessor, the game features a large open world. In addition to completing the main storyline, the player can explore the world and encounter various non-playable characters (NPCs). They drive the plot of the game forward by providing predetermined dialogue and side missions for the player to complete.
In the past, Ubisoft has highlighted and celebrated the main characters and narrative in the game but for the first time, the company focused on NPCs to promote the video game. This campaign is a great example of innovation in marketing and the risks and rewards involved. It was a big risk to produce something that had never been done before. However, the higher the risk, the higher the reward, and in this case thinking outside the box led to the implementation of one of the best social campaigns ever made for Ubisoft.
In 2018, the Assassin Creed licence had been on the market for 11 years, Ubisoft’s strategy was to rejuvenate the target for the launch of Odyssey and keep the audience attracted to their licence in a highly competitive market. For this reason, the campaign targeted two types of audiences that are at different stages of the funnel : the gamers who have known the licence for a long time and the new generation of players. Since Assassin's Creed Odyssey is set in ancient Greece, the challenge was to appropriately translate that era into a modern context.
MY LIFE AS A NPC campaign was launched in 20 countries for a week and ran over Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat with a total of 50 animated ads. These videos featured dozens of NPCs taking over Ubisoft’s social media accounts to tell the viewers their life in the game in a funny, fresh, and quirky tone. The characters used memes and filters like face swaps to communicate wiht the viewers.
One of the most popular story published for that campaign was a video named ‘The Leap of Faith’. It’s taken from the perspective of a NPC on the ground yelling at the hero climbing on a historical monument. Later on, the assassin jumps and lands in a pile of hay unharmed. One witness finally points out how convenient the location of the pile of hay was. That comment was a private joke among the players who are used to taking a Leap of Faith that same way to unlock games achievements. Those locations are always identifiable in the series of games by the conveniently located pile of hay nearby.
In the following days, another offbeat video came along and featured a shepherd in shock when he found his beloved herd of goats dead on the ground. While the shepherd blames their death on the ‘cruel world of fashion’, the players are actually the ones to blame. This is a reference to a secret game achievement called ‘Stink Eye’. In order to unlock the trophy, players have to find a fragment that was randomly placed inside any goats on the island. Therefore, gamers need to kill as many goats as possible to uncover it.
In addition to using private jokes to connect with their audience, Ubisoft also made sure to design videos that are in line with their humour and pop culture. The company published an offbeat video featuring a character roasting another with gamer jokes such as ‘your mom is so old she screams in 8bits’ and ‘your mom is so pixelated she looks like an indie game’.
They also published an Instagram story using the same codes as the famous meme ‘thug life’ featuring pixel glasses flying onto a character after they say a witty remark. In that spot, the video starts with a group of level 30 spartans bullying a level 4 player and asking the viewer through an Instagram poll if they should keep him alive or kill him.
The ‘death’ choice reached 56% and the next story featured a spartan talking to the camera and referring to the viewers as his ‘internet dudes’ congratulating them for their choice. Later on he takes the camera and films another spartan killing the said player before making it a ‘thug life’ meme.
Those light-hearted videos effectively communicated how NPCs are impacted by the presence of gamers running around in their world. Other spots featured a wide variety of characters from a trader complaining about players treating her as if she “was a trash can”, to a spartan who can never take his helmet off and many more. This campaign successfully showcased how attentive Ubisoft is to its audience humour, cultural references as well as the type of memes they enjoy. Through the entire duration of the campaign, the company consistently ensured that they were addressing their audience in a language they are familiar with by using gamer slang.
The MY LIFE AS A NPC campaign reached an all-time high engagement rate (+138%) from gamers, with an organic reach of 3.7million on Facebook and 2.5million on Instagram. It effectively showed the diversity and depth of the Assassin's Creed Odyssey environment and virtual world. By choosing to communicate to their target audience through social media from this original point of view, Ubisoft broke the fourth wall of gaming. The attention to detail utilised by Ubisoft brought together multiple passionate global communities in an interactive experience with this successful campaign. This is a perfect example of the results that proper market research, social listening, content creation and planning can bring to a digital campaign.
To see your own successful marketing campaign come to life, contact us here for a free strategy session!
