Context Considered among the top 10 best mangas of all time, Captain Tsubasa has been adapted for the second time in history as a video game by Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe. Storytelling the fate of a soccer prodigy, Tsubasa Ozora and his friends became one of the global soccer stars and a global phenomenon with more than 82 million copies sold worldwide. By launching this game, Bandai Namco entertainment's main goal was to reactivate the brand and set up a new licence in the casual football game segment.
Challenges With three main targets to reach: Tsubasa fans, soccer game fans and party game enthusiasts, Biborg proposed to position the title as a soccer game with a refreshing manga twist for pure shots of fun.
The goal of the campaign was to set it as a casual and mainstream alternative to arcade and simulation soccer games and find a place for it in this segment. Competition and teamplay are usually the essence of soccer but the gameplay here is lighter and amusing. Soccer in this title is not about being strategic and skilled on the field but about living spectacular, over-the-top epic action.
Biborg accompanied Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe for the launch of the game including the announcement with a social media stunt, pre-order trailer, pre-order and launch digital campaigns.
Social media stunt As the world of soccer was massively influenced by Captain Tsubasa, the best way to address a mainstream target and not only niche video gamers was to integrate soccer players in the campaign.
Biborg created an activation on Twitter featuring well known players from the soccer world, Brazilian centre-back, David Luiz (8.2M followers) and Spanish midfielder Thiago Alcantara (3.2M followers) - as well as the full-service, soccer focused, digital and social media agency, 433 (500K followers), that bring together one of the largest community of soccer fans in the world. Esport clubs even got involved in the discussion, making this operation a success, among them being AS Monaco esports.
The famous soccer players and the agency relayed the trailer as well as clever messages addressed to the mainstream soccer media and fans shared by the official account of Tsubasa (@CptTsubasaRONC) which was created especially for the announcement.
The objective is that all fans subscribe to the new account and follow the release of this game whose cult name is a childhood memory for a whole generation.
The operation was a trending topic on Twitter the day it went live. Overall the operation generated more than 3K retweets, 7K likes and hundreds of enthusiastic comments from the community.
Trailer & digital campaign
The original anime and manga is loved for its over the top style, gravity-defying special shots and catalogue of unbelievable tricks.
In the gameplay trailer, we wanted to insist on the variety of moves, characters, the frantic gameplay and intensity of the matches.
To do so we decided that the hero of the trailer was not any one player or team: it was the football itself. As the trailer builds, it reflects the flow of a match. The pre-match, midfield battles, dribbling, tricks, stout defending and saves. Just as heads are starting to drop, it crescendos. Gauges fill up and pave the way for gravity defying volleys, special shots and breathtaking goals. It enables us to go beyond the anime fans only target and refresh the genre.
To reinforce the differentiation with the anime, we created original music with Stereoplane studio in order to steer away from the anime BO style and have a more street style composition inspired by Justice.
Rich banner
Standard banner
In order to support the pre-order campaign and the launch campaign we produced for 11 countries, we created a digital campaign with standard units, rich media banners and homepage takeovers highlighting the quirky and fun gameplay with unrealistic and epic actions.
The Drum (EN), AdHugger (EN), Adobo Magazine (EN), Ads of brands (EN), Strategies (FR), Strategies News (FR), TopCom (FR).