Context To support Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) with the digital launch campaign for their latest PlayStation 3 exclusive title, The Last of Us, Biborg produced an innovative and immersive campaign across the following digital channels: desktop, mobile, tablet, and digital out of home.
The Last of Us delivers an evocative journey of survival in a radically transformed world, twenty years after a virulent pandemic of the cordyceps fungus which has ravaged the human population. The rich story provides a realistic experience that explores the depths of humanity through the main characters, Joel and Ellie. Their journey is rife with emotionally charged moments as the narrative centres on themes of survival, loyalty, love and redemption.
Objectives The aim was to immerse users in The Last of Us world and create a digital campaign that evoked the survival and action elements about a population decimated by a modern plague.
The European Digital Campaign we collaborated with Biborg for the launch of The Last of Us has proved to be extremely successful. The interactive digital formats that have been produced have all been used globally, which made the campaign even more consistent and impactful.
Creative response
The campaign focused on the narrative aspect of the game.
Among other formats, a cinematic homepage takeover brought the collapsing world of The Last of Us to the user. A YouTube Masthead presented a short but impactful video unit displaying the struggle it takes to be a survivor and invites the user to watch the full trailer. Digital out of home executions were diffused, creating high impact to increase awareness. Video units , HTML banners and interactive layers were produced to specifically benefit from smartphone and tablet placements.
With the objective of creating an activation that had a PR and social resonance, Biborg and PlayStation created a series of matte paintings with the idea of reaching mainstream audiences by projecting The Last of Us in our real world.
The activation illustrated how a pandemic could change our cities, just like in the game. Biborg created all the matte paintings of twelve European cities with a specialised team who also had worked on the TV series Spartacus. The activation resulted in high PR coverage in Europe and at an international level.
A multi-device compatibility gallery was also developed inviting users to interact and compare the ‘before’ and ‘after’ versions of the cities and get a glimpse into the radical changes the world would face following a major disaster.
Once again, the priority of Biborg resides in the user experience. The digital campaign propels the user in the devastated world of the game and portrays what it means to survive in such a world, where the rules are constantly challenged.
We wanted this campaign to be both event-driven and easily adaptable, with a section for each existing digital media. It was a real pleasure to tweak every detail to do justice to this fantastic game. Ultimately the success of the campaign has exceeded our expectations, the evidence proved that the work we produced ultimately for Europe was also used overseas!
JeuxVideo.com (FR), Design Stack (EN), Dexigner (EN), Little Black Book (EN), Evening Standard (EN), Game or Alive (ES), Latin Spots (ES), You Mark (IT), ADC Group (IT), Advertiser (IT), Gamezone (DE).