Crusty Demons Tattoo Parlour

Background

Deep Silver games asked New Media Maze to generate a viral marketing tool to spread awareness of their Extreme Motocross game ‘Crusty Demons’. The challenge was to engage casual gaming males aged 18 to 30 with a genre that traditionally has limited appeal beyond niche motocross fans.

Idea

New Media Maze realised that in order to spread awareness outside of motocross fans, they would need to find a broader theme. Luckily, in addition to motorbikes galore, the game also contains a sexy, gritty culture featuring sultry young women in various states of undress - all part of the Extreme Motocross culture. They played on this culture to create their viral tool. This simple and highly interactive mechanic allows users to say anything they want to their friends whilst delivering it in a novel and saucy way. Users can click through from the tattoo parlour microsite to the main Crusty Demons site. They can also take the tattoo image and apply it as a wallpaper on their PC - further enhancing the viral appeal and taking the Crusty Demons brand offline onto users’ desktops. See www.crustydemons.co.uk/UK/tattoo_parlour.

Results

Within one week of being submitted to viral sites such as ‘TTR2’ and ‘B3TA’, the site had generated 103,000 unique visits. As at December it had received 1,003,903 unique visits and was linked to from 8,504 different websites (according to Google Analytics). More than 9,000,000 tattoos have been generated. The viral also created a buzz within the Blogosphere, making it into various lads’ sites and newsletters, industry blogs, and even being ‘Culture Jammed’ by a certain ‘Dr Strangelove’.

Target Audience

UK males, aged 18 to 30, casual gamers.

Our Thoughts

When we were reviewing all the submissions for this Issue, we spent a ridiculously long time with this entry creating daft tattoos. Not a complicated idea but very engaging.