Infected Advertising

Background

INFECTED is a first-person shooter game for PlayStation Portable, in which the mission is to rid New York City of zombies. INFECTED has one very unique feature: in head to head mode, gamers can ‘infect’ each other people’s games. The winner’s customised character lives on in the game of whomever they beat, and whomever they beat, and so on. In theory, one gamer could infect the PSP world. The brief was to create awareness and drive sales of INFECTED, as well as drive awareness of the ‘infectious’ feature of the game.

Idea

INFECTED’s target audience is video gamers aged 18 to 30. Gamers are inundated with hundreds of advertisements for new games every day. Gamers also talk to each other, a lot. Majesco Entertainment needed to get their attention, and get them to talk to each other about INFECTED. The Concept Farm's creative solution to these challenges was to bring the game to life. Rather than tell people about the game, they would let them experience it. Just as the game infects other games, ads for the game would infect other ads.

They dreamt up new products for which they then created and placed integrated advertising campaigns. Amongst these ‘fake’ ads, they inserted ads for INFECTED. Anywhere an ad for INFECTED was placed, the surrounding ads gradually became ‘infected’. The decaying fake ads were designed to lure the audience to their websites. When a user clicked anywhere on a fake product’s website, the model turned into a zombie and exploded. When the dust settled, the viewer had been redirected to the INFECTED website.

Wild-postings on the streets of New York and San Francisco became ‘infected’ over a four-week period. Web banners on gamer-websites changed before viewers’ eyes. Print ads in gamer and music magazines were zombified by adjacent ads for INFECTED. The zombifying ads were even built into the game itself.

Results

Sales of INFECTED averaged 8,000 units per week during the weeks following the campaign and are still going strong. Despite a small media budget, a jaded target audience and an already saturated market, this innovative use of media cut through to the core target market and beyond. Talk of the Infected advertising, and therefore the game itself, spread rampantly via blogs, gaming websites and word of mouth.

Target Audience

Videogamers aged 18 to 30