Agency / Omelet — Client / Google x Blizzard — Co-Marketing — 2021
How do you fit the biggest franchise on the smallest screen?
Creative Strategy
This wasn't Candy Crush. This wasn't a cheap dilution. Diablo Immortal was AAA developer firepower and world-class IP pointed at a touchscreen. A mobile gaming revolution in the making. But a revolution no one was asking for — a divide existed between the worlds of mobile and console/PC gaming. Mobile gaming was not "serious" gaming. And core fans were letting their lack of enthusiasm be heard.
Two points of intersection became important: that of the subcultures and marketing environments of gaming and mobile gaming, and that of the Google brand and Diablo IP. The fact that the latter actually didn't exist provided a generative tension — the clean elevation of Google meeting the signature grit of Diablo. In the former, we found tropes to avoid and tropes to amplify, in pursuit of setting this game apart from mobile games of the past. This was ad strategy 101: implying quality through production and media value.
A screen erupting into a magical battlefield, animated with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 — The Battle for Homescreen felt more appropriate for the launch of the next Call of Duty console game than something that could be played on a phone.
10MM+ downloads and $14.5MM in the first week, $100MM in the first eight weeks, and a cruising altitude of $1MM+ daily revenue. Can our campaign take credit for those insane numbers? Certainly not. A figure I take pride in, however, is the 50% of DI player accounts which were completely new to the franchise, validating the mainstream/gaming culture handshake represented by this co-marketing campaign.
Production // Impossible Objects + Director // Joe Sill + Omelet CDs: Jimmy Barker, Brianna Lohr + GCDs: Josh Smutko, Raul Montes + Account: Andrew Krensky, Luke Lamson + CSO: Pete Talaba + CEO: Thas Naseemuddeen + many more — please shout if I've been a jerk and left you off here!
