Sonic The Hedgehog X Minecraft Winstrike Agency
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Use of Media
Task
Encourage a new young audience to watch Sonic movie trailer and lead them to the cinema. The franchise is 90’s based, so it is preferred to pick a native and relevant integration to involve new people in communication with the brand.
Ideas and solutions
Sonic games were a massive hit in the 90’s, when 16-bit and 32-bit consoles were considered cool and children (now adults) were lost for hours in Green Hills (starting in-game location). Target audience of the movie are modern children of 6 to 17 y.o, not 30+ Sonic fans. So we thought of a similar modern game, that delivers the same feelings and immersion like Sonic did to us. The right answer is Minecraft: impressive creative options, massive fanbase all around the world, thouthands of young players and viewers. Twitch and YouTube streams about Minecraft collect millions of views. Variety of in-game instruments allow players to build and create whatever they want. It gives brands a lot of options in terms of advertising and integrations. We chose 7 top RU streamers with 30+ million combined subscribers on YouTube to deliver our message to the audience. For two weeks they played Minecraft with movie integration. The advertising campaign was divided into three stages: 1. Announcement of a special Sonic-themed contest from each streamer with movie trailer integration. 2. Special broadcast with the contest winners. 3. Repeat of a movie trailer integration on a release week. During the realisation we came to a decision to let go of traditional contest prizes (devices, money etc) and focused on emotions and experience we can give. So the main prize was a privilege to join their favorite stream in creation of the legendary Sonic stage Green Hills from SEGA-game in Minecraft. This was a success, as viewers valued this chance higher than a physical object. By the end of the campaign, the server and the created map became available to all subscribers, who can still launch it and find themselves in Sonic universe. This is a great way to involve new potential audience into more direct contact with the Sonic movie characters in future activations. In two weeks we created 27 various Sonic integrations in top-bloggers’ content and collected 6,5+ million views on YouTube!
