Ford Escape Routes broke new ground. Our collective goal was to launch the new Escape in a way that would give folks something they had never experienced before in branded entertainment. So, in an industry first, we took the small screen to the second screen, combining TV (NBC/Hulu) with social media & mini-gameplay to create the first primetime Social TV show: Escape Routes. Six teams took on daredevil stunts (Words With Friends in mid-air, anyone?), but also had to enlist online fans as Virtual Teammates (VTMs) whose real-time support at home determined who crossed the finish line each week.
The Building Blocks
We put our developers on the pace of a TV production crew, designing, writing & coding on 24-hour cycle. Each week on escaperoutes.com, there were social-media-centric interactive challenges that teams could only complete with help from their at-home VTMs. And the gaming mechanics & badge rubric fostered friendly rivalry among VTMs in their "always-on" participation & prizes. Capping the week was “GameStream," the first livestream video gameshow, hosted by iJustine. Marrying video & real-time community management was a huge breakthrough, & added a layer of interactivity that was unprecedented.
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MobileSMS
QR Code
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SocialFacebook
Instagram
Twitter
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VideoYouTube
Livestream video
Ustream
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Web/AppsWebGL
HTML5
jQuery
Github
Google Analytics
CSS3
SASS
The Votes
The Details
- Agency
- Brand
- Ford Motor Company
- Targeted Regions
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- North America
- Marketing Objective
- Launch Date
- March 8, 2012
The Team
- ROKKAN rokkan.com
- John Noe, CEO
- KellyAnn Lum, Senior Producer
- Cintra McGauley, Account Executive
- Jim Blackwelder, CTO
- Andrew Rindfleisch, Senior Technical Officer
- Russell Savage, Technical Director
- Katarina Milkova, Technical Director
- Jarret Gabel, Senior Interactive Developer
- Emma Assin, Interactive Developer
- Daniel Viedma, Creative Technologist
- Roger Ruiz, Creative Technologist
- Matt Lindeboom, Creative Technologist
- Dominic Giangiobbe, Creative Technologist
- Krasimir Georgiev, Senior Developer
- Dan Applegate, Developer
- Jon Zepernick, Developer
- Mauricio Aguayo, Senior Social Strategist
- Jordan Schenck, Associate Social Strategist
- Melyssa Brown, Copywriter & Marketing Manager
- Chase Domergue, Copywriter
- Maria Wang, Senior Art Director
- Magnus Andersen, Senior Visual Designer
- Vincent Au, User Experience Director
- Annie Ha, Senior User Experience Architect
- Team Detroit teamdetroit.com/
The Stats
- 1 month of all-nighters pulled
- 21 rounds of creative iterations
- 50% increase in Facebook 'Likes'
The Results
Ford took a risk in bringing pre-launch to primetime, but it paid off. Syncing real-time video content, social engagement, gaming, & still doing multi-platform 24/7 tech support for months seemed like mission impossible. But, it was pulled off by a talented, collaborative team; no one was siloed, & everyone was a jack-of-all-trades, dedicated to further blurring the lines of digital & IRL interaction. The result? The social media buzz around Escape Routes was rabid, exceeding all our expectations & benchmarks. And, true to its purpose, Escape Routes sent Ford after Ford driving off the lot.
