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Dikembe Mutombo 4.5 Weeks To Save World

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the rundown

As our Mayan ancestors' prediction of the end of humanity drew near, Old Spice felt it was their job as a quality hygiene product to devise a way to save it. The answer came in the way of a fragile alliance with basketball legend Dikembe Mutombo and a weekly video game. Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World is Old Spice’s answer to those cocky Mayan calendar makers who predicted the world would end on December 21, 2012, but didn’t predict Old Spice would make a video game designed to stop them.

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The Building Blocks

For us, it wasn't so much about using unique technology as it was about the development process. In order to make a unique flash-based video game from scratch our team every week, our team literally looked at headlines from the previous week every Monday morning and produced content for the next 7 days. Building a new game weekly required us to negotiate rights and usage for cameos all the time. We challenged the way both our agency and our client's traditionally work in the name of compelling creativity. We were fortunate to work with Adam Atomic, Driftlab and Powerhouse Animation Studios!

The Votes

The Details

Agency
Brand
Old Spice
Targeted Regions
  • North America
Marketing Objective
Launch Date
Nov. 21, 2012

The Team

  • Wieden+Kennedy www.wk.com
  • Mark Fitzloff, Executive Creative Director
  • Susan Hoffman, Executive Creative Director
  • Jason Bagley, Creative Director
  • Craig Allen, Creative Director
  • Matt ORourke, Interactive Creative Director
  • Andy Laugenour, Copywriter
  • Max Stinson, Art Director
  • Mike Davidson, Senior Interactive Producer
  • Ben Kendall, Interactive Producer
  • Jake Doran, UX Designer
  • Ben Grylewicz, Director of Broadcast Production
  • Pierre Wendling, Director of Interactive Production
  • Michael Dalton, Management Supervisor
  • Liam Doherty, Account Supervisor
  • Cindy Lewellen, Business Affairs
  • Kelly Muller, Kerry Antos, Lisa Feldhusen, Media Team
  • Adam Atomic www.adamatomic.com/
  • Adam Saltsman, Game Maker
  • Paul Veer, Artist
  • Sven Ruthner, Artist
  • Jukio Kallio, Composer
  • Robin Arnott, Sound Design
  • Powerhouse Animation Studios www.powerhouseanimation.com/work.php
  • Powerhouse Animation Studios, Animation Company
  • Brad Graeber, CEO
  • Jason Williams, Studio Director
  • Louie Granda, Production Director
  • San Deats, Creative Director
  • Chris Beaver, Ed Booth, Kellan Stover, Animators
  • Driftlab www.driftlab.com/
  • Driftlab, Digital Development Company
  • Ash Warren, Developer
  • Nate Horstmann, Developer
  • Dan Will, Developer
  • Joe Corrao, Animator
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The Stats

  • 1 worlds saved from Mayan's prediction
  • 18 characters developed for the game
  • 756 total hours spent on this project

The Results

Video games typically take a long time to build. The thing that made "Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 weeks to save the world" unique was that it was a video game built every 7 days based on current events, all culminating with the ultimate current event...the end of the world. Building the levels each week made the video game topical and relevant, which made people want to play it, and also share it. And most importantly for the Old Spice brand, it wasn’t just another video game, but had the ridiculous visual and dialogue humor the brand has become known for.

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