Glacéau vitaminwater’s global positioning is “Hydration, only better,” so in advance of the brand’s 2012 Olympic sponsorship, we created games – specifically, Musical Chairs – only better. We partnered with global pop star Jessie J to launch Musical Chairs and the music video for her new single, Laserlight, simultaneously. The ultimate goal was to provide an experience that was challenging, addictive and fun, as well as create something that no one had ever created before.
The Building Blocks
Technology inspired and informed everything from the bones of the game to the gameplay mechanics incorporated to the syncing of real-time players. We wanted to minimize latency and keep the game responsive across various servers and regions. Optimization was key, so we spent two weeks testing the P2P communication. Another challenge was repeat playability. The game has various video edits and randomized stop points to make the game fair and challenging.
The only project element not informed by technology was maintaining the original game rules. Everything else was, well, only better.
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SearchAkamai
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SocialFacebook API
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Web/AppsAmazon EC2
The Votes
The Details
- Agency
- Brand
- vitaminwater
- Targeted Regions
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- Global
- Marketing Objective
- Launch Date
- May 23, 2012
The Team
- Droga5 droga5.com
- Pulse Films www.pulsefilms.com
- Rushes www.rushes.co.uk/
- Cut + Run cutandrun.com/
- Island Records www.islandrecords.co.uk/
- B-Reel www.b-reel.com
- vitaminwater
The Stats
- 3 straight all-nighters
- 10 team members working on this project
- 180 total hours of missed sleep
The Results
The craft and attention to detail of this project make it a win. Design, SFX, graphic game elements and mechanics defined the game. Showing restraint in the interface design allowed the music video to be the main feature and helped users get lost in the experience, aligning it with the actual experience of Musical Chairs.
Musical chairs was available in 18 countries and translated into 12 languages. The site ran for three months and drew 78,000 visitors with 24% returning to the site. The average visit duration was 4:31 minutes.
