verizon // npcs
| Shorty Award & Silver Honor Winner |
Tom Nook, Solaire of Astora, Koopa Troopa — video games are filled to the brim with NPCs (non-playable characters) and their reign as fan favorites, meme-templates, and besties for gamers has no end in sight.
So, when Xbox wanted to launch at Verizon stores there were no better guides for the main characters of the real world (gamers) than IRL NPCs that point them to Verizon stores at every turn.
we launched with
the quest for xbox,
a 30s OLV.
Because an NPC’s core goal is to keep the story moving at all costs, we brought NPCs to life in everyday moments to remind people of their true purpose: to go get an Xbox at Verizon.
then kept the IRL shenanigans going with an NPC on the street outside a Verizon store.
and wrapped the campaign with an NPC-filled Twitch stream.
We built a complete video game set (full of Easter eggs and references of course), cast live NPCs, and created a whole quest for Twitch streamer Average Jonas to go on in search of an Xbox.
The only roadblock? All his actions had to be controlled by Twitch chat.
Luckily for us, 626k viewers tuned in to help over the course of the stream.
