We’ve all heard the term “viral” as it applies to a video, ad campaign or idea – something so interesting and unique that people tell everyone else they know about it.
The secret to viral ideas is that they aren’t about social media, but about social behavior. Their success depends on the average human’s love of sharing cool things amongst friends and colleagues. Similarly, when confronted with a mystery, people will band together to share clues. And the web, through twitter, facebook, chat rooms etc, facilitates that.
Case in point is today’s link; a find by Gavin Wiggins: the story of an alternate reality game, or ARG, from MacLaren McCann developed specifically to bring gamers to the launch party for Halo 3 ODST.
Alternate Reality Games combine elements of the web, the real world and mobile technology to create a story that is affected by the participants’ own actions. In this case, the agency created a scavenger hunt combining youtube videos, an IP address, GPS co-ordinates, physical clues, an SMS number, QR codes and cryptic text messages. Whoever figured out the secrets of the game got VIP access to the launch party.
The idea quickly went viral: gamers shared the clues and their solutions with each other and figured it all out, almost doubling attendance goals.
Although this happened last fall, it’s still a really interesting example of how to combine various elements to create an alternate reality game that tech-savvy consumers enthusiastically work together to solve.
Check out the brief article and video here.
And a higher resolution version of the video here.
One can see how we could develop such a concept for, say, Walmart’s electronics department or for a brand like Crush or Trident or Stride. The reality is, the only limit is our imagination.
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