VIKINGS LONGSHIP COMPETITION

HISTORY wanted to create a buzz among Media Buyers and Marketing Clients about their big scripted drama Vikings. So we developed the Vikings Longship Competition – an online interactive battle at sea. The campaign was designed to educate clients about Vikings, and to immerse them in the HISTORY brand while getting them pumped for the show and all the advertising opportunities within it. We developed a website, interactive game, email blasts and other promotional materials that encouraged people to play every day for chances to win great prizes.

WEBSITE

We created the Vikings Longship Competition Website, where players got chances to win great prizes by answering daily trivia questions about Vikings & the actors in the show, and then attacking enemy longships in a cool interactive game inspired by the classic board game of Battleship. The site also featured information about the Vikings premiere, and an exclusive sneak preview clip of the show.

INTERACTIVE GAME

The interactive ‘Longship’ game was created with fun in mind. To really engage the players, we developed a ‘Create your Viking Avatar’ feature where players would upload a headshot and choose from a series of Viking face cutouts to truly immerse themselves in the game. They would then choose a character from the actual show to battle against, and set up their ships on the virtual game board using a cool drag-and-drop interface.

Players would make three strike attempts each day, and would register either a hit, miss, sea monster – which earned them bonus points and an instant prize, whirlpool – which took away points, or floating arrows – which allowed them to take one extra shot for the day.

The players’ scores were always visible along with their opponent’s, as was their ship layout – which also registered the opponent’s gameplay. Daily and weekly winners were published on the site (along with their funny avatars) which gave them incentive to keep playing and gave others a reason to start.

EMAIL BLASTS & E-SIGNATURE

Email blasts and a customized e-signature were also developed to drive traffic to the website. Different Vikings characters were featured in each email blast to generate further excitement among media buyers, encourage them to participate in the competition and keep playing every day.

PRIZES & FULFILLMENT

We sourced, fulfilled and shipped out all prizes for the Vikings Longship Competition. From iTunes gift cards to HD TV Entertainment Suites – 144 prizes were awarded daily, weekly and at the end of the campaign. Insert cards were sent out with each prize congratulating the players and encouraging them to keep playing. They also drove traffic to the main HISTORY website.

MY ROLE

I came up with the idea for the competition & campaign, pitched it to the client, helped formulate its game play and created all UX and UI for the game and website, worked with a sweepstakes partner to write the official rules and restrictions, designed the overall look and feel of the campaign, managed & provided creative direction to both the design and web development teams as they implemented it into all materials, oversaw prize sourcing and fulfillment, and managed the day-to-day running of the live competition for two weeks (data collection, client communication, etc.)