Charging our way to a 530% ROI with Desperados

With festival season on the horizon, Desperados came to us seeking a unique and unforgettable digital experience

Emphasising their strong connection to music and creativity, whilst simultaneously bridging the gap between on and off-trade sales.

Armed with a host of Boomtown tickets as prizes, we set about creating a multi-faceted gamification piece; promoted across the on-trade and designed to encourage progression through both skill and the purchase of coded Desperados packs in shops.

Read on to see how we turned things up to 11, and achieved over 10,000 redemptions in the process...

Hey Mr DJ!

We knew we wanted to put the player right in the heart of the action, and what better way to experience the raw energy of a festival crowd than from the DJ booth?

And so we got to work, rapidly prototyping and wireframing ideas. We soon arrived at the concept of Charge - a virtual power meter of your DJing dexterity. Earn enough charge during your set and you unlock the next stage, unlock all stages and be in with a chance of winning those tickets. Watch out though! Miss too many beats and a career on local radio awaits.

Getting the balance right

From experience we know online games built into campaigns should be quick and easy to play, with minimal instruction, a shallow learning curve and enough depth to keep players coming back for more.

For this game, the fewer mistakes made meant the higher the charge. For the perfectionist this posed a fun, but challenging experience, while equally giving casual gamers a more forgiving experience.

Cross platform compatibility

Whilst it may look like an App at first glance, the whole game was actually built using the latest HTML5 web technologies, so that it worked flawlessly across all modern browsers and devices.

The results

The campaign struck the perfect balance between entertainment and incentive, driving thousands of plays, purchases and sign-ups in a short space of time. With seamless gameplay, strong creative and a clear value exchange, it delivered real engagement at scale and proved a hit both on and off trade.

Time to level-up your brand? Let's talk.