An Unexpected Partnership

Denny’s wanted to drive downloads of their new Denny’s app during a quarterly promotion where they were remixing some of their classic diner dishes. So I had an idea. What if we remixed some classic video games and placed them exclusively on the Denny’s app to drive downloads? The result was a one-of-a-kind mash up where we gave Atari classics like Asteroids, Centipede and Break Out a diner spin.

We started by creating the custom app games in house. From there, we built custom arcade cabinets for the high score holders to play at an event we put on in Vegas. We also created a PR splash by hacking Atari consoles to be able to play our mashups. And we created advertising, lots of social, and content to promote it all.

The result? 500K app downloads in the first 3 months which exceeded our goal by a large margin. We also saw a spike in sales during the window the campaign was live and generated more organic press and awareness than any Denny’s promotional campaign to that point. The campaign also received creative recognition in the Communication Arts Exhibit Annual, CA Online, the NY Festivals, and more.

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A unique combo of tech, digital, and content.

We hacked Atari cartridges and consoles so bloggers and influencers could play the remixed Atari games on real Atari consoles to test them out. We even streamed our video game world championship live on Twitch with the app game high scorers and became the first non-tech brand ever to do so. Check out the full campaign in this short video.

Bringing it all together.

Watch this video to see more of the gameplay on the apps. You’ll also see how we created custom arcade cabinets and hacked them so the high scorers could play our mash up games at our championship in Vegas. The live-streamed event on Twitch featured hype videos and plenty of gaming action. It resulted in millions of impressions through organic press, lots of great conversations and sentiment on social, and over 500K app downloads in the first 3 months.

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The work garnered lots of press, from Ad Age and Adweek to winning awards and being featured in the Communication Arts Exhibit Issue.
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