Page 47 - Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World

38 The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World

Target audience

The principal target audience for the campaign was 16- to 24-year-old males.

Action

To create a buzz around the resurrection of the Doritos flavours, Goodbody,
Silverstein & Partners capitalized on the Halloween theme and set about cre-
ating an online experience with one goal in mind: to scare teenage Americans
out of their wits.

Hotel 626 grabbed a demographic obsessed with horror films by their vivid
imaginations and immersed them in a living nightmare where they became
the star. Employing innovative live action techniques and first-person 3D ani-
mation never before seen on a website, visitors to the site found themselves
trapped inside a haunted hotel facing a series of spine-chilling challenges to
earn their freedom. Some of the challenges included photographing a psycho-
pathic maid, singing a demon baby to sleep and escaping a madman’s cell
alive.

To make the experience even more personal Hotel 626 cleverly blurred the
lines between the virtual world of the game and the real world in ways that
had never been attempted before. Early in the game it used the player’s
webcam to surreptitiously snap a photo of them, and then featured their face
prominently in the lair of a serial killer later in the gaming experience. The site
also called players up on their mobile phone during game-play, offering tips on
finding a way out of Hotel 626, but also causing a disquieting sense that
somehow the denizens of the hotel already knew your every move.

Visitors could only play the game at night: Hotel 626 only opened its doors
between the hours of 6pm and 6am, boosting the scare factor.