ACTIVISION: SKYLANDERS — Mandy Wakimoto

Ask any tween or parent of a tween and they’ll tell you that Skylanders wasn’t just a video game it was much more than that. It was a toy and a video game rolled into one and helped to turn an entire category on its head.

When a character was placed on The Portal of Power, a device that could read NFC technology, Skylanders would instantly become playable in the game.

When we took on the project Activision tasked us with making the new IP’s launch more successful than their most storied IP - 'Call of Duty'.

Through consumer research, we uncovered the insight that once kids saw the technology work, what we deemed to be the ‘boom moment’, they were hooked.

Armed with that information we created a campaign called 'Frozen Toys'. The premise was that all Skylanders (toys) were frozen on the outside, but alive on the inside. Communications we're aimed at giving kids the power with the central message being "only you can unfreeze them.”

Retail, OOH, Digital, Print, TV and Cinema help round out the campaign, which was adapted globally. The Skylanders series hit $1 billion in just 17 months*.

*According to the SFGate

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