Vanquish Media Group embarked on a multi-phase campaign to bring Acer’s ‘Predator’ gaming line of products to life in a groundbreaking branded content universe. The challenge for Acer was reinvigorating the brand with a story-driven campaign that would engage and inspire gamers across mutliple countries, cultures, and languages. Set to premiere at Acer’s Global Press Conference ‘Next@Acer’, we debuted an elaborate product-inspired franchise featuring innovative character designs & key scenes, 'origin-story' trailers, graphic novels, UGC experiencer, and more.
PREDATOR is a flagship product line of gaming computers, gear, and peripherals from industry consumer-tech leader, Acer Inc. and by far one of the brand’s best performing product lines. This initiative was developed to elevate Acer’s Predator line in the competitive gamer market through a reimagined marketing integration of popular gaming experiences and character archetypes.
Acer unveiled this new brand initiative andn developed collateral (video, graphic novel, digital/physical banners, and product packaging) at it’s annual global press conference (GPC) in addition to sponsored pro-gaming events throughout the year. The impact had to be profound and offer gamers an authentic and inspired approach to brand storytelling that promoted character-building and personalized experiences over basic specs and price points.
The ultimate test would be the adoption from the gamer-community itself in testing the authenticity and fidelity of these brand-developed experiences.
The key to re-imagining the new Predator Universe was to implement dynamic storylines and award-winning visual development to establish an authentic brand-inspired 'origin story' and immersive content universe that would personify their featured products and gear. Reimagining their established marketing themes and brand identity into dynamic characters, capabilities, and environments had to be as seamless as possible to cater to the discriminating tastes of their gamer audience.
The first piece in bringing this incredible dynamic story to life, was the creation of the custom characters and key art. These characters had to carry the story, product specs, and key features that Acer wanted to highlight for the forthcomming product launch. In the end 5 custom characters were created, each with their own corresponding superpowers, worlds, and missions. Each of these assets were designed for cross-compatibility both for digital, print, and retail/packaging campaigns.
With characters now developed the next phase of the Acer Predator campaign was to develop a slate of video components that would tell the story behind Predator, conversely named Predatoverse. Two videos key video deliverables were produced, one showcasing the origin story of the Predator characters and mythical 'RECA' recruiting initiative (inspired by their real-world gaming tournaments), and the other tying the specific product launch and featured characters together for a timely reveal.Another component added to the Acer campaign, was a fun and entertaining graphic novel, also showing the story behind the creation of Predatorverse.
Our team also integrated Acer’s existing brand sponsorships and notable e-sports events (e.g. League of Legends) in to the content narrative as a story-driven recruiting initiative that tied real world Acer products and events with in-game experiences and avatars. Our mission was to create and integrate this array of custom characters, key visuals, videos, avatars, and graphic novels, into the company’s global marketing efforts.
Our integrated marketing campaign for mobile, app, AR/VR, and UX has continued to be championed by Acer in a varied deployment across site, social, gaming events and more. The global deployment of this campaign has been featured in a variety of B2B, B2C capacities as well as throughout regional retail outlets across the globe.
Featuring multiple video assets, interactive UGC experiences, and a series of Predator-inspired graphic novels this campaign has reinviograted Acer's authentic connection with a worldwide gamer audience. Establishing product differentiation and reimagining it's display of product features and specs has allowed the brand to separate itself from the competition by giving it's consumers a more integrated and personalized connection between product and gaming realms.
The greatest challenge was to meet (if not exceed) the discriminating tastes of gamer culture with high-quality visuals, storylines, and character assets - inspired by the products themselves - as a seamless extension of the generation's most iconic game franchises.
Ultimately, the engagement and consumer embrace of this approach has been exemplified across hundreds of thousands of views and social engagements, hundreds of UGC submissions, and integrated branding throughout largest pro-gaming tournament in the world. We are proud of this collaboration and looking forward to continuing to expand upon the Acer Predatorverse narrative.
