Dead Space was a long dormant franchise that had ended on a sour note for its fan base. The community still regards Dead Space among the greatest gaming experiences even years later, but attributed the fall of the franchise to EA, as the last iteration was perceived as a departure from the series. EA enlisted us to develop a social media advocacy program and rollout strategy for the remake of Dead Space that would engage core fans and attract the attention of the wider gaming community.
As we dug deeper into our key insights, we selected Instagram as our primary platform because Dead Space had no official presence on Instagram, and a huge built-in fan base could be accessed immediately upon announcement.
With the creative freedom to go wherever our insights lead, we designed a unique narrative that exists in the periphery of game canon. Players who follow @thebench receive urgent messages and cryptic clues from Chief Engineer Ariel Rousseau (they/them). Players are enlisted into the Comms Relay Crew to solve puzzles, decode data, and uncover hidden information in order to save Rousseau, the ship… and humanity.
Our campaign was a massive success, garnering over 1 million organic engagements across social. We elicited over 700k total mentions from our passionate fanbase and amassed more than 332 billion potential impressions, succeeding in our goal to reignite a dormant audience, and bring Dead Space back to life.
