THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 7th Annual Shorty Awards

Denny's Atari

Entered in Contest or Promotion, Gamification

Objectives

Denny's decided to remix some of their most loved dishes, so we decided to find some other classics to remix to promote the limited-time menu. We picked our three favorite Atari titles and rebooted them with a Denny's twist, creating three app games from scratch, in-house at our agency. Asteroids became Hashteroids, Centipede became Centipup, and Break Out became Take Out. We worked closely with Atari to make sure the games were as true to the originals as possible. Then, we unleashed our army of tech stars to help us spread the word. In two weeks, we hacked six Atari consoles and 18 cartridges, and we shipped them off to influencers to coincide with the launch so they could play our app games on actual Atari consoles.

We paid homage to Atari's retro TV commercials with a spot of our own and custom built four retro arcade consoles, designing and tweaking them until they were ready for action. Then, we tracked down the high scorers for our games and invited them to a showdown of epic proportions in Las Vegas, and we streamed it all live on Twitch. When the dust finally settled, two ordinary fans were transformed into gaming legends. Denny's experienced their highest sales and restaurant traffic since 2006. The app was downloaded 475,868 times in first three months, and the buzz that was generated produced over 10 million additional impressions. In the end, Denny's had its most engaging and successful partnerships in its 65-year history.

Strategy and Execution

One of the coolest parts of this campaign is the fact that it was created in house by our agency. In addition to being a blast to play, our app game partnership garnered some impressive results. During this campaign, Denny's experienced their highest sales and restaurant traffic since 2006. The app was downloaded almost a half million times in the first three months, and the buzz that was generated produced over 10 million additional impressions. In the end, Denny's had its most engaging and successful partnerships in its 65-year history.

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Erwin Penland

Links

Entry Credits