Cherryflava

State of Grace: Hostage situation plays out over two weeks within large South African company

Posted on 29. Oct, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

On 1 October 2010, the employees of one of Africa’s biggest ICT organisations were sent links to a website that promised “a huge leap in business communications” using a projection of a charming client liaison avatar called Grace.

What it really offered was a leap into the deep end of a world of rampaging holograms, umbrella men, slinking LOLcats, stinking hackers, epic battles and a lot of tricky puzzles.

Hundreds of players from Dimension Data made their way through the game, which turned a dry presentation about corporate values into an epic and unforgettable quest to save the world from a hologram avatar turned eeeevil!

We here at Cherryflava are often asked about the type of work that we do in the field of commercial experience design – and this alternate reality game (or ARG) is the perfect example of how we’d turn the mundane content of a typical year-end sales conference into something memorable, engaging and effective; using multi-layered media, a great story [written by the award-winning extremely super-talented novelist Lauren Beukes] and an intriguing game involving a puzzle-filled treasure hunt played out on the Internet and in the real world with fake websites and specially filmed video sequences.

Alternate reality gaming isn’t for everybody, but for innovative brands that are open to taking their event to a far deeper, fantasy level – you should get in touch with us.

Check out the series of videos that were part of the game here.

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Credits:

Conceptualised and produced by: Cherryflava Media

Cherryflava team: Heinrich Hattingh, Jon Cherry & Isabeau Joubert

Story: Lauren Beukes and Sam Wilson

Gaming design: Cherryflava Media & Clockwork Zoo

Video production and direction: Pixel Warrior

Actors: Sarah Terry and Garth Breytenbach

Client: Dimension Data

Isabeau the Zen master joins the Cherryflava team

Posted on 09. Sep, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

We’ve been on the hunt for a creative heavy-hitter here at Cherryflava for some time. Somebody that is used to having their name listed as a Loeries finalist, a talent that extends beyond the confines of socially acceptable design thinking, an individual that brings a new balance to the team. After making the request, the universe brought us a trained Shiatsu practitioner who kills the trail running circuit in her spare time and eats colourful, Knysna, forest birds for breakfast.

Isabeau will be taking on a couple of big experiential projects that we have in the pipeline and bringing peace to an otherwise franetic fourth quarter of 2010.