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

BRAND HOOLIGANS is back – and this time it’s all experiential

Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

Experiential branding is the hot topic in global marketing circles and if the trend forecasters are to be believed, it’s the way of the future as people turn their backs on more traditional approaches.

But creating a remarkable experiential brand campaign is tricky. Done right it’s the most powerful catalyst for creating massive amounts of positive word of mouth for a brand. So this year, we’ve gathered together a line up of internationally acclaimed speakers and presenters that will, for 2-days, offer a complete crash-course in the elusive art of constructing a fantasy brand experience.

It feels a little sad for us to be calling this year’s event a marketing conference knowing what kind of images those two words generally represent in people’s minds. Truth be told we’re going to delving deep into the psyche of what drives our desire to form a community around brands we love. In true BRAND HOOLIGANS style we have a few paradigm shifting tricks up our sleeve to complete a fully-rounded, educational, 2-days of experiential marketing strategy that’ll arm you to create and execute this thinking for your own brands.

Our presenters this year include:

• Lauren Beukes
• Prof Tim Noakes
• The Black Heart Gang
• Justin Fiske
• Rod Suskin
• Braam Malherbe
• Jack Parow
• Liam Lynch

Your conference ticket will also give you exclusive membership to our new book club. For the next year we’ll keep the inspiration flowing with a series of books and videos, that continues the thinking of BRAND HOOLIGANS, sent to you free of charge.

For the details and ticket bookings – head over to our new BRAND HOOLIGANS site.