One unexpected partnership.
During my time working on Denny’s, we had the chance to create a unique partnership with Atari and remix some of their classic video games. Denny’s was remixing some of their classic dishes, like putting a spin on their Grand Slam. So I came up with the idea to put a Denny’s spin on some Atari classics as part of the campaign.
We started by creating the custom app games in-house. From there, we built custom arcade cabinets for the high score holders to play at an event we put on in Vegas, we created a PR splash by hacking Atari consoles to allow people to play our mashups on the retro consoles, and we created a ton of great advertising, social, and content to promote it all.
The result was a big idea that unified all aspects of the agency while delivering a ton of organic press for Denny’s. In the first 3 months, the app was downloaded 500,000 times. It won numerous awards too while being featured in Communications Arts and many other online and trade publications.
A unique combo of tech, digital and content.
We hacked Atari cartridges and consoles so bloggers and influencers could play the remixed Atari games on real Atari consoles to test them out. We even streamed our video game world championship live on Twitch with the app game high scorers and became the first non-tech brand ever to do so.
Beyond an app game.
Watch this video to see more of the gameplay on the apps. You’ll also see how we created custom arcade cabinets and hacked them so the high scorers could play our mash up games at our championship in Vegas. The live-streamed event on Twitch featured hype videos and plenty of gameplay. It resulted in millions of impressions, organic chatter on social, and lots of press in news publications and the trades.
