ARcade
Read the story- Brand
- M&M's
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Mini-Games
- Platform
- AR & VR
- Agency
- Blippar
Objective
M&M'S was launching Caramel, the biggest product innovation in the brand's history, and needed to turn a single flavor drop into a story people would keep talking about through the rest of 2016 and all of 2017. The campaign had to introduce a new character, Caramel, into the brand's existing cast of spokescandies, and give people a reason to engage with the product in person rather than just see an ad for it.
Solution
Walking through Times Square, players see ordinary M&M'S Caramel billboards. A prompt invites them to download the free Blippar app and point their phone's camera at the board, and the static ad comes alive: the screen opens into M&M'S ARcade, a retro arcade cabinet. From its home screen, players pick one of three games — Caramel Cannon, where they fire at falling caramel cubes; Caramel Crawl, a snake-style game that grows longer as it collects Caramel characters; and Square Smash, where they race to smash falling caramels while dodging the M&M'S themselves. Anyone who isn't at Times Square can get the same games by scanning a pack of M&M'S Caramel with the same app, so the experience isn't limited to one place or one day.
Results
The launch generated more than 392 million traditional-media and social impressions, drew over 26,000 people to interact with the M&M'S ARcade experience at Times Square on launch day, and was featured more than 20 times by influencers posting under #UnsquareCaramel.
- 1
The experience starts on ordinary retro-style M&M'S Caramel billboards installed at Father Duffy Square in Times Square, which stay plain advertising until the player downloads the free Blippar app for Android or iOS.
- 2
Pointing the phone's camera at a billboard through Blippar — or at a pack of M&M'S Caramel anywhere else — triggers an AR transformation, turning the static image into a retro arcade cabinet called M&M'S ARcade.
- 3
From the ARcade home screen, the player picks one of three retro mini-games: Caramel Cannon, Caramel Crawl, or Square Smash.
- 4
In Caramel Cannon, the player uses on-screen arrow buttons to slide a cannon left and right, dodging falling caramel cubes, and taps a fire button to shoot them; hit cubes splatter on impact.
- 5
In Caramel Crawl, the player steers a character with the arrow buttons in a snake-style movement, collecting Caramel characters to stretch the trail into the longest possible line.
- 6
In Square Smash, caramel cubes fall from the top of the screen and the player taps to smash as many as possible before they land; tapping a falling M&M'S character by mistake costs 10 points.
- 7
Away from Times Square, the same three games are just as accessible: buying a pack of M&M'S Caramel and pointing Blippar at it unlocks the identical ARcade experience without a trip to New York.
