Youland
- Brand
- Old Spice
- Year
- 2016
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Wieden + Kennedy
- With
- Monks
Objective
Old Spice wanted to promote its new Hardest Working Collection line — three fragrances the brand needed to introduce to a younger audience that had grown skilled at tuning out television ads. The campaign leaned on the brand's established persona of a fun, adventurous life, but made the pitch personal: by putting players and their friends' own faces into the game, Old Spice turned a spot you'd normally watch into one you starred in and wanted to send around.
Solution
You start by logging in through Facebook, and the game immediately grabs your photo along with a random dozen of your friends, turning everyone into pixel-art characters cast as sidekicks or rivals. Isaiah Mustafa greets you first, jokes that he was only paid for 45 seconds of voiceover, and hands the mic to Terry Crews. From there you pick one of three retro arcade games, each built around a different scent in the Hardest Working Collection, and clear three levels in each — racing as a transformed sports car in an OutRun-style stage, or flying a jetpack alongside your pixelated friends. Between levels, cutscenes drop in personal details pulled straight from your profile — your city, school or job, age, interests, birthday, even the real-time weather where you live — so the story reshuffles itself around whoever's playing. It's a mouse-and-keyboard, desktop-only session that ends once you've beaten all three arcade games.
- 1
The player lands on youroldspicegame.com and logs in through Facebook Connect, which is required before the game will start.
- 2
The game pulls the player's profile photo and photos of up to 12 random friends, turning every face into a pixel-art character, and builds its world from that player's city, school or workplace, age, interests, status posts, birthday, and current weather and time of day, so no two playthroughs look alike.
- 3
An opening cutscene introduces Isaiah Mustafa as host, who exits almost immediately, joking that he was only paid for 45 seconds of voiceover; Terry Crews then takes over as guide, casting the player as the hero of a video game.
- 4
The player picks one of three separate games, each named after a scent from the Old Spice Hardest Working Collection: Lasting Legend, Stronger Swagger, and Tougher Timber.
- 5
Each of the three games is built in its own retro arcade genre and runs three levels in sequence, played with mouse or keyboard on desktop only, with no mobile support.
- 6
In one game, styled after OutRun, the player is turned into a sports car and races down the road.
- 7
In another, the player and friends take to the sky on jetpacks in a multi-person flying episode.
- 8
Along the way the player encounters a surreal Old Spice world of talking animals, wooden VR headsets, a wealthy future version of themselves, malls outnumbering people, and interdimensional cyborg racers; the Facebook friends recast as pixel characters appear as both allies and enemies, with some opponents shown getting facial tattoos.
- 9
Levels are separated by pixel-art cutscenes personalized with details from the player's profile, adding up to more than 40 minutes of footage set to an original soundtrack.
