Tommy Pinball
Open the game- Brand
- Stratford Festival
- Year
- 2013
- Objective
- Sales
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- shannonkarleen
Objective
Stratford Festival launched a promotional campaign to generate buzz for its 2013 revival production of The Who's rock opera Tommy, directed by Des McAnuff. The campaign leveraged the iconic 'Pinball Wizard' song to create an immersive and memorable marketing moment tied to the production's May 30 opening. The objective was to drive awareness and excitement for the theatrical run among both theatrical audiences and digital media consumers.
Solution
The campaign comprised two integrated components: (1) an interactive web-based pinball game built with HTML5 and jQuery animations, created by agency shannonkarleen, deployed on tommypinball.com; (2) Pinballapalooza, a physical record-breaking event held May 16–17, 2013, at First Canadian Place in Toronto, where 100 players simultaneously played pinball machines to set a Guinness World Record for the most pinball machines operated in a single venue. The production's cast and composer Pete Townshend participated in supporting radio promotions.
Results
The pinball campaign received Awwwards recognition with scores ranging from 5.35 to 9.4/10. The Stratford Festival's production of *Tommy* officially opened on May 30, 2013.
