You Need The Needs
- Brand
- The Needs
- Year
- 2019
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Wayward Creative
Objective
The Needs and Jansen Records needed to launch the band's debut album "You Need The Needs" (out September 6, 2019) as something more than another tour-and-tracklist landing page. Working with US interactive studio Wayward Creative, they built the entire campaign around a game that gives fans a reason to spend time with the record and carries them straight into streaming it, rather than tacking listening on as an afterthought.
Solution
The campaign lives on its own domain, youneedtheneeds.com, and drops the visitor straight into a browser-based 3D arcade instead of a player-and-tracklist page. Using the arrow keys, the player steers a character through the level, dodging obstacles as they go, and picks up vinyl records scattered across the terrain. Each record collected isn't a score tick — it triggers the corresponding track from the album, playing straight out of Spotify or Apple Music, so the play counts on the streaming services instead of staying trapped inside the promo page. Once a session ends, the player can share their result on social media. There's no separate marketing layer bolted on top of it: the game itself is the entire piece of album promotion.
- 1
The player opens youneedtheneeds.com and a browser-based 3D arcade game loads in place of a standard album promo page, built around The Needs' new record.
- 2
The player steers a character through the game space, dodging obstacles that appear along the route.
- 3
The core objective is collecting vinyl records scattered through the environment as the character moves.
- 4
Each record picked up triggers a track from the album, streamed live from Spotify or Apple Music, so the player builds a listening session by playing through the game.
