Context Are you ready to rumble?

Biborg jumped in the ring with World of Tanks Console by setting up a stream announcement on Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook to celebrate the exclusive partnership with WWE for this all-new season. Hosted by WWE announcer Corey Graves and featuring WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and WWE Superstars Kofi Kingston, Big E and Lacey Evans, the one hour long SummerSlam Showdown stream consisted of 4 segments.

In April 2020, World of Tanks Consoles implemented a whole new seasonal system, bringing new content, rewards and thematic in-game events every 3 months. After the Valor season, in August 2020, kicked-off the all-new season of World of Tanks Consoles, Summerslam, with WWE’s input. Players can earn points and progress through 100 Levels to receive epic in-game content, including in-game currency, tank equipment, and legendary WWE tanks helmed by WWE favorite Superstars.

To create excitement around the announcement, and due to the Covid19 circumstances, Wargaming turned to Biborg to craft an online-only and creative activation to engage the core US-based target audience and showcase the content of the new season in an entertaining way.

Challenges To create an engaging online event for our core US Console Gamers audience, we needed to keep it simple and entertaining. Iit needed to be integrated directly into players’ social media daily usages, from Twitch to Youtube and Facebook, within easy reach.

This new season is the perfect opportunity for WOTC to entertain actual players, while giving a reason to lapsed and newcomers to get back into the game. We needed to be unexpected, and present WoT Console in a refreshing way that will surprise our audiences and help us create FOMO. The content needed to give players a clear understanding of the new season, while being fun and over the top. Interactivity and rewards will be key.

Finally, the concept had to be adaptable, reusable and customisable for every other season of WoT Console on other networks.

Creative Thinking We made sure we fully understood the WOTC universe. We crafted a creative platform to get WOTC’s approval on the main message we wanted to communicate: For those on the lookout for fun and challenging experiences, now is the best time to gather in WoT Console:

1. Epic & fun challenges: have fun challenging yourself and your opponents in epic battles

2. Cultural & Social Experience: embrace a global pop culture phenomenon that goes beyond the game

Creative Answer From there, came the idea of creating a celebratory event, generating positive emotions by taking advantage of digital tools to create social connections and celebrate the community in a quarantine context.

And what’s better than a streamed event, where viewers can win rewards while discovering the new season’s content through entertaining and unexpected activities that celebrate both the WWE and WOTC culture? This approach was perfectly addressing our three challenges:

1. A livestream is the best way of reaching gamers, since it’s already part of their daily habits and can work as much on Youtube, Facebook and Twitch. Thanks to the notification features, all the brand followers can be reached in a flash.
2. A livestream hosted by entertaining personalities can be as much didactic as it can be engaging. By producing tailor-made content & activities, we could easily surprise our audience while engaging them on the new season content of WOTC.
3. A livestream can be easily seen & set as an “event” for every new season. We just had to create a graphic stream layout reflecting the WOTC DNA that could be easily reused.

Campaign Production Supporting military veterans, the stream was pushed on Saturday, August 8 at 11pm BST on the World of Tanks YouTube, Facebook and Twitch channels in order to make the most of the organic reach. Biborg collaborated with WOTC & WWE teams on three aspects of the project.

First, Biborg worked on a script for the host to set the narrative arc between the four activities handled by the WWE Production Teams & Superstars. We were also in charge of scripting the overall tone of the Showdown segment, as a base for the live recording of this World of Tanks Console best of three head-to-head game, featuring WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and WWE Superstar Lacey Evans.

Then, to make this event as premium and entertaining to watch as possible, Biborg worked ahead of the livestream on the global art direction and graphic elements. By crafting the host and show layouts, animated transitions, SFX and Motion Design elements, our goal was to ensure brand consistency and awareness throughout the show.

Finally, we were also in charge of broadcasting the live on Twitch, Facebook and Youtube platforms. We partnered with O’Gaming, an official and trustworthy broadcaster of French and European esports leagues such as the LFL, to set-up the livestream.

To keep users engaged throughout the stream, we elaborated a contest with the WOTC Social Team: we revealed 5 codes (one for each show), which users could redeem in a separated landing page for exclusive rewards and a final draw contest.

Discover America’s Best (a special interview by WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin of U.S. military veterans to talk about their experiences) or Beastmaster (“Tank vs. Superstar” event featuring WWE Superstars Kofi Kingston and Big E competing against al MK5 Centurion Tank) here.

Press [GeekGeneration]