Wieden & Kennedy Portland won the Entertainment And Entertainment For Gaming Grands Prix At the Cannes Ad Festival today by creating several decades of fake history for Clash of the Clan’s anniversary. The campaign celebrated the game’s 40th anniversary. It was actually its 10th.  

The idea was to create an alternate universe where the game had achieved iconic status comparable to games like Pac Man, Super Mario Bros and others. But to get there the agency made up three decades of Clans history.  

The campaign included a made-up 20-minute documentary featuring a fake origin story that included the game’s fake founders and 40 years of invented Clash games and brand partnerships. 

The agency even created decade specific games from the documentary that were “re-released” from “the vault.” And it partnered with real companies to create fake brand partnerships for decade-specific apparel (Champion), garbage pail (Topps), cereal (General Mills). The merch was available on Walmart.com.  

There was a top-trending video on YouTube and the agency said the campaign achieved the highest brand lift among the game’s fans compared to any brand “at this low a media spending.”