• by Fern Siegel , December 19, 2023

Disruption is the new creative.

That's the premise behind the integrated marketing campaign to launch Meta’s Asgard's Wrath 2, which claims to be the biggest virtual-reality role-playing games ever created. In it, the trickster god Loki uses various cosmic portals to unleash chaos.

But to reach gamers skeptical of VR, BBDO went rogue.

Loki was brought into the real world to disrupt events. At a recent Golden State Warriors-Phoenix Suns game on ESPN, the NBA announcer told the TV audience a "mysterious portal"  had opened outside the Footprint Center. TV audiences witnessed monsters from Asgard's Wrath 2 invading our reality. 

Similarly, as attendees were leaving The Game Awards, a giant, 300-square-foot glowing portal ripped open the Los Angeles skyline outside the Peacock Theater.

The singular promotion resulted in sizable earned media, while up-ending conventional gaming ads. The campaign is also running on TV, YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud and Podcast Sponsorship, Instagram and Facebook.

With little paid support, the effort received more than 8 million views in less than a week and caused online conversations from gamers and non-gamers alike. The actions went viral on TikTok and became the subject of multiple Reddit threads.

“With disruption as a core principle, we wanted the campaign to bring the chaos from the game to our audience, instead of relying on them to discover it,” Ricky Bowry and Joe Fox, SVP-creative directors BBDO New York, told Agency Daily.

BBDO is part of Omnicom Group. Client work includes GE, PepsiCo, Allianz, Guns Down America and Cesar.