How 73 FCB Offices Made 1,440 Minute-Long Ads for One Gaming Campaign

Regardless, FCB Happiness just launched a snappy hub, Why It’s Okay to Play, loaded with 1,440 minute-long videos that run in sync with local time worldwide.

The clips promote Slotomania, a leading provider of mobile Las Vegas-style slot action (though there’s no actual wagering). The films feature 1,440 fun facts about specific times of day, offering lighthearted reasons for playing Slotomania at that exact moment.

Why should you play at 2:36 a.m.? That’s when most folks spot UFOs. But you can avoid potentially unpleasant extraterrestrial encounters by wasting time—er, chilling out—with Slotomania instead:

Sharks tend to be really active at 7:11 a.m., we’re told, so diving into Slotomania probably beats diving an early-morning dip:

Why play at 3:14 p.m.? Well, it’s all about cherry pie, or maybe Pi (3.14159 etc.):

Next, we learn that 1:40 a.m. is “an internationally lonely minute,” so playing Slotomania will help drive off those pre-dawn blues:

12:21 p.m. is, apparently, “the international minute of the palindrome.” Wow! Time to hit the online slots:

Research showed that “people tend to feel a bit guilty when playing a mobile game while taking me-time,” says FCB Happiness creative chief Geoffrey Hantson. “They think it might be perceived as unproductive, compared to reading a book or going for a walk. So, we decided to take on that feeling of guilt head on.”

Working intensively for eight weeks, FCB marshaled talent from 73 offices across its global network to build the campaign. All told, 142 copywriters, 37 creative directors, 14 creative chiefs and 30 editors worked on the initiative. Nearly 6,200 stock clips were generated based on keywords in the scripts. It took 320 hours to record the narrations.

Phew! And all those people-hours couldn’t possibly have been spent in any other more meaningful way imaginable.

Obviously, some of the (so, so many!) installments work better than others. The ones we sampled were amusing in a self-consciously nonsensical way. Some of the “It’s-time-to-play-because” set-ups seemed forced, but maybe that’s part of the joke.

Of course, this weighty enterprise works best as a PR platform to generate coverage and spread the Slotomania name, rather than as a proper campaign in its own right. Still, it can be sheer hell to sell through a single minute-long ad, and FCB managed to get 1,440 up and running, so major back-pats there.

“The mere fact that the first edit of every film was automated, done by a machine—you never really knew what to expect,” Hantson says. “You never really knew which image the system would link to a keyword out of the script. I remember that one of the films contains the sentence ‘There are more nipples in the world then people.’ After reviewing few hundreds of scripts, I remember that we had a good laugh with that one in the middle of the night. However, I don’t remember in which minute the sentence was featured. Looks like you will have to check them all!”

Pfft, dude, who’s got time for that?

Here’s a campaign case-study that mercifully clocks in at just two minutes:

CREDITS
• Playtika / Client
Ofer Kinberg General Manager
Mattan Levin Marketing & Monetization Vicepresident
Mickey Sonnino Director of Monetization
Sharon Tzvielli Marketing Manager
Eyal Argon Marketing Relations Director
Or Reznitsky Acquisition Vicepresident

• Happiness Brussels, an FCB alliance
Karen Corrigan Chief Executive Officer
Geoffrey Hantson Chief Creative Officer
Kris Hoet Chief Innovation Officer
Elke Janssens Managing Director
Hans Smets Group Account Director
Marlen Fernandez Pando Account Executive
Niels Sienaert Creative Director
Tim Schoenmaeckers Creative Director
Pieter Claeys Concept Provider
Barbara Dzikanowice Creative Content Director
Eline Goethals Strategic Planner
Tuyet Hoang Digital Producer
Dries Lauwers Graphic Designer
Frederik Draulans Senior Graphic Designer
Remke Faber Motion Designer
Seth Michielsen Motion Designer

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