When Dreamworks came looking for new, interactive experiences for Kung Fu Panda 2, we conceived and built two unique ways for their fans to engage with Po and his friends.
THE IDEA
Po’s adventure continues in Kung Fu Panda 2, with the trailer revealing a hilarious moment with the audience; a staring contest. How can we leverage this positive momentum to keep the fan base excited about the movie, and keep it on the top of people’s “must see” lists? How about an interactive webcam based Augmented Reality video where you stare down Po and try to distract him enough to make him blink? Not only that, but also port it to Apple and Android devices so fans can that this experience on the go. And for those who wanted something more social to share with the Facebook friends, why not create a magical parade that populates with their friends, to create a custom parade for every fan?
Sounds like a challenge.
THE EXECUTION
For the desktop application, we created a custom webcam visualizer that was able to read user data in various quadrants. With this information, we could translate it into gameplay mechanics themselves, while also including keyboard controls for those without a webcam.
On mobile we created our own application, and had to create a uniquely mobile friendly experience that no longer used cameras, but rather used the built in accelerometer to reach positional data, or having users swipe the screen in each of the directions manually.
For the parade, we pulled data directly from the Facebook API to cull the friend’s names, photos and information to populate their data securely, and allow the experience to be shared with custom URLs.
MEASURING SUCCESS
With over 200,000 visits in a single month, fans of Kung Fu Panda flocked in to see what Po had in store for them, and to share their excitement with a parade.
With over 1 million marchers during launch week, by the end of the month, we reached 3 million making it the biggest Facebook parade ever!
Kung Fu Panda 2 went on to make over $500 Million dollars from the box office.
