Jägermeister's 'Release Your Darke Spirit' campaign targeted young adults across the United States as part of a larger strategy to celebrate Halloween worldwide. The integrated campaign that featured POS collateral, social media marketing, social media ads, display ads, sequential programmatic ads, promo video, a microsite on their US presence, and a mobile AR experience that took place at over 125k geo-fenced bars, clubs, and event venues nationwide.
The focus for our advertising agency was to deliver an integrated campaign that drove awareness and engagement across the Jägermeister's digital channels. The goal was to lead users down a mysterious journey to a participating retail location to interact with a Jägermeister spirit. During the experience users had the option to take a picture with their friends and to share on social media in a chance to enter a drawing for a Jägermeister party pack.
Ads weren't the only programmatic feature of the campaign. At each participating location, a custom spirit would be shown to the user based on the ads they interacted with and their geographical location. In order to achieve this and limit real-time rendering on mobile devices, we utilized a base for all of our spirits.
Our illustrator created 2D versions of what would later become the manifestations of the Jägermeister spirits like The Stag, The Meister, The Spirit, The Hunter, The Magician, and The Ancient Oak. Next we modeled, rigged, and animated various layers of the spirits.
Next, our team modeled, rigged, and animated various layers of the spirits. Mobile, browser-based AR (web AR), as opposed to a separate app for a limited experience, reduces the users barrier to engagement by eliminating the requirement to download and register the app.
To power the experience relied on an Amazon Sumerian and 8th Wall integration on android and iOS devices. Sumerian powered our animation loops, spirit behaviors, and effects. 8th Wall powered user interaction through the mobile browser.
In the truest agile sense, we fragmented into various sprints running concurrently to knock out all of the assets in a 4 fidelity round and dual stage revision process.
Promo video shot on iPhone, promoted across social media, and leveraged as an asset for the campaign microsite.
Programmatic display ads using Celtra.
Rich media units that also utilized Celtra. We also incorporated Google's Map API to power GPS location, geofencing, and directions to the nearest participating locations. We placed these RMUs in sequential order to drive users down the journey. They also controlled the triggering of the spirit at the location. We relied on data partner Foursquare to power the listing of real-time location data.
A series of social media polls leading up to activation were sprinkled through the brand's facebook, instagram, and snapchat channels.
Results
It took our 17 people from our ad agency, coordinated with brand managers in 6 different countries and 2 other agencies, only 8 weeks from idea to launch. In 60 days the campaign generated millions of impressions in earned media, user engagement with the AR experience, and sweepstakes entries. It also won a 2020 Silver ADDY for Integrated / Multi-channel Campaigns and was featured in multiple publications including Ad Age.
