Saatchi & Saatchi Revolutionises Dementia Research

Client: Senior VP of brand strategy & marketing communications at Deutsche Telekom, Hans-Christian Schwingen.

How did this project initially come about and why were you keen to be behind it?

HCS: We were confronted with an insight from Saatchi & Saatchi that said people spend three billion hours per week playing games around the world and we wondered how we could use this time for something good. 

Creative: Saatchi & Saatchi's creative directors Franki Goodwin (FG) & Will John (WJ).

What was the brief that you received from Deutsch Telekom?

FG: There wasn't an exact brief; it was more proactive and insight-driven following the research we’d found.

WJ: We want to empower people to share their time for a common good. The impact on the global economy of dementia is huge. The G8 are committed to finding some form of treatment by 2025, which is hugely ambitious. We wanted to create something that can accelerate that deadline and get there that much quicker. It was about solving a problem.

How did the project develop?

FG: We contacted scientists and science advisors to identify the problem, so that the game would actually be useful for them. Creating a research trial that begins the minute anyone picks up the game, that’s never been done before.

What was the biggest challenge?

FG: To create something that was as fun as it was scientifically valid. And obviously the more science you put into something, the more restrictions it has in terms of fun. We had to also consider the size of the game. Deutsche wanted a mobile game under 100 MB, which is tiny, but that it meant it could download easily and be used on the go.

How did the story for the game and the campaign come about?

FG: It was a very collaborative process. The Glitchers’ guys came up with the idea for a boat as they knew it would be a great navigating device. And the ad and game were developing pretty much in tandem. Director Bibo Bergeron's treatment for the campaign’s script featured a journal - its destruction was a visual metaphor for losing memories. The developers loved this and put the journal at the heart of the game.

How did you retain that sense of fun and magic in the campaign despite tackling dementia?

FG: We always tried to live in game world even when we were telling the promo story. We looked at how games promote themselves - by building up backstories, characters and animated worlds. We wanted to play in that space rather than in the science sphere. But we also wanted to move people while telling the story. We thought about what to lead with - the game or the cause and identified two markets; emotional philanthropists and casual gamers. But the two have converged and we’ve found that gamers are also interested in science and are fascinated by how they can help fight dementia.

How was working with and coordinating all these different skillsets?

FG: We’re used to being met with cynicism when making ads, but when we’ve got a brand who wants to change the world, that's hugely inspiring. Often the conversation in an agency can be quite insular but there were so many different levels of expertise so we all brought something new to the table.

WJ: No one had done anything like this before, so we all had to learn on the job.

What appealed to you about the project?

FG: It’s not very often that we feel this good about working in advertising. There’s a lot of talk about brands advocating social change but in reality, it takes a lot of commitment, time and money to do something impactful.

Science: Dr Hugo Spiers UCL.

How will the game directly benefit science?

HS: It will assess how humans behave and how the population around the world navigates. One of the first signs of dementia is getting lost, but at the moment, we can’t tell at what point someone is under-performing or having problems. This game will create a global benchmark to advance our understanding of our brain circuits. We really need this tool as dementia is not being researched enough. We're playing catch up with dementia research and trying to find answers to tackle this disease.

Tell me about your experiences working with everyone on the project.

HS: It was a fun but challenging experience. I’ve never worked with a games design company before but there was a lot of throwing ideas around, integrating perspectives – it’s all new. I’m looking forward to writing an article about how scientists can do this better. I had to learn; there was nobody I could call up and ask what’s it like working with a games design company?

How involved were you working with the game designers?

HS: It’s an incredibly collaborative project. I wasn’t brought on simply as a scientist; I’ve worked directly with the company on this. It’s taken up an enormous amount of my time but I put that value into doing this because I can see the huge benefit to accelerating the research. I’m absolutely confident that it’s going to work.

How did the collaboration between creative and science work?

HS: We really had to connect. We retained the scientific rigour to say what was going to work. It was really important to make the game enjoyable by merging the science and creative together. As soon as someone starts moving their boat around, we know where they are and what they’re looking at every half a second. Once we launch the game, we can create heat maps of where people get lost and where they go wrong so we can start to understand how the landscape and environment influence people's ability to find their way. Combine that with information about gender, age and geography, and hopefully we should be able to pin down characteristics and determine certain factors of the disease.

Game developers: Hugo Scott-Slade (HSS) & Matthew Hyde (MH) from Glitchers.

Tell me a bit about the convention of building a ‘normal’ game compared to the restrictions of this one?

HSS: It was difficult initially coming up with a fun and casual game that’s based around science. It had to collect valid science data so we couldn’t lean on the normal aspects of game design that make a game fun. The earlier levels introduce the techniques of navigating but from level six onwards, it’s about familiarising yourself with your surroundings and remembering where things are. The fun element comes down to how well or how fast you can do it, as you can never fail a level or run out of time as this means there's infinte amount of data to collect. It’s a very strange way to make a game.

MH: We did rely on some conventional game mechanics like level progression and bettering your personal best.

Can you still compete?

MH: You can connect on Facebook and see where your friends are on the map.

HSS: It’s less about the specific levels and more about the progression and perfection. It encourages you to compete with one another but at the end of the day, you’re playing to help dementia research.

And what were the biggest challenges that you faced during the development of the game?

MH: The capabilities of what you can achieve in 3D environments wouldn’t have able to run on most people’s devices even a year ago, which means that the scientists wouldn’t haven been able to get the fidelity that they require. There’s a certain richness to the environment that wasn’t previously achievable; this is the first time that most people can actually do this.