Lowe Brindfors Celebrates 25 Years for Magnum

For the past three years, Swedish agency Lowe Brindfors has teamed up with Magnum to deliver a cool and innovative interactive game for the ice cream brand to engage with its consumers.

Each year, the concept gets further developed and more detailed with the interactive element utilising and reflecting advancing technology to maximise the adventure across the internet theme.

This year, the plan was to incorporate the fact that the brand is celebrating 25 years in the ice cream business in 2014 and the agency has once again teamed up with B-Reel to launch the latest instalment of Pleasure Hunt – this time with an interactive party theme.

Below Patrik Westerdahl, creative director on the job, tells us about how the new version was developed for audiences on different platforms, how the agency has managed to keep reinventing the concept to a success and how the universal theme – pleasure – appeal’s to all.

Considering it’s the 25th anniversary of the brand, was it essential that you tied this in for this year’s theme? What was the brief?

That’s correct, this year the overall theme for the caign is all about celebrating pleasure. And as simple as that was, it is backed up with a number of strong product launches to make Magnum’s birthday extra special.

What have you learnt since last year’s work was launched and how has the experience improved in 2014?

After creating five completely different games in Pleasure Hunt 5 Lost kisses last year, this year was actually about going back to basics and focusing on the established game mechanic from “Snake” that people will recognize and get in to immediately; but, of course, in a brand new party outfit worthy of 25 years of celebration.

With a lot of focus on the rise of mobile and tablet, how have you adjusted the creative to work for those users?

That was actually the starting point of the whole process, and that’s why this gameplay will work seamless over all platforms. If you thought it was addictive steering round a pixel picking up another pixel back in the day, wait ‘til you’ve steered around a conga line filled with people celebrating across your screen.

How long did you work on this year’s caign for and tell us about some of the challenges?

The whole process from A to Z is always a year, but the first half is all about tweaking and aligning with markets, an important detail when doing an asset that needs to work and resonate with an audience that includes 25 markets with cultural differences, and that is of course a challenge for any brand.

And do you expect engagement to increase considering you’ve enhanced the interactive aspect with a social slant?

To the earlier point, we’re really proud to have found a territory with our Pleasure Hunt concept that has attracted visitors from so many different countries and cultures. This year we’re about to build on that, introducing a multi-player session so that you can dance your way across the screen trying to avoid up to five “competing” parties sharing the same screen. That is tricky!

Tell us a bit about the levels/worlds this year and creating the game’s environment?

One important ingredient in the Pleasure Hunt concept is that it’s taking place on the Internet and therefore plays with the medium itself. This year though, since being a big Party, we will let the population of the Internet leave whatever they’re doing to join this contagious party we’re having. To make it come true; same procedure as every year, a huge amount of actors shot against green screen, this year also introducing a green screen treadmill in the mix.

You’d usually associate Magnum with the summer months, so tell us why the caign is launching in early April?

Because of all the different markets, ice cream season varies tremendously, some markets start their pushes as late as October-December, and on the Internet it’s ice cream season all year round.  

Tell us about your relationship with B-Reel and working on the caign for the past four years...

Our relation is very familiar. It has been pretty much the same teams from both sides from day one, and we often have creative sessions with attendants from both sides to nurse and take care of what has become a baby that we share the custody of.

How tough is it to keep reinventing the Pleasure Hunt concept each year?

It is, and should always be hard to create great work and that is extra true when inventing a game that somebody actually should get into how it works and then hopefully spend some time with. Saying that, we feel that we have a concept that we lay trust upon, and especially in the digital sphere it is quite rare to stick with something, so we don’t really start from square one every year.

To join the biggest party on the internet visit Magnum Pleasure Hunt 4.