Propel Fortnite Festival into global trending with viral Hatsune Miku marketing campaign
Details:
Role: Director, Brand Creative
Client: Epic Games
Agency: Ayzenberg
Production Partner: Untold Studios
The Challenge:
Epic Games had an exciting challenge on their hands: they needed to launch their Season 7 icon for Fortnite Festival… but she wasn’t a person at all. She’s a virtual “vocaloid” named Hatsune Miku, who just so happens to have beloved niche fandoms across gaming and anime. This was one that needed careful yet passionate creative.
Our strategy was rooted in the insight that Miku is a force that accelerates connection between people. She does this because she’s not just an icon, but a toolset for creativity. We grounded this truth in the visual identity of Miku’s iconic teal glow sticks, a symbol representing the sea of lights that connects her fans at her concerts.
The flagship of the campaign was our live action launch trailer, which took viewers on a journey from inside their computers to explode out into the world by transforming the ordinary into the magical – all with Miku’s interconnected lights. We also communicated new product updates with this commercial: showing both keyboard play and couch multiplayer.
But launch was only the beginning! To keep momentum going and hypercharge awareness of Miku, we built a surprise & delight influencer gifting campaign at scale. Over 100+ boxes were gifted globally – some purely for earned, some in paid partnership. Inside these bespoke boxes creators found a one-of-a-kind Varsity Jacket that we custom designed for the season, an exclusive Miku lightstick, a personal note, and a cute crafted felt leek.
Our campaign was so successful that we hit global trending lists across both YouTube and Twitter, inspired UCG fan content and memes, and got the entire internet in a frenzy for Miku’s debut in Fortnite Festival.
Results:
→ Global Trending across both YouTube and Twitter/X
→ Over 12.3M total impressions across the campaign, including over 70 posts on social for a total of ~1M total engagements
→ Generated a flurry of earned UGC and memes
Paul Wallace 