#MinecraftIRL

Minecraft is a sandbox video game that grew into a worldwide phenomenon nearly overnight through word of mouth. But like all good things come to an end, participation eventually began to wane.

The Minecraft brand knew they needed to advertise their game for the first time, ever. We studied their problem and realized that Minecraft didn’t so much need to advertise; they needed to find more ways to engage with new and old players alike.

#MinecraftIRL taps into the shared knowledge of this remarkable gaming community and brings in-game wisdoms to the real world through social media. Each post is designed to bring one piece of wisdom to life, while also acting as an invitation for the community to share their own lessons and tribulations in real-time.

The results: An award-winning, multi-platform social campaign that garnered 42 million impressions at launch along with 71,000 new Facebook and Twitter followers.

One of the first lessons every player learns is to drop torches to light their way home.

So during the busiest travel time of the year, we kicked off the program by building the fundamental lesson “Light Your Way Home” out of the iconic Minecraft letters across a massive roof in the flight path of LAX. Then the real-life installation was switched on one word at a time as members of the community completed a series of live mini-games from within Minecraft.

We then released a full calendar of social media content—creative that transcends boundaries between the real world and Minecraft.

We built all the props and produced/shot/edited the content ourselves.