We've just made finance trade shows funs, with help from a squirrel.
Without casting aspersions, we don’t imagine that the trade show stands of investment banks are the most thrilling places to visit. Which may be why BNY Mellon asked their communications agency Inkling for help livening theirs up. And why Inkling, in turn, came to us for a video game.
Inkling and BNY had decided that a custom video game would help attract to and keep visitors at their stand. And BNY wanted it to stay in line with their ATL creative, which focused on the familiar message “money doesn’t grow on trees”. Playing on the idea of squirrelling away your savings, we designed an infinite runner game in which you took the role of a squirrel, racing up a tree and collecting nuts. The challenge was to avoid the branches and pigeons which may suddenly appear in front of you.
We built the game to run on a PC, with mobile phones as the controllers. This allowed for private data capture within the very public environment of the trade show, as players could enter their details on the phone, without them being shown on the game screen. We built one and two-player options, created a leaderboard with prizes for the top score each day, and enabled players to choose which of BNY Mellon’s nominated charities they wanted their score donated to (in $).
After the first couple of trade shows, it seems both visitors and staff are going for nuts for it. Which is (squi)really good to know.