What Drives Edward
What do you do when your brand gets hijacked by a devoted mass of hormone-crazed, vampire devotees?
You feed them.
To balance the needs of the brand with the appetite of fans, we created a series of puzzles based on the Twilight storyline and the XC60 featured in the film. The puzzles gave fans what they wanted: exclusive content and trivia from the Twilight series, as well as a chance to win Edward's car. The riddles were time-released in phases that correlated with the phases of the moon ("New Moon" was the title of this film).
Making a connection between Volvo and the Twilight series wasn't a problem—fans of the books knew Volvo's role in the story. The real issue we had to face was being genuine to the Twilight series, while upholding the Volvo brand. We could have been lured into traditional automotive territory and alienated fans. We also had to be careful to be accurate with the Twilight story to avoid fan outrage.
If you're not a "Twihard" and don't understand the correlation between Volvo and Twilight, I understand. I never read the books either, so it was baffling at first. Long story short: Edward is the beloved protagonist in the series. Each character had a car written in to the books that mirrored their personality. Edward's protective, agile character drove the author, Stephenie Meyer, to align him with the Volvo S60 and thus the correlation between brand and boyfriend was born.
Case study video featuring puzzle play at 1:00.
CREDITS
Creative Director: John Steward
Art Director: Ben Thoma
Copywriter: Luke Ward
Flash Developer: Chia-Wei Chang
Flash Developer: Joe McHeffey
Puzzle Consultant: Jeff Webster
SITE EXPERIENCE & PUZZLES
Phase 1: Arrange the scenes of the "New Moon" trailer in their sequential order. This proved to be more difficult than it seems, because the order of events in the trailer is not the same as the storyline. This led to even more views of the trailer, which Summit Entertainment loved, of course.
Phase 2: This challenged the user's Shakespeare knowledge. Their task was to arrange the poetry correctly to match the poem quoted in the book.
Phase 3: Early in "New Moon," Edward protects Bella from another vampire, pushing her through a glass coffee table in the process. Your task was to reassemble the tabletop, revealing the crest of Edward's family in the process.
Phase 4: Here's where we focused on Edward's Volvo. Within an interactive 360° experience on volvo.com, we included comments from Edward on his favorite features. Ranking those features correctly would complete the puzzle.
Phase 5: These cryptic visuals were designed to challenge contestants knowledge of the real-life locations from the Twilight series. These altered maps had question marks that hinted at the locations, but only a precise Google Map search would lead to the correct answers.
Phase 6: In one of the story's most iconic scenes, Bella tracks down her love in an Italian city square. She must race across the busy piazza before he is seen. This stage recreates the urgency of the moment with the difficulty of a moving maze.
As users completed puzzles, they were awarded moon phases. Once all the phases of the moon were collected, they animated to be all "new moons" and a final challenge was presented: arrange the new moons in the calendar year of Edward's birth. (Except we were far more obscure in our instructions.)
