Spacemen in gorilla suits, cheerleaders with explosive ‘apocafists’, a strange sadistic cat professor, and a mind-bending myriad of colorful gangs and surreal weaponry. It can only be the hallucinogenic, open-world anarchy that is Saints Row: The Third. And down at Ocean Park we’ve been bringing all of that chaos to life – online.

The game features a variety of gangs and characters, each of which has their own particular style and color palette. THQ were keen to illustrate this variety online and asked us to create 8 completely different sets of creative, which were then used in staggered media bursts over a six month period. Each burst had a distinct look and feel, and featured different trailers and promotional assets, and yet the entire campaign featured an overarching brand that was recognizable as Saint Row – even the designs that featured real-life ‘Penthouse Pets’ toting MP-5s!

All of this pandemonium equates to over 100 different ad units, including YouTube homepage mastheads that pealed back to reveal a secret trailer (below), and numerous different takeovers (such as IGN above). Because of the nature of the project and a shifting media plan, there have been a multitude of last minute requests to cope with. Working closely with Brand and Marketing Managers at THQ, we outlined minimum design time standards and created standard ad size units for future ad flights (in some cases a few months in advance) to get ahead of the curve. This has allowed THQ to mix-and-match ad flights when responding to switching requests.

And in the week that Rockstar released their new GTA5 teaser trailer, we think that The Saints have successfully established themselves as a distinctive and eclectic open world crime syndicate in their own right.

Meanwhile….

Forged in blood, tempered in battle….and that’s just the guys in the Flash pit! And by a strange twist of fate it turns out that Space Marines are ‘living weapons of humanity’ too! The global rich media campaign for Space Marines ran from May to August this year, across 8 territories in 5 languages. There were over 50 different creative designs and more than 250 ad units worldwide. In the US alone, we produced 150 formats across more than 10 websites. There were the usual problems of co-ordinating media plans in time for proper concepting, design, approval, production, distribution and in-region support; but generally we kicked ass on this one.

A major part of the solution is based on our experience and proper planning. Pulling in the requirements, building the creative and deploying on time takes an immense amount of planning effort especially when you’re dealing with literally hundreds of individual ads worldwide. But that’s thousands of details to keep track of.

So, using a tool like OceanView is essential for tracking not only the major requirements and all of the minute details attached to them but also version control with amend/change requests.