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Snack Dash viral game

Snack Dash viral game

Snack Dash viral game

Our client, Digital Public proposed a viral game to the School Food Trust to promote their healthy eating message, raise awareness of the Trust and drive traffic to their site "http://www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk".

Their proposal was to provide more than just a game with a logo on it, or with information regarding healthy eating embedded in it - they asked that we conceive a game that would appeal to kids but actually illustrated the benefits of healthy eating within the game play.

The overall objective is to guide the main character from start to finish in the shortest possible time, whilst collecting as many points as possible along the way. In order to fulfil the brief, one of the game's key features is the inclusion of healthy and unhealthy food.

Collecting healthy foods (such as apples, water and carrots) increases the player's score and protects the player from danger. Conversely the consumption of unhealthy food (such as crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks) cause the character considerable instant weight gain. The player can still move but is unable to move quickly enough to negotiate features like the loop the loop or jump over the baddies.  A little bit of exercise is required to lose the excess pounds (toggling the A and S keys will make the character perform a number of press ups in order to lose that puppy fat), however this all takes up precious time. The only way to get a decent score and speed is by avoiding the fatty foods altogether.

The target market are a cynical age group and the task of creating a game with such a nannying message without alienating them is a minefield. We did it through pure game play and humour.

Did it work?  At the time of writing, the game has achieved over 3,000,000 visits in its first 2 weeks – with no budget spent on media buying. We are viral purists and so buying media to promote a viral campaign is totally against our ethos.  The game has been independently tracked by Memecounter and Viralchart.
 
"Out of over 400 campaigns this is the fastest moving viral that we have ever tracked" Viralchart.com
 
“Memecounter have recorded over 340 thousand visitors in one day on Kerb’s latest viral game – Snack Dash - beating the previous record by over 80 thousand." Press release from Memecounter.com
 
(the release was a little premature as the following Saturday we received just under half a million visits in one day).
 
The game can be played at http://www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/game.asp.