HBO – Westworld. Discover a world without limits
CLIENT
HBO
SERVICES
Creativity
CLIENT: HBO
SERVICES: Creativity
Westworld is an ambitious HBO fictional series, full of imagination, that elevates the concept of adventures and raw emotions to a new level of danger. In the futuristic theme park known as Westworld, a group of android-servers deviate from the sequences programmed into them, meticulously by computer scientists, and adopt abnormal behavior. With a spectacular cast headed by Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright, Westworld is based on the 1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), and has been adopted for television by executive producers Jonathan Nolan (Interstellar, The Dark Knight) and Lisa Joy (Pushing daisies, Burn Notice).
The campaign for the launch of Season 2, created by Darwin Social Noise, uses material and narrative resources of the series creatively to attract public attention and generate debate. One of those resources is the “glitch” or interference, which the humanoids of the series suffer in certain scenes, and which we use as a narrative language in the video pieces, with deliberate interference to deliver promotional messages of the series noticeably out of tone or out of context.
Under the claim ‘Discover a world without limits’, the campaign plays with a duality: there are no limits to territory (here the campaign connects with the vast landscapes of the west where the series is located), but neither are there any limits to each of us, in our ethics and our morals, because the series takes the viewer to extreme situations from this point of view.
For this reason, the campaign explores the world of artificial intelligence and tries to generate conversation and debate by launching ethical dilemmas such as “Sleeping with an android, is it infidelity?” or “If there were no consequences, would you kill?” The pieces are accompanied by images of the characters in the series, both outdoors (in Madrid and Barcelona), as well as in social and digital networks, wherein the rich media pieces allow the user to interact in the debate around the dilemmas.
Videocase
Under the umbrella of this campaign, we have used Tinder creatively with advertising formats. We have created a Native Display Card that provokes the user with the phrase “A world of matches”, followed by several screens with characters from the series, with surveys of dilemmas questions, which are answered with a swipe to the left or to the right with the habitual usability of Tinder. In the end, the series closes with an invitation:” It’s a Match. Discover a world without limits. Westworld.”
The dilemma questions also appeared in all kinds of digital formats, both in social networks and in rich media on different websites.
The campaign also uses videos that use a resource of the series itself, the “glitches”, interrupting the original content of video pieces drastically and disturbingly. These pieces are being launched on social networks, YouTube and other programmatic environments.
To give a stronger digital presence to the entire campaign, a website was also created (descubrewestworld.es), which also plays with the interference mechanic, and which provides an participatory experience, with exclusive content for fans of the series. The purpose of this website is to act as an extension of the campaign, creating desire for the series and generating leads.
Social networks play an important role in the campaign, with provocative and participatory content, from interactive dillemas questions, to a dynamic wherein you discover the source code of Dolores, one of the central characters in the plot.
And as a cherry on top, HBO Spain has made use of influencers such as North Korean, Carolina Denia, Alejandro G. Calvo, Patricia Castro and Alena KH, and some of them had shot specific original videos in order to reach their audiences.
