Australian sports retailer Rebel partnered with agencies OMD Create and Unbound on a gamified basketball experience called ‘Play Like’ which allows hoops fans to assemble on a virtual court throughout the 2023 NBL season via social AR filters built on the Meta platform ‘Spark AR’.
The initiative, which activates rebel’s official retail partnership with the NBL, aims to promote Rebel’s basketball shoe offering – including its signature ranges – and aims to encourage viewers to shop the latest range both in stores and online.
Rebel challenged the agency to increase awareness of the retailer’s performance footwear range in an innovative way, while supporting their ambition as ‘the home of basketball’ and OMD Create’s response to the brief was an idea based around a social AR filter which created an immersive basketball court environment on which users could project their own face onto the body of a basketballer and then match/mirror a set of facial expressions in response to timed on-screen prompts.
Each user is given a unique, gamified experience based on their footwear choice – users can choose to pay in one of Rebel’s signature basketball shoe range which includes Nike Kyrie Infinity and Air Jordan XXXVI – which relates to the level of difficulty and speed of the game.
OMD worked with contextual partners ScreenSports and Sporting News to promote the filter to hoops fans through a multi-channel campaign spanning authentic and organic channels, while the experience is also supported with media activity across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The campaign was spearheaded by a hero Rebel basketball spot called ‘Play Like’ which dropped on 5 October.
Rebel General Manager of eCommerce and Marketing Rosemary Martin explained: “This innovative idea presented by OMD allows us to connect with our customers who are heavy users of TikTok and Instagram. The competitive nature of the filter and game will entice customers to keep playing and share it with their friends. This work continues our ambition to cement rebel as ‘the home of basketball’ in Australia. Our new campaign focuses on highlighting the latest signature ranges worn by the super athletes of the NBA. We know our ‘Hooper’ customers are obsessed with all things NBA and want to emulate their heroes in what they wear.”
OMG Content Managing Director Thomas Hutley added: “This AR filter is a great display of OMD Create’s ambition to always challenge convention and think outside the box, pushing the boundaries of innovation and creative thinking. The growth of AR in social has been phenomenal, offering brands the opportunity to engage and connect with their audiences on a deeper level with gamification at its core. We’re excited about the potential in this space and confident this experience will be a huge hit with basketball fans.”
Unbound Creative Lead Josh Parisi said: “Gamified filters are an increasingly popular way to drive organic reach on social. The rebel All-Stars game we’ve created really pushes the limits of what AR filters can do – multiple levels, avatar shoe configurations, dynamic scoring and a full 3D basketball court – all within the tiny 4mb file size limitation. With limited time to grab attention, we focused heavily on an intuitive UX and clean UI, letting users figure out the game as they play to improve their score. It’s resulted in a highly addictive little mini-game, and we hope basketball fans get a good kick out of it.”
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