The beginnings are always complicated, especially if we talk about a field like video games. The competition is very tough, so when Microsoft decided to launch the first Xbox had a titanic fight to wage against Sega, Nintendo and Sony. The three great powers in the market had their own platforms and it was necessary to stand out no matter what.
For example, PlayStation knew how to adopt a very strange line of advertising that resulted in advertisements as unexpected as that of the “alien girl.” Those advertising campaigns are still remembered for the little relationship they had with the games, but they still remained marked in the collective imagination of the community. Trying to hit the table, Microsoft did the same with Champagne.
That was the name given to the announcement that landed in thousands of emails in order to promote the launch of Xbox. That happened in March 2002 and Bill Gates’ company could not imagine the great amount of criticism that was coming. However, the best thing to be clear about what I’m talking about is to see the advertisement with your own eyes.
At the very least, curious, right? A couple is in a hospital just as the woman’s labor is about to bring a child to life, but the pressure on her body is so much that the child shoots out like a projectile. It begins to traverse the skies at supersonic speed while egrows fastergoing through all the stages such as adolescence or adulthood.
Finally, when he is an old man and his life begins to fade, he lands in a tomb, crossing it with his naked body and it is inferred that he dies. Above all, if we take into account that what appears on the screen is the motto “Life is short. Play more“, to then show the Xbox logo.
The production cost £500,000 and twelve different actors were needed for all the roles we see in the 60 seconds. “From a logistical point of view, the biggest problem was casting: we had to find actors of all ages who seemed to transform into each other,” Andy Gulliman, producer of the ad, told 22 years ago. The Guardian.
The craziest part of all involved closing part of a park in west London, recreating a cemetery, building a 30-foot tower of scaffolding, and building a life-size model of the old man so he could throw it into the grave. “We only had part of the park cordoned off, so there were all these retired people walking their dogs who gathered to see what was going on. I’m not sure what they thought of it.” an old man who was sent crashing to the ground from the top of a tower,” Gulliman said.
Harvey Eagle, advertising manager for Europe at Microsoft, was responsible for commissioning that campaign after joining the company in 2000. They had absolute creative freedom, but that also made it difficult for them to set limits, as he confessed to Gamesindustry.biz.
“I remember there was no rule book, none of us had launched a console before, and it was a very exciting time to be part of that small launch team. We were heading into the unknown at a really fast pace, and it was exciting to know “We had a small group of people who were absolutely committed to trying to make this work.”
Bartle Bogle Hegarty is the name of the advertising agency that gave them the idea for Champagne, specifically “two guys called Fred and Farid. They were a very talented and prolific creative team.” The two creatives presented dozens of ideas to Xbox members, including childbirth and the baby flying through the skies, which caught the attention of Eagle in your quest to create viral content. “At that moment I knew that was the [campaña] chosen, for its brilliant simplicity,” said Eagle.
Once the choice was made, he traveled to Microsoft’s Redmond base of operations, obtaining the long-awaited approval from the US division. The objective was to spread the campaign by email, which was quite a challenge.
“I remember we had to compress the file format to less than 2 MB because it had to be able to be passed via email. YouTube didn’t exist in those days, and the only method of sharing something virally was via email. I also remember embedding “a tracking device, a code inserted into the file, so we could essentially track the number of times it was shared.”
More than a million people saw Champagne via email, which was a milestone for the time. So, Microsoft gave the green light to its projection on televisionbut that’s when problems arose. Up to 136 complaints were sent by viewers to the Independent Television Commission of the United Kingdom because those images were “offensive, shocking and in bad taste.”
Because? Critics argued, at least 20 of them, that it had caused them great discomfort to see that advertisement, since they had recently lost loved ones. Microsoft evidently explained that it was all a pro-life statement, but the ITC ignored its defense.
“The ad was banned after only a small handful of complaints. But those complaints were accepted, and of course that only served to increase his notoriety even more,” Eagle explained about Champagnewhich won a large number of awards in the advertising discipline.
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