Client
Gamestation
Date
April 2010
Media
Targeted marketing email.
Objective
Gain press (and notoriety) with an April Fools joke on customers.
Background
For April Fools Day 2010, Gamestation changed its terms and conditions to say that it owned the soul of anyone who bought from its website that day.
The next day, the 88% of customers who didn’t spot the change were sent an email explaining what had happened, and giving them back their souls. The other 12% who opted out were sent a similar email containing a £5 gift voucher for their vigilance. I wrote both emails.
The Work
How do you present owning someone’s soul in a way that’s on-brand, and more importantly, tongue-in-cheek?
My answer was to write it in-character as Shang Tsung from the Mortal Kombat video game series: a character famous for his catchphrase “Your soul is mine!”.
The Result
It worked! The gag was picked up on by specialist and mainstream press, including UK broadsheet The Telegraph, Brit games industry trade mag MCV, and US channel Fox News.
