What it had to solve
PlayStation Now gives players instant access to 800+ games via cloud streaming; Sony wanted a global campaign conveying that instant gratification, and it was the first work from a new partnership with adam&eveDDB.
The idea
Show streaming made literal: iconic PlayStation characters — Kratos, Scorpion, Nathan Drake — crash out of the sky into living rooms, summoned by a few button pushes.
How it works
An epic film, directed by Mischa Rozema at Nexus Studios, of gaming heroes rapidly diving through the sky and crashing into homes, standing side-by-side with the player at the climax — launched globally on October 1, 2019 across the PlayStation Now campaign.
What it did
No results were published. The film broke as the first campaign of adam&eveDDB's new PlayStation partnership, with more work planned to land 'over the next few months', and put the service's 800+ game library into one visceral image.
Background
On October 1, 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment unveiled a global campaign for PlayStation Now, its cloud game streaming service giving players instant access to hundreds of games — and the first work to break from newly appointed agency adam&eveDDB, created with Nexus Studios. The idea: with only a few button pushes, hundreds of stories, characters and worlds can be delivered directly into players' homes.
The film makes that literal. Rapidly diving through the sky comes a cavalcade of iconic PlayStation heroes — Kratos, Scorpion and Nathan Drake among them — crashing into the homes of players, sampling the 800+ games available through the service. At the climax it is revealed the characters have been summoned through PlayStation's cloud streaming, ready to stand side-by-side with the player against whatever challenges lie ahead. Mischa Rozema directed for Nexus Studios, with post across tenthree, Happy Finish and The Mill and sound by Sam Ashwell at 750mph.
'PlayStation Now is the first work to break in our new partnership with Eric [Lempel] and the team at PlayStation,' said Matthew Goff, CEO of adam&eveDDB. 'We have been working together on a number of projects across the summer and are excited to see them land with the gaming community over the next few months.'
Why it lands
Streaming's benefit — immediacy — is invisible, so the campaign turned it into a physical spectacle of characters materialising instantly.
Using PlayStation's own iconic characters made the library itself the hero, selling breadth (800+ games) through familiarity.
The sky-diving descent visualised 'cloud' delivery in a way any player could grasp without a technical explanation.
A global single-film launch matched the service's scale and marked the start of the adam&eveDDB partnership.
What you can take
The benefit of a service is best sold as a physical event: 'instant access to 800 games' becomes characters falling through your ceiling.
Since then
As of launch on October 1, 2019, the global campaign was breaking across PlayStation Now's markets, with adam&eveDDB's further projects for PlayStation due to land over the following months. No performance results were published.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE