Nottingham Building Society – Facebook game

November 2013

A fun and engaging Facebook game to promote The Nottingham Building Society's social media presence and raise awareness of their brand.

One of several Facebook games I designed for NBS whilst working at Headland. This time the brief was to create an interactive competition for the lead up to Christmas using their then recently launched Robin Hood promotional characters. Early on we had the idea to adapt a pantomime and quickly figured out a fun little game with repeat play potential that would hopefully promote sharing within Facebook.

The idea was to make Jack (Robin Hood) climb the beanstalk, using the leaves as steps, and open the treasure chests in the clouds, whilst avoiding the Giant (the Sheriff) who walked back and forth. Only one of the randomly assigned chests contained that week's prize draw entry, the other four chests contained "rubbish" presents (such as a pair of socks, a tangerine or a badly made Christmas jumper). If the Giant got Jack it was GAME OVER and the player had to start again.

We had great fun developing the game and incorporating elements such as Nottingham Castle in the clouds and thinking up the rubbish Christmas gifts. I especially loved designing all the game screens and graphics and seeing it all come together. Alan Gilby (who now co-runs Leftlion Extended and also built this website) built the game in an HTML5 environment and incorporated the prize draw functionality.

 

Introduction screen
Start screen
Game screen
Climb the beanstalk
Get to a treasure chest before the giant gets you
Open the right chest to enter the prize draw
4 of the chests contain "rubbish" presents
If the giant gets you it's game over!

We created a teaser campaign, running ads to promote the game before it's launch on the NBS website and their Facebook page. The game ran for five weeks and did phenomenally well with thousands of prize draw entries which helped NBS gain "Likes" and valuable marketing information.

 

Teaser campaign graphics