TL;DR:
To build anticipation for the launch of Warframe’s Angels of the Zariman expansion, I led a marketing campaign that brought the iconic world and story of Warframe into our own. This campaign also served to launch Warframe’s official Tiktok channel.
Over the course of a week, thousands within the Warframe community rallied in Discord and across social media to decipher cryptic clues and solve mind-bending puzzles to unravel a terrifying mystery at the heart of Warframe’s story.
500K
Views across 4 “hero asset” videos.
100K
Views across 9 TikTok videos.
130%
Increase in Discord activity.
What I Did:
- Came up with the campaign strategy and core narrative, and led a multi-departmental team of marketing artists, community managers, narrative and audio developers, content marketers, and PR managers in its execution.
- Consulted closely with Warframe’s creative director and narrative team to ensure the ARG campaign supported and augmented Warframe’s complex lore.
- Wrote the scripts for 4 video logs (totaling ~5 minutes) that served as the hero asset for the campaign, each one a new chapter in a gruesome story that kept players guessing.
- Wrote the scripts for 10 additional Tiktok videos (totaling over 7 minutes) that served as the main narrative vehicle for the campaign — each one a broadcast from a mysterious character desperately in need of help.
- Oversaw the design of bespoke, high-value visual elements including motion graphic templates and more.
- Designed and created over a dozen puzzles and “events” including:
- Social media graphics/videos that contained encrypted messages the community had to work together to decipher.
- A total recreation of the Warframe.com website as it existed in 2013 — only with several puzzles buried in its HTML code, including a 1,500-word, interactive short-story built using Twine.
- An in-game event where thousands of players had to band together to collectively accumulate 10,000,000 of a special resource earned from specific missions.
- A Warframe-flavored “Arecibo Message” of audio beeps that could be translated to binary to build a simple picture.
- Hidden IRC channels with interactive bots, a phone number, secret codes physically printed on posters sent to key influencers — and so much more!
- A dozen .pdfs and other misc. documents, many containing juicy bits of lore or enticing details about Angels of the Zariman key features like new weapons, characters, etc.
- A “repository” blog post on Warframe.com that tracked unlockables and helped those joining the campaign late to get caught up and stay organized.
- Acted as Dungeon Master during this wild event, pivoting or re-adjusting the plan on the fly to account for unexpected developments or player reactions.
Results:
- Successfully built enormous excitement and anticipation around the Angels of the Zariman update, resulting in sky-high community sentiment.
- The four audio log “hero assets” were collectively viewed +500K times across all channels.
- Successfully launched Warframe’s official Tiktok channel, with the 9 ARG-related videos recieving 100K views.
- Discord activity spiked 130% across a 7-day period — especially notable since player engagement is often at its lowest heading into a major update.