2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

In a media landscape with shrinking click-through rates, the results speak for themselves. It got 70x the average performance CTR compared to regular banners and was shared via scrabble Facebook groups and forums. Most importantly, with just one banner, more players took on the war of words than ever before – with the addition of players from Oman, Kuwait and Qatar.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We hijacked an irritating online convention on gaming sites across the Gulf, and transformed it into something unexpected. Battle Captcha is unlike any other captcha. It doesn’t make you type in gibberish to verify you’re human. Instead, it challenges you to prove you’re MORE than human by unscrambling different letters and demonstrating that you’ve got the power of WORDS. Users who unscrambled the captcha correctly were then directed to register for the championship. Battle Captcha helped raise awareness about the 21st Annual Gulf Scrabble Championship and remind players that on the road to victory at the upcoming tournament, every word is a weapon.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

We needed to recruit Scrabble enthusiasts across the Gulf for the 21st Annual Gulf Scrabble Championships. Only three countries out of six had participated in the initial tournament. We needed to raise awareness and ignite the competitive spirit of Scrabble aficionados across Gulf countries – all on a shoe-string budget. So we went to a popular destination – casual gaming sites online.