The title sounded pretty cool to us when we first heard about a party celebrating the launch of Burnout Revenge in Finland last year. The pictures are even cooler.
Cruising for a bruising
Inspired by our friends in the north, we thought we'd share how other territories around the world connect to Burnout at all levels.
We spoke to EA Finland's PR Manager, Micke Nordman, to get the background on this event:
Bring A Hammer? What was the original idea and who came up with it?
The original idea was to create an outdoor campaign with smashed cars that had crashed in to outdoor ad-posts on strategic places in Helsinki city. The campaign was planned and everything but we had to let it go because it became too expensive.
The second option was to invite key press to a big factory hall and divide them into teams/magazine, Fear-Factor style. The teams would have been equipped with one car, sledgehammers and all the equipment needed to completely trash a car. The task would have been to create the ultimate Burnout car with Burnout decals, etc. Afterwards, the cars would have been placed at strategic places in the city. This would have given us the chance to arrange a great PR event, as well as creating cool, smashed cars to use for publicity stunts. This also became too expensive.
At last, we decided to buy an old car, place it in a gaming store for two weeks as POS (Point Of Sale) material, then ship it over to Pelaajalehtis (a big gaming magazine in Finland) birthday party and let them trash it in front of everyone. We created a telegram which was read in front of the public, stating something like; "It is time to relieve your stress after three years of hard work. EA will help you do this, Burnout style".
All members of the magazine team were given EA branded baseball bats, helmets, protective glasses, and then the show started. Everyone moved outside where the guys took on the car, and smashed it thoroughly. After demolishing it completely they turned it upside down and all 200 guests sang happy-birthday to them.
How much was the car and what made you pick it?
The car was bought from a junk yard, and I think it cost approx. 500€. We picked it up because it was cheap, rather small and served our purposes! Of course it would have been cooler to use an old muscle car or something similar, but our pockets were not that deep!
What was the weapon of choice?
Baseball bats, of course!
What did you do to the car after the party?
It was smashed to several pieces and had to be shipped directly to the junkyard. Seems the guys at Pelaaja were quite stressed!
This idea was actually recreated just one month ago by a car magazine here in Finland. It was run by the same media agency we used for planning the Burnout campaign, so it seems like good ideas do stand the test of time! This is still spoken of as the best promotional idea ever over here now we will just have to come up with something better for the next Burnout game!
Gallery
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