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NBA2K - BE THE STORY.

Sports games have always struggled to compete with the immersive storylines in games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto. This year, NBA 2K enlisted basketball super-fan Spike Lee to direct a 90-minute storyline, giving gamers the opportunity to star in their very own Spike Lee Joint.

Case Study



NBA FINALS-TV
We kicked the campaign off during the NBA Finals with a piece featuring Spike showing respect to the stories that make the game of basketball great.

"Story is Everything"



ONLINE VIDEO
Leading up to the game's launch, we teased out scenes from Spike's film, challenging gamers to take their place amongst the NBA's best.



SOCIAL
To get fans personally involved, we held the world's first Twitter Casting Call. The best online audition got to star in Spike's 90 minute narrative that played at the NBA 2K16 Brooklyn (where else?) launch party.



Spike's call to audition:



Fans went crazy. We received over 11,000 entries. Here's a few:




COVER ATHLETES
We designed the covers to have pieces of our cover athlete's origin stories.


After the cover release, we asked fans to tell us who they wanted on the cover. We got back some epic fan-made responses:

ONLINE FILMS
Films of our cover athletes origin stories got fans excited about playing out their own stories on NBA 2K16.

Steph Curry's "Beyond the Shadows"



James Harden's "Believe"



Anthony Davis' "The Rise"



SOUNDTRACK PROMO
We created hype around the multiple DJ's on this year's soundtrack by sending boom boxes out to major game bloggers:

Boombox Case Study




Some of the biggest game bloggers and fans created unboxing videos, showing love for the campaign.



And, we created online docu-style pieces speaking to how basketball had an impact on our DJ's own come up stories.



OOH
With Spike at the helm of this year's game, we wanted to give the launch posters a cinematic feel.


Spike likey.

PRESS
Shoot Online
The Washington Post
HYPEBEAST
Bleacher Report

RESULTS: Record pre-order sales, record sales and 41,393,143 social impressions.