When everyone was stuck at home, where did fashion go? With streets and runways empty, where we could gather inspiration to create and sell a new collection? Well, we've decided to listen to what people were talking about. In 2020, people found a new way to express their creativity: Nintendo's Animal Crossing. The most talked about game of the moment was also a trending platform for fashion creation. So, how could we adapt our needs for fashion inspiration to this new context? We did what everyone was doing at the time: we played.

We recruited Amaro's famous virtual influencer, Mara, and created an exclusive Island for her in the game. Mara received a complete profile and island on Animal Crossing, with every aspect of the game planned to match her personality and also the brand style. Her mission was simple: we asked Mara to go search for inspiration for the brand by looking at the other players' creations. Everyone was invited to Amaro's Island to show their best looks and get a chance to become part of Amaro's next collection in real life. The best in-game creations inspired "Cross Collection", with 30 exclusive and real items fully created within the game.

Amaro had a specific target to bond: zennials (16-35, AB, Woman, Brazil). Our strategy was created to dialogue with them. We've gathered insights from Kantar-Ibope tool called TGI:

WhatsApp and Instagram as the biggest online platforms in reach;

Twitch as an ascending platform for the target.

Games as the second territory with most relevance to the target.

A need to emotionally connect to brands as key decision factor besides price to conclude sales.

From this scenario, the fact that 73% of Brazilians are gamers, 54% of them are women, and that Animal Crossing peaked globally and locally as the best seller game during the pandemic led us to an urgent question: how isn't any fashion brand co-creating with the audience within the game for real life?

From this question, "Cross Collection" was born; an unique, close and tech-driven way to creatively transform virtual creations by gamers into real fashion garments.

The first week of the project was dedicated to island building on Animal Crossing. Mara and Amaro's island needed to recreate the brand's personality, from color pallet to moodboard of every aspect of the island. With the island ready, we posted an invitation to our followers to visit Mara in the game, show their best creations and get the chance to see them part of next Amaro's real collection. Mara started to collect inspiration and at the same time, our teams of designers and stylists began to plan the real collection and display the making of on Instagram - a simultaneous effort to literally bring different realities together, on looks co-created with players. After choosing 30 look of more than 300 collected, we re-invited the winners to parade the garments within the game, and broadcasted the collection on social media and Twitch.

The Cross Collection sold out in just one week. Within 205 hours played, Mara received hundreds of players and gathered 300 looks for inspiration. The campaign reached 3 million organic impacts and also caught the eye of both advertising and fashion industries, with comments from Contagious, Trend Watching and Vogue. In Vogue's words: "Amaro Is Making Money in the Real World with Animal Crossing".