The Beta-7 Experience. To launch ESPN NFL Football, a new video game from Sega, we created a piece of live, interactive theater which played out in real time over a four month period. The target was hardcore video gamers. The performance took place primarily on the web, including three separate websites, but also included viral videos and voicemails, posts at independent gaming sites, e-mail, :30, :15, and :5 second television commercials, small space newspaper ads, physical stunting, mailing actual beta copies of the game directly to a small group of gamers, and finally the distribution of flyers. Ultimately two additional websites were created by fans who were caught up in the story. Actors were cast to play the main roles including Beta-7 himself. These actors played their roles 24/7 for the entire 4 month period, answering posts on the blog, answering e-mails, even being interviewed by the gaming press. Once the game launched, we gathered all the media we had created during the campaign and used it to create a 9 minute film. The film ran on the G4 gaming network as well as at I-film.com, where it got over 60,000 views.

The performance took place primarily on the web, including the creation of three separate websites, but also included viral videos, viral voicemails, posts at independent gaming sites, e-mail, 30", and 15" TV and web commercials, small space newspaper ads, physical stunting, direct mail (mailing beta copies of the game directly to a small group of gamers), and the distribution of flyers. Ultimately two additional websites were created by fans caught up in the story.

The online portion of the effort was extremely cost-effective at just over 300K production and media (not counting TV production and media) and netted the following statistics: 2.25 million impressions. 4 million downloads of game clips. Average web session time of 10-11 minutes vs industry average of 05" to 30" seconds. Game sales exceeded previous year by 20%.