In March 2018, Xbox launched the swashbuckling new multiplayer Sea of Thieves with The Quest for The Golden Bananas.

The quest sparked a gold rush with an alternative reality game where 15 fiendishly difficult puzzles needed to be solved in order to win the Golden Bananas, forged by master craftsman in London and valued at $100,000. Why bananas? In the game they are a source of health; in the real world we made them a source of wealth.

We brought an in-game character to life to surface clues via our microsite, sending thousands from all over the world across digital and physical channels.

What began as a competition grew into something greater. A global community working together, proving the value of camaraderie in the vast ocean of toxic online gaming.

The crew that completed the quest were immortalized in game and rewarded with the loot of fruit.?

We worked with world famous goldsmiths to create a treasure to attract gamers around the world – a bunch of real golden bananas valued at over $100K. This prize and the quest to claim them called gamers to ‘crew up’ to have a chance of solving the clues the fastest.

The Quest began with a cryptic film surfacing on the campaign microsite in the days prior to launch, with 14 further clues appearing every four hours over the course of the subsequent three days.

These clues sent intrepid problem-solvers to multiple locations, both off and online—across social, Web, forums, chats, etc—to unearth secret keywords. Six of these clues involved the staging of live-action events, occurring in Key West, London (Piccadilly Lights), Paris, Berlin, Sydney and Victoria (Canada). We also worked with the game developer to hide a clue in launch kits that were sent to over 400+ influencers globally.

Total campaign reach of over 650 million

Over 300K?visits to The Quest website during the 2 week campaign period.

Over 7.8M video views?across owned channels (312% vs objective), with 90% of views organic

Over 300k engagements across social channels (120% vs objective)

Generated global earned media impact?driving 100+ articles across 18 markets.

More than 40k players engaged with two or more clues, and more than 10K players?solved all 15 clues and entered the final

Sea of Thieves saw more than a million players join on launch day, adding a further million within a week.

Sea of Thieves is the fastest selling new IP of this console generation on Xbox

Sea of Thieves?is the best-selling Microsoft Studios first-party title on Windows 10 ever