The Skylanders franchise created the Toys to Life category in 2011, capturing the imaginations of kids across the world with its sense of innovation, magic and adventure.

To launch the third instalment, Skylanders SWAP Force ™, we wanted to blend the physical with the virtual – just like the game – and capture the imagination of influencers with a stunt that took the title beyond the games pages.

The creative concept centred on announcing a world first: the twinning of a real place with a virtual one. The Skylands, the virtual home of the Skylanders, were twinned with the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Drawing on the fact the two landscapes bear a striking similarity, Scottish landmarks like the Fairy Glen would become the setting for the ultimate Toys to Life celebration.

To ensure authenticity, we partnered with Visit Scotland and the Highland Council. Implementing a surprise takeover of the Isle of Skye website, and generating interest and intrigue through a teaser campaign, we drove anticipation ahead of the full twinning announcement. A 6ft Skylander was taken on location, capturing a bank of playful visual imagery and b-roll content that showed how the landmarks of Skye had been given a ‘swap’ makeover, driving headlines across Europe.

Resulting in over 93m OTS – the campaign was a huge success, generating mainstream editorial in titles including: BBC News, Metro, The Sun and Yahoo. The games media took note as well, Kotaku’s headline read “An entire Scottish Island is now an ad for Skylanders”.

We brought the Skylanders to Earth. The team headed to Skye armed with a 6ft Washbuckler statue, a camera crew, a photographer and a van full of props to capture a range of content. Despite the rain (and wind), the resulting imagery was used across multiple touch points including:

• Teaser postcards, urging tune-in, directed media and influencers to ‘Visit Skye’ via Skye.co.uk on the day of the announcement

• A secret ‘SWAP’ takeover of the Isle of Skye tourism website

• Media mailers for kids and mainstream press

• Supporting imagery for the official twinning release issued in partnership with Visit Scotland and the Highland Council

• Mailers for fans sent through Skylanders’ and partners’ social channels

• Broll for broadcast media and behind-the-scenes footage for online features

Activity was backed up by a hard-working press office teams ensuring positive and widespread coverage across broadcast, national, parenting and kids’ media, and parent bloggers.

Delivered on time, in budget, the campaign created a world first. The game moved out of the reviews pages and into front of news, TV, magazines and social media , driving conversations at launch.

Results included:

• Secured a media OTS of 93million worldwide

• 96% of Isle of Skylanders coverage mentioned Skylanders in the headline or lead paragraph from 15th October – 31st December

• Drove an 86% increase in traffic to skye.co.uk

• 30% of coverage was positive – 70% was neutral (no unfavourable coverage)

• 16,000+ articles globally for launch. In Europe, the campaign generated ¼ of all coverage in launch week (3/4s centred on reviews)

• A Twitter OTS of 3.6million in the UK alone - 6.5+million OTS globally, including North America, Brazil and Saudi Arabia

The Guardian said: “Activision's multi-million selling game has been virtually twinned with the beautiful Scottish isle in a marketing masterstroke.”