Xbox All Access has everything gamers need to move on to the next gen. It’s a service that offers a next-gen Xbox Series console and Game Pass Ultimate, for one low monthly price, and no upfront costs. At a time when gamers were pining for a fresh, new console, it almost seemed too good to be true.

And yet...nobody was talking about it.

So, we were tasked with “breaking the internet” and bringing Xbox All Access into the mainstream conversation. This was the way Xbox wanted to sell Xbox consoles to their consumers, and they needed more subscribers.

Of course, emotional resonance with any brand helps create a splash. So, we took that to heart.

Upgrading to next-gen gaming means you have to break up with your last-gen console — and if you’re a gamer, that can be even tougher than ending a real relationship, with a real person. So, since nothing heals a broken heart like 90s RnB, we’ll create a breakup ballad for gamers ready to move on: “It’s All There.”

A fresh spin on All-4-One's classic “It’s All There” — re-created and recorded with the original band — this version has new lyrics that illustrate our great memories with our old console, and the even greater things to come in the next gen of gaming; all set to the original’s instrumental and cadence.

Complete with an over-the-top 90s music video featuring exotic-ish cars, an overdecorated McMansion and white linen galore, it captures all the things we appreciate about the past, and our excitement on moving on to what’s next.

On paper, Xbox All Access checks all the boxes: new console, 100+ games, for a low monthly price and no upfront cost. What it lacked was an emotional connection to our audience.

So, we created one, by tapping into the insight that people’s relationships with their consoles are emotional and like “the real deal”—with powerful memories like sleepless nights, new adventures, and overcoming challenges together. Add on a provocative message that people should leave behind an old Xbox product, and making a catchy, breakup tune made perfect sense.

Given the spirit of this campaign is a bittersweet “goodbye” to the past, we rewrote and re-recorded a favorite song from the past — “I Swear” — to add an extra layer of familiarity and emotional heft. People engaged not just in the conversation of loving their past consoles, but the past period — without feeling they needed to stay there.

Created a 2-minute long single and music video with the original band behind “I Swear”, All-4-One, that felt straight out of the year 1994, from the washed-out editing and the 4:3 aspect ratio, to the sonic aesthetics of the song itself. We even used the original song’s instrumental.

We released the full long form video on Xbox’s social channels, including YouTube and Twitter. We created additional faux “behind-the-scenes" content featuring scripted outtake gags, GIFs from the funniest moments of the music video, and paid cutdowns.

To make the single feel as legit as possible, we even created album art, of which some physical pre-recorded copies were sent to influencers in boomboxes that also contained windbreaker jackets and shoutouts from the band.

The new track and music video received coverage from major media publications in gaming and pop culture, including Nerdist, IGN, Game Informer and Screen Rant. We even saw folks on YouTube upload reaction videos to ours.

Campaign-wide, this video saw 621M impressions and 355K engagements. Platform-specific metrics included 219K views on YouTube, with over 26K likes. It also generated a larger conversation on the Twitter sphere, with thousands of quote tweets of Twitter users chiming in and giving their take on the new track—all laddering up to a staggering $8.6M in earned media value.