Real-World Rovio: Creating an Agile Live-Action Commercial for Angry Birds 2

No matter your budget or your IP, your best-performing Facebook ad has about 10 weeks before creative fatigue sets in. 90% of your new creative concepts will fail to outperform that ad. So, finding your next winner takes 20-50 new original concepts. To keep our clients’ ads outperforming those of their competitors, our quantitative creative development process yields fresh creative concepts for ongoing testing, while maintaining advertising efficiency at scale. Here’s how we did it for Rovio’s Angry Birds 2.

The Challenge

With some of the world’s most recognizable IP, Rovio needed a fresh approach to promoting Angry Birds 2, the new arcade mobile game in the billion-dollar franchise. In a departure from cartoon cardinals and canaries, Rovio wanted a live-action ad with real actors. This allowed them to highlight the universal appeal of the game across every demographic and device.

Our Solution

Through our agile production process, Consumer Acquisition is able to efficiently capture hundreds of video and photo assets in one shoot, saving time and budget. We script and film multiple performers, narrative arcs, and endings while using downtime to capture stills and behind-the-scenes footage. Our creative learning agenda incorporates intensive research into the game genre, personas, and user motivations as well as understanding what ads our target users are responding to in other markets.

This approach was ideal to develop unique creative for Angry Birds 2 and differentiate the game in a crowded category. Angry Birds 2’s competitors include Toon Blast, Toy Blast, Candy Crush franchise, Charm King, Cookie JamGardenscapes, and Homescapes. The target demographic for the game spans generations of players age 8+ and is equally popular among men and women.

Analyzing creative and competitor trends in the category, we found the following themes among high-performing ads:

• Player-Focused/Player vs. Player (PVP): Concepts featuring players competing against one another or different types of players in the game (Candy Crush Friends Saga)
• Gameplay: Real and modified footage of ideal gameplay action(Toon Blast, Candy Crush Saga)
• Achievement: Primary focus on mastery of a game (Toy Blast, Charm King, Cookie Jam)
• Puzzle with Purpose: A puzzle where the solution helps a character complete a challenge (Charm King, Fishdom, Gardenscapes)
• Puzzle Challenge: Brain teasers and other challenges, often tied to IQ (Fishdom, Gardenscapes, Homescapes)
• Progressive Puzzle: A puzzle that requires the player to complete multiple levels (Fishdom, Gardenscapes, Homescapes)

With a massive target audience and diverse creative trends to leverage, we focused on gameplay. We also featured PVP to appeal to players. Using our demographic research on affinity interests, we tailored the narrative arc of the ad to the real-world passions of our potential players.

The Result

Based on our research, we developed narrative devices to illuminate the passion that players of all ages bring to the game. Using location, wardrobe, hobbies, and age to contextualize characters, we were able to move swiftly from player to player. A rhythmic cadence and engaging character progression bring the viewer along to a humorous conclusion, where we reveal the unlikely antagonist. Competition and a sense of community are proven motivators for our target audience.

Beyond an entertaining ad, our agile production approach provided Rovio with multiple variations to test. This included different character reactions, different narrative progression, and different gameplay. The ad is optimized for multiple platforms and for iterative testing, allowing Rovio to sustain profitable ad spend. By shooting the commercial in 4K, Rovio can also capture still photos from the digital footage for social posts and single-image or carousel ads.

Watch the commercial for Angry Birds 2 here: Rovio’s Live-Action Commercial by Consumer Acquisition.

Consumer Acquisition has partnered with Rovio since 2019 to generate original story-driven ads for Angry Birds Dream Blast, Small Town Murders, and Sugar Blast. Today, we’re providing thumb-stopping creative for their RPG, Darkfire Heroes.  

Marko Pohjosmaki, Producer of Rovio Entertainment Corp, said, “It was great to work with Consumer Acquisition and their new talented live action & CGI team. The production pipeline was handled with care and respect by CA – from the early steps of pre-production to the final delivery. These guys knew our product so well beforehand that approval rounds were even smoother than expected. Production of Angry Birds “No!” commercial excelled and I can recommend them for similar use cases with pleasure.”

How We Can Help

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Consumer Acquisition can help produce a steady stream of fresh creative ideas and fresh assets. This allows you to maintain profitability from your mobile app advertising. Through our Creative Studio, we provide better, cheaper, faster asset production through our agile shoots and creative testing.

Founded in 2013, ConsumerAcquisition.com is a technology-enabled marketing services company that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers. We provide a creative studio and user acquisition services for Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Apple Search social advertisers. Contact Sales@ConsumerAcquisition.com to work with our elite Hollywood storytelling creative team. They will provide you with breakthrough creative ideas and gameplay capture assets to power your mobile app advertising.