Good People | Borderlands 2

In an effort to position Borderlands 2 as 2K Games' premiere title for the 2012 holiday season, we rallied the fan base to help spread the word through social content, contests, and apps that generated sharable results. Our goal was to take the Borderlands brand from 'Core Gamer Darling' to 'Top 10 Title of 2012' and expand the Borderlands Facebook page to a million followers.

Borderlands Fandom

Borderlands fans were a small, but active on-line community who loved to share their fan art, cosplay photos, and even tattoos. We scoured through their social posts to create a campaign that was tailored to the existing fan base so that we could draw in new fans. These were our insights:

Fans want fun ways to tell their friends about their favorite game.

The game's humor is weird and crude. We ran with that.

Everybody loves to hate Claptrap, the intentionally annoying robot guide.

Strategic Planning

From high level planning to tactical rollout, those insights guided our approach to delighting and growing the fanbase:

DIGITAL ECO-SYSTEM PLANNING

CONTENT STRATEGY

EDITORIAL CALENDAR DEVELOPMENT

Custom Applications

We created 3 custom Facebook apps to harness the social power of the fanbase by providing them with tools to make their friends "joy puke" with excitement for Borderlands 2.

129K social shares

350K visits

End of the world confession generator

The internet in 2012 was full of speculation about the Mayan apocalypse. We invited fans to come clean before doomsday by customizing and sending snarky "end of the world confession" eCards written in the voice of a Borderlands character.

25% of users shared a confession on Facebook.

80k unique visitors and 50k shares within 48 hours of launch.

Claptrap Photo Bomb App

Fans added digital stickers of their favorite interplanetary robot to their Facebook photos, uploads or webcam shots then shared these "photobombed" creations with friends.

5:07 average time on site

Claptrap's Love Machine

Fans selected a character, "spicyness level" and recipient type to generate and share sassy Valentines written in the voices of their favorite characters.

1.5M slot machine interactions

Characters

Character profiles introduced fans to the playable classes with stats, backstory and action skill overviews.

6M organic impressions

50K Facebook likes

5K Facebook shares

Skills

Skill tree sneak peeks got fans excited about gameplay by revealing special abilities from each playable class.

18% avg. engagement rate

32K Facebook likes, comments, and shares

Enemies

Pandora is a brutal planet filled with fearsome creatures; our survival guides helped fans prepare for the worst.

3.4M impressions

Weapons

We got gamers excited for Borderlands 2's bazillions of guns by showcasing the distinct flavor of each of the in-game weapon manufacturers.

15% engagement rate

Fun and "Flavor"

We rounded out the content calendar with holiday messages and "just for fun" posts that fans shared across the social web.

Post Launch DLC

The fun wasn't over at launch. We supported 3 downloadable expansions with thematic content to promote the distinct flavor, characters and enemies of each DLC pack.