A UBISOFT ORIGINAL - ANNO 117: PAX ROMANA

Anno, a popular German city-builder game, faces a global awareness challenge. To tackle this, we focused on the game’s core theme: BUILDING. In Anno, players build so much more than just roads, houses, and trade routes. They also build alliances, happiness, and peace within their cities! For Anno's latest installment, Anno 117: Pax Romana, we introduced a marketing character - The Town Crier. Getting the message of “build” to players in the most roman way possible! This character was revealed at Ubisoft Forward '24 to encourage players, both old and new, around the globe to build their empires!

Attracting over 1.1 million live viewers at Ubisoft Forward, the reveal trailer was lauded the funniest trailer of the summer game announcements. It garnered over 6 million views in just weeks – a 200% increase from the previous Anno 1800 reveal in 2017, all without paid support!!

The Town Crier was a clever marketing device, as he allowed us to engage Anno fans without revealing gameplay footage (as the game is still in development), but the fan response was something we weren’t expecting! The fans loved him! They even started a Reddit petition to have him in the game! To keep the Town Crier fever dream alive, we launched a community activation called The Scroll of Fame, paying homage to fans who had long requested an Anno game set in the Roman Empire. We honored 117 fans with unique social responses to their posts dating back to 2019 and immortalized them in a 10-minute YouTube video featuring The Town Crier. This initiative, described as a “marketing coup,” boosted brand engagement by 104%. All fans where immortalized on an “endless” scroll on the Anno Union.

This notion of build extended all the way to our brand redesign. For the first time ever in gaming, we hand forged the logo out of steel with a blacksmith, this attention to detail and commitment to craft took hold of the community, and they started building the logo in other places. Players built the logo in the previous game, Anno 1800, they built wooden key chains, they 3D printed the logo, pins were created, heck they even painted it on their nails!