How Playstation told stories with radio

To promote Playstation 3’s latest game – The Last of Us – the marketing team at Sony have used the original storytelling feature of radio to develop their latest ad campaign.

The game, The Last of Us is all about living in a a post apocalyptic world and the stories and turns the characters take. They have used the powerful creative feature of radio and its ability to storytell to develop a stand out campaign which grows and develops based on feedback from listeners.

Each day on air in the week building up to the release of the game – the on air spots reveal part of a story of how London is getting taken over and the listener is the last in the city. Through always updating spots – listeners are then instructed to go online and choose what the survivor does by giving two options.  Whatever they choose is what airs the next day.  The development of this story is completely up to listeners! A radio version of Choose Your Own Adventure!

It’s a really creative way of using radio bring to life all of radio’s great features: being timely, reactive, engaging and personal – involving a lot of careful planning and co-ordination behind the scenes – this radio campaign brings to life the true effect of storytelling in radio creative.

The on air radio campaign is supported by a truly interactive website over at a http://www.couldyoubethelastofus.co.uk/ where listeners can find which kind of survivor you would be in a post-apocalyptic world along with a daily chance to choose how the story continues and what the next creative will be, alongside enter a competition to win Sony products. Additionally – homepage takeovers and digital coverage runs on station websites alongside presenter mentions to drive listener engagement and develop a station partnership.

 

 

Take a listen to some of the campaign audio here:

[audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Last-of-Us.mp3
|titles=”The Last Of Us Example”] [audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/7JUN-XFM-1723-Last-Of-Us-Trail.mp3
|titles=”The Last Of Us Trail”] [audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/10JUN-1858-XFM-Last-Of-Us-20sec-advert.mp3
|titles=”The Last Of Us 20″ edit”] [audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/12JUN-0927-Last-Of-Us-Day-3.mp3
|titles=”The Last Of Us Day 3″] [audio:http://earshotcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/13JUN-0743-Last-of-Us-Day-4.mp3
|titles=”The Last Of Us Day 4″]

The campaign is running across the UK on Capital FM, XFM and Choice FM with creative and digital design by Global Radio for Sony Playstation. [update 16 June: The original idea came from Drum, Playstation’s content agency. See comments.]

If you’ve run any great examples of radio production and creative – do please share with us via jonathan@earshotcreative.com