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Star Trek: Infinite - Video Ad Suites

In short

Star Trek: Infinite poses a compelling question: What happens when you combine the beautiful in-depth systems of Stellaris with Star Trek, the sci-fi IP stacked with lore and known the world over? It’s a stunning pitch, and we were over the moon when our long-term partner, Paradox Interactive, asked us to collaborate on Infinite’s pre-order campaign.

Deliverables

Video ad suites.

To boldly go

Star Trek: Infinite is the work of Argentinian developer Nimble Giant Entertainment. Like Stellaris, it’s a 4X grand strategy game and one that’s built on that game’s core systems.

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In this case, players assume control of one of four classic Trek civilisations: the Federation, Klingons, Romulans or Cardassians. In-game, players encounter legendary faces from various television shows over the years - the likes of Picard, Janeway and Data.

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The Paradox team were keen to drive pre-orders of Infinite ahead of its release on October 12. We grabbed our phasers, set them to stun and got cracking on a suite of video ads that were out of this world.

Computer, on screen

Using gameplay footage provided to us by the Paradox team, we produced compelling video content to appear on social media channels, including Facebook and Instagram. The team made expert use of motion graphics for the videos’ text slates, end slates and overlays.

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TikTok was a particular focus for this campaign, so we included a version at the 9:16 ratio. Viewer retention on the platform is notoriously tricky, so our video content needed to be snappy and attention-grabbing from the start. Because of the flighty nature of the audience on TikTok, we effectively used captions to draw viewers in and gently persuade them toward the pre-order page.

Communicators on

With a brand as famous as Star Trek, it’s natural to expect several approval stages for any produced content. Our team saw this as an excellent opportunity to provide multiple versions of our video ads, each with subtle but significant differences.

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This allowed our partners at Paradox to decide on the direction they wanted to take the project and gave us the chance to collaborate with teams as far afield as the US.