At the finale of “The Art of the H3ist” at the Viceroy hotel in Santa Monica, actors playing the fictitious characters Nisha Roberts, Ian Yarbrough and Virgil Tatum appeared live to hash out the last act in the alternate reality gaming (ARG) project that McKinney + Silver, Durham, N.C., and bicoastal Chelsea Pictures/Campfire created for client Audi of America’s North American launch of the compact A3 automobile. The event was also aired live in a Web cast on www.stolena3.com.
The three-month long caper began the evening of March 31 when an Audi A3 was “stolen” from a dealership on Park Avenue in Manhattan. The theft was a staged event and launched this “Art of the H3ist” initiative for Audi. The car was on loan for the night from the New York International Automobile Show. The next day at the show, a sign appeared in the vehicle’s place, urging anyone who had information on the stolen car to phone a special hotline number.
The campaign also featured a TV spot asking anyone with information about the missing A3 to call in and report it to the number on the screen. Newspaper, magazine, outdoor and banner ads all played a part in promoting the initiative to find the missing Audi. Of course, since the target audience is extremely tech savvy, word spread quickly on blogs, and fan Web sites began to pop up.
This story involved additional live events at a variety of places like E3 (the world’s largest interactive entertainment and educational software trade show) in Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. At these rendezvous points, retrievers, who were real life participants (non-actors), played along in-character with the story. With their disbelief suspended, they answered ads seeking help in the mission to retrieve the stolen car. The chosen retrievers, who were selected on a first come, first served bases and only totaled three to five people per event, would arrive to participate in a segment of the game and try to steal SD cards (secure digital memory cards) that were located behind the navigation systems in A3s that were on display at the events.
The SD cards held information about a planned art heist at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Ultimately, Roberts and her band of retrievers needed to track down the stolen A3 because its SD card contained a program that deciphers the encryption in the other SD cards. Along the way, as the SD cards were captured, online players could try to crack the puzzles contained within the cards to get to the next level of the story.
“We knew that we wanted to somehow capitalize on the technology of the car so we decided as a part of the story it would make perfect sense that these cars left Germany and before they left, SD cards were inserted into the slots of six of them. Together all six needed to be tracked down to crack the story, so that was really the impetus for going around the country,” McKinney + Silver director of broadcast Regina Brizzolara explained.
In Atlanta, like at E3 and Coachella, participants–the real-life retrievers who were playing along in the alternate reality game–meet the actress playing Roberts at a Waffle House restaurant across the street from an Audi dealership. At the diner, they discussed a plan to go into the dealership and retrieve an SD card from one of the Audis. “Some were there to distract [people working at the dealership] while someone was designated the person to get into the car, get the nav down, get the card and get out discreetly and that was our first live Web cast,” Brizzolara said. Essentially, some of the people who chose to play along with this elaborate game got to do so in person.
Other elements that were created to make the alternate reality seem as real as possible were two Web sites: www.LastResortRetrieval.com, for Roberts’ high-end art recovery service Last Resort Retrieval, and www.VirgilKingOfCode.com, which is video game designer Tatum’s company Web site.
REAL-LIFE CAST OF CHARACTERS
This unusual project created an equally unusual role for director Mike Monello. Executive producer Steve Wax said the helmer’s job included guiding the story, deciding where content would live and how it would be revealed. Copywriter Matt Fischvogt described Monello as a puppet master and said he developed the story arc. Ben Rock shot the “Easter egg films,” QuickTimes that fill out the story and live on www.stolena3.com.
The story was so complex that Fischvogt welcomed the formation of a large creative group that, beyond his partner art director Jason Musante, included head writer and co-director Brian Cain and writers Ernie Larsen and Jim Gunshanon.
In the end, it was Tatum’s head programmer Emile Smithson who was behind the plan to steal from the Uffizi Gallery. This news was revealed online before the event at the Viceroy.
The party at the Viceroy was presented as a re-launch for Tatum’s company TatumThink and the debut of his video game The Nisha Chronicles, Volume 1, based on the exploits of Roberts. It also presented a perfect opportunity for the final act of the ARG to play out.
Like the other live events, all of the actors remained in character. Tatum was walking around and mingling with attendees until he took the stage to welcome everyone and formally announce the re-launch and new video game. Abruptly, he was interrupted as the monitors behind him began to play an embarrassing video from the security cameras at TatumThink. The footage showed Roberts as she confronted Smithson and discovered he was the true villain. Then Roberts demanded to know where her boyfriend Yarbrough was and Smithson told her to ask Tatum because he had Yarbrough “all wrapped up and ready to go.”
At the live event in Santa Monica, Roberts suddenly appeared and rushed up to Tatum, who was still on stage, and insisted he tell her where Yarbrough was. After a few heated words were exchanged, Tatum dropped the screen behind the stage to reveal the stolen A3, with Yarbrough bound and gagged in the front seat.
Once released, Yarbrough roughed Tatum up a bit, called him pathetic, and left with Roberts. In a rage, Tatum demanded that the cameras and lights be shut off and he exited the party.
ACTIVE ROLES
Audi partnered with several companies like Apple, Bose and Palm for the project. Wax estimated that fifty percent of the footage on the Web sites was shot using palmOne Treos (cell phones).
Inspired by the target audience, 25-34 year olds who get more of their information online than any other way, the team wanted to break boundaries while blurring the line between the real and the unreal, Musante related. That desire led them into ARG. “Advertising is so passive,” he said. “Now, it’s active.”
Additional credit at McKinney goes to David Baldwin, executive creative director; David Cook and Jonathan Cude, group creative directors; and Justin Smith, interactive designer.
At Chelsea Pictures/Campfire, Ilene Richardson served as producer and Brian Clark as digital creative director.