sentosa
Creating a Virtual Paradise
Capabilities:
Imagine escaping to a paradise island where bags of cash fall out of trees and a pudgy anthropomorphic raccoon can approve your mortgage. This is the virtual world of Nintendo Switch’s ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’; a game where players can build their own nirvana. The perfect place for a world under lockdown.
This is the story of how we kept a Singaporean holiday island open for business despite a global pandemic closing its gates.
300+
Publications.
12
Days taken to build the island experience.
15,000+
Minutes of virtual dwell time.
The coronavirus pandemic had put the travel industry out of action. Overnight, Sentosa Island had closed its gates and gone from hosting millions of visitors to zero.
Instead of waiting for people to be able to return to the island, we brought the island to the people.
Nintendo Switch’s ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ was the game of the coronavirus moment. With the world in the grip of a pandemic and entire countries indefinitely under lockdown, the warm-hug tone of the game had universal appeal.
So, we created an ultra-specific digital replica of Singapore’s holiday destination where visitors’ avatars could downward dog at beach yoga, rock out at a music festival, sip cocktails at dusk at one of the many beach bars, visit attractions found in the real-world Sentosa, go on nature trails, catch movies under the stars at the open-air cinema and get their digital hands on exclusive in-game merch. We even held an animated press conference where an animated avatar of Sentosa’s CEO cut the digital marketing ribbon on the island’s pearly gates.
1 Nintendo Switch
12 days
22 Black Sheep
500 hectare island designed and constructed
15,000+ minutes of virtual dwell time
300+ PR stories worldwide
"Sentosa Crossing is a case study in how tourism marketing can innovate and connect with future travelers, even as travel itself remains closed on a global scale." - Conde Nast Traveller
"Sentosa Crossing is a breakout effort in tourism marketing." - HYPEBEAST