Deutsch LA and PlayStation 'The All-Star'

PlayStation and Deutsch LA are launching a new spot, “The All-Star,” which follows up last year’s award-winning fan favorite “Michael.” Like its predecessor, “The All-Star” painstakingly brings the stars of gaming to life in the same commercial. But instead of having them drinking at a bar, it shows what fans really want: those characters beating each other up.

 

 

“The All-Star” promotes a new PlayStation game, PS All-Stars Battle Royale, which lets characters from different games cross over and fight each other. So, of course, we thought that battle should happen in the real world. And, as before, it finds a way to make the gamer part of the action.

 

The ad brings back “Michael” director Simon McQuoid, and revisits the world and characters of “Michael” (including my favorite, the enigmatic tattooed coatcheck girl), but on a larger scale. This commercial was shot on five different locations in Prague.

 

To stoke fan interest, we teased the commercial with 15-second videos released in the days before the ad’s launch. Those teasers earned more than 450,000 views on their own without media support, and generated thousands of comments as people speculated about their purpose.

 

We also included 23 Easter eggs (including a typewriter that wrote only in the language spoken in one of the PlayStation titles) to get the devoted PlayStation fan base engaged in the commercial. Within 24 hours, someone had translated the text from the typewriter.

 

If you’re not up on your video games, the characters include Kratos from God of War (large, blue-skinned); Nathan Drake from Uncharted (wears a shoulder holster and drives a Jeep); Cole MacGrath from Infamous (has electric hands); and Sackboy from Little Big Planet (looks like a puppet).