Innocean Berlin and M.AD School's Game Changers Celebrates Timeless Industry Ideas
How do you make decades worth of creative culture pocket sized? Simple. By turning 32 of the industry’s greatest ideas into a card game. Introducing: M.AD Game Changers.
Innocean Berlin collaborates with M.AD School to create an educational tool honouring timeless industry ideas that all students can learn from and be inspired by - so they can come with the next game-changing idea themselves.
Born in a M.AD classroom as part of an assignment, the idea was further developed together with Innocean Berlin led by Ricardo Wolff (a M.AD graduate) whose team helped take the concept to the next stage. To round up the final 32 cards, agency and school reached out to graduates, now in leadership positions, like Andrew Keller (VP of creative and experiential at Facebook) and Menno Kluin (CCO at Dentsu Creative), asking them to name the ideas every student ‘must’ know before landing their first job. Then, in a live voting session, over three hundred M.AD students across the globe judged each idea according to the categories:
- Could win a Grand Prix today
- A behaviour changer
- Brand-building material
- Worth sharing with non-ad friends
- Belongs in the MOMA
The cards feature an array of classics such as Volkswagen ‘Lemon’, Levis ‘Odyssey’ and Apple ‘1984’ covering the most ground-breaking and relevant work created over eight decades of advertising, from agencies such as BBH, Wieden & Kennedy and AMV to name a few.
The game itself is an easy play. It follows the rules of ‘Top Trumps’ - in which players compare stats, and the first to collect all cards, wins.
Innocean Berlin also created a website to showcase the final 32 cards and their respective campaigns, along with a token ‘joker’ card and profiles of each of the ‘jurors’ (M.AD students). Visitors can also download the entire deck so they can print and play.
An Unveiling Event is being held virtually on February 3rd 2022 where the cards will be presented to the world. The creators of Dove "Beauty Sketches", Burger King "Subservient Chicken", Amnesty "Refugee Nation", Bing/Jay-Z "Decode Jay-Z", who are all M.AD grads, will talk to the students and tell a bit more about those campaigns. Printed decks of the cards were sent to the creators of the final 32 campaigns - an “award” they surely weren’t expecting to get after so many years.
The website will go live on February 3rd, along with the Unveiling Event.
You can join the live event by signing up here.
Ricardo Wolff from Innocean Berlin says: “There's a lot of scepticism around 'studying old campaigns" and that students should look for references outside of advertising. I think that's wrong. One thing doesn't exclude the other. They should know great ads AND other stuff. It's like telling aspiring basketball players they shouldn't look at Jordan's videos. Browsing annuals, scanning festival winners, these things matter. You're silently developing your own criteria. And that's what M.AD School is all about: helping shape creative minds. No wonder we, at Innocean Berlin, scoop up so many brains there. I'm particularly happy to help bring this game to life both as a M.AD grad and as part of an agency that believes ideas are the driving force of this industry."
Pippa Seichrist, CEO Miami Ad School says: "How to evaluate ideas is the most important skill students can learn to improve their work. When 300 plus students vote on campaigns, like in a real jury, we're offering them a unique opportunity to practice just that. I'm so proud of the students who came up with M.AD Game Changers: Madalena Gonçalves, Gabriela Barreira and Deborah Ferreira. They realised the importance of critical thinking and, together with Innocean Berlin, without whom this global project wouldn't be possible, found a way to help other young creatives develop this skill by simply playing a card game."
