Jabii
Launching a game nobody had a word for.
- /Brand strategy
- //Marketing strategy and ICPs
- ///Launch campaign, films and photos
From the first workshop to the preorder campaign, July to November 2020.
The Challenge.
How do you launch a product that is not a toy, not a sports gadget and not a video game, to people who have never seen one, in the eight weeks before the preorders open?
The game.
Jabii is a Copenhagen startup with one product. Two players each hold a Jabii, a handheld device with a soft strike pad and RGB light, and try to land a punch on the other. The app keeps score, shows the life bar, records the winning blow and lets you share the replay. Active, social and fun, together.
The first version was made for kids of eight to twelve and went viral in 2017, on NowThis and LADbible among others. In 2020 the team relaunched it for young adults, with a new design, an app and real hardware arriving from production in August. Their brief to us: two product commercials for a preorder campaign running from late September, a set of player and product photos for the website and social, and the teasers to run as ads.
There was a harder question under the brief. Jabii had no category. A buyer looks for a toy, a piece of sports kit or a game, and Jabii was all three and none of them. Before anyone could film it, someone had to decide what it was, and for whom.
What we did.
1. Brand strategy
We started with a workshop with the Jabii team on 6 August 2020 and worked through the golden circle. Why: to make movement fun by rethinking play. How: social, fun and active games that combine physical movement and gaming. What: starting with the Jabii device and app. Out of it came the words the campaign had to carry, active, social and fun, all three ending in together, and the feeling the team wanted a player to leave with: empowerment. Under the tagline Ignite your game, Jabii talks about play, never about matches, and that went into every script.
2. Marketing strategy and the ICPs
Jabii had two customers in mind, and we helped define them as ideal customer profiles the campaign could aim at. The High School Guy, fifteen to twenty, into casual gaming, still living at home. And the Party Starter, the same guy a few years on, with his own place, the one who throws the movie nights and moves it all to the park in summer. Each profile got its setting and its mood: an afternoon outdoors on a city court, light and competitive, and an evening at home with friends, dark, homely and lit by the device itself. The cast followed from them, diverse without looking arranged, fit but not built, and dressed for the street.
3. The campaign, from plan to ad spend
We planned the whole campaign around one production. Two days of filming in Copenhagen, on 16 and 17 August, gave two hero films, one per profile: The Transformation, where a basketball player who scoffs at the game ends up packing a Jabii next to his ball, and The Unexpected, where a girlfriend who switches off the music turns out to be the best ranked player in the room. A stills photographer worked the same scenes, framing every shot with clear space at the sides so Jabii’s art director could crop it for any format and set copy beside it. Then the cutting: the first film with three different calls to action, social ads in square and story formats from each film and from both together, and a ten second packing the bag loop. One shoot, many pieces of content, all of it built to be spent on.
TODO KIM: the fourth point, if there is one.
One shoot, cut for every feed.
From brief to launch, on one timeline.
What happened at Jabii on the left. What we delivered on the right.
The video brief: two commercials and a photo set for a preorder campaign, with the products still 3D printed.
23 JulyOur first presentation, with storyboards for both films.
The first real Jabiis arrive from production.
6 AugustThe workshop: the golden circle, the two profiles, casting, locations and music, and the storyboards tightened with the team.
16 and 17 AugustTwo days of filming. The court on day one, the evening at home on day two, and the photo package from both.
The preorder campaign opens on the website and in the feeds.
25 SeptemberThe Transformation delivered, with the packing the bag loop for social two days later.
The launch. The ads go live.
Three versions of the first film with different calls to action, and The Unexpected, the second hero film.
10 NovemberJabii on TV 2’s Go’ Morgen Danmark. Ten organic sales before the morning was out.
Twelve second ads in square and story formats, from the second film and from both films together.
The two hero films.
One per profile. The High School Guy on a city court in the afternoon, the Party Starter at home in the evening.
The Transformation, commercial, 1:15
The Unexpected, commercial, 0:58
Cut for the ads.
Short, fast and made for the feed. Square and story formats from each film and from both together, and the first film with three calls to action to test against each other.
The Unexpected, square, 0:12
The Unexpected, story, 0:12
Both films, square, 0:12
Both films, story, 0:12
Packing the bag, square, 0:11
Packing the bag, wide, 0:26
The Transformation, call to action 2, 1:15
The Transformation, call to action 3, 1:15
The photo package.
Shot on the same two days as the films, with room at the sides for copy, so one picture could become a banner, a square post and a story.
Results.
The campaign was in the feeds when the preorders opened, with a film for each profile and enough short cuts to keep the ads fresh through the launch. The photos became the faces of Jabii on its website and social channels.
On 10 November 2020 Jabii was on TV 2’s Go’ Morgen Danmark, and the morning brought ten organic sales. The same week we were cutting the last ads from both films.
TODO KIM: numbers of our own from the ad spend, if Jabii shared any: views, click rate, preorders.