25th Anniversary of Pokémon
03–01–2021


︎ Agency: Mediacom
︎ Type: Campaign
︎ Period: 2021
︎ Medium: Digital
︎ Status: Completed

It’s not everyday you see Pokémon chart #1 on Spotify.

Awards
Cannes: Gold Lion
Cannes: Shortlist (x3)

I worked with the Mediacom Creative Services (CS) Team on this project during the concept exploration stage. The initial idea to connect the 25-year-old brand (Pokémon), 25-year-old artist (Post Malone), and a 25 -year-old hit (Only Wanna Be With You) was lead by Marcelo Dzialoszynski and Emiliano Zapata. After Pokémon’s approval the exploration stage insued to see how this connection could play out.

More than 10 months later, the final result was an animated virtual concert (video) put on by Post Malone using a full Mo-Cap suit and all. Prior to this final direction we explored creating an interactive virtual festival. This festival would be the ultimate expression of familiarty fans have with the iconic Pokémon brand mixed with being at a full-scale music festival. At the end of the day, Pokémon decided to go with a non-interactive video partly due to time limitations and to our surprise – IP complications. It’s very unfortunate but I hope the idea gets to live on one day.

My focus during this lengthy process was to develop ways to gamify the virtual festival. Leverage the love of playing Pokémon games, exploring environments, conquering gyms, capturing unique Pokémon and winning merchandise. The team used Fortnite’s Travis Scott concert as an inspiration. I studied the experience Fortnite players had and explored ways to amplify, build-on and extend them to the realm of Pokémon.