‘Traces of Hope’ an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) produced for British Red Cross by Enable Interactive has been the charity’s most successful digital campaign ever for generating media attention. In addition to features in the Guardian, Metro and national TV, the game attracted over 150 pieces of digital press coverage including the BBC.co.uk homepage and Yahoo Games.

Traces of Hope was created by Enable Interactive in collaboration with two other Bristol-based creative businesses. ARG specialist and Pervasive Media Studio resident Hazel Grian scripted the game and moving image specialists Silicon 19 filmed the trailer and in-game video. This is the trio’s second collaboration. They previously worked together on the British Red Cross’ highly successful ‘HIV: What’s the Story?’ campaign which took over the Bebo homepage on World AIDS Day and was featured between bands on the Glastonbury main stage.

“Working with Hazel and Silicon 19 again was a natural choice” says Enable Creative Director Darius Pocha. “It was a really productive creative collaboration on the HIV campaign and Hazel is one of the world’s leading ARG writers. The fact they’re both Bristol-based and friends of ours was just a bonus really. One of the attractions of being Bristol is the sheer number of people doing interesting stuff who you can collaborate with”.

According to Pocha it was the trust created by the success of the HIV campaign which persuaded Red Cross to invest in a potentially risky and radical campaign. “ARG’s are very much an emerging genre and persuading a brand-owner to invest in one rather than a banner campaign or microsite could have been a bit of a challenge. Luckily Red Cross are a brave and visionary client and they trusted us to re-create the success we had last year”. He adds that “As an agency we’ve already had a lot more interest in creating branded content as a result of it”.

One of the challenges was to attract a mainstream audience for what has traditionally been a specialist genre but due to the interest created by the media coverage over 60,000 visitors came to the game’s pre-registration page with several thousand signing up before the game even started.

“We were pretty pleased with the pre-registration numbers” says Enable’s Strategy Director Matt Connolly. “Equally importantly, the exit questionnaire shows that nearly 70% of players who finished the game had never been in an ARG before, suggesting there’s definitely a mainstream audience for this type of experience.”