NBA ALL-WORLD GLOBAL MARKETING

Niantic is a San Francisco company that blends the physical and digital worlds with AR and mapping. Its games, made famous by Pokémon GO, rest on four ideas: draw people outdoors, inspire exploration, encourage exercise, and create connection. NBA All-World brought that to basketball.

Our team had already delivered the game’s UI design and branding. Niantic then entrusted us with the marketing: develop and execute strategies that made NBA All-World a central topic in hoop culture, using social media to join the real-world metaverse with live events.

NBA All-World launched in Paris first. France got early access on January 17, 2023, two days before the NBA Paris Game on January 19, and the game went live worldwide on January 24. The launch rode the hype of the NBA Paris Game happening at the same time.

We designed custom out-of-home advertising to take over Paris, then edited the footage for social platforms to show the audience how far the game reached.

To reach Parisian NBA fans and Niantic fans alike, we sent players on a scavenger hunt across Paris. It ended at NBA House, where the product launch event was waiting.

Players who finished the hunt earned exclusive merch, and the Niantic team hosted friendly games of NBA All-World. The event brought together a community of new players from across the city, and some from across the world.

In line with Niantic’s goal of a real-world metaverse, we met players where they already were. Our first OOH campaign launched in Paris, then Barcelona, with interactive ads in subway stations, on street signs, and more.

We carried the OOH campaign back to the US and took over Boston and San Francisco with NBA All-World ads that invited new players to download the game.

Before any creative, we built the strategy resources that guided every NBA All-World marketing decision, from everyday Instagram posts to complex out-of-home campaigns.

NBA All-World had to work for very different players, so we designed for three audiences at once.

A community brings people together, and that is what we set out to build. In the long run, engagement matters more than awareness for brand and product loyalty, so every strategy was built around it. Followership is not community.

With such different audiences, our voice had to include everyone: accessible authenticity. We balanced the tone hoop culture had already set, shaped by community members, with Niantic’s own brand identity.

After release, we planned content for the whole year, with a focus for each phase that fit the seasons and the events happening at the time.

Niantic chose GO ALL OUT as the launch catchphrase and call to action, challenging players to begin their NBA All-World journey and bring the game into their lives. We wove the phrase and its ethos through every part of the launch marketing.

I Ball All World was our homage to the famous I Love NY phrase. New York is an influential city in hoop culture, so it made sense to build a catchphrase on it. Where Go All Out was the launch campaign, I Ball All World became the evergreen tagline, capturing the game’s global outlook and encouraging players to ball worldwide.

We created the NBA All-World Awards to turn ordinary fans into contributors, all-stars, and brand ambassadors. Millions of players had the chance to win prizes like pro athletes, which promoted inclusivity and engagement. Unlike traditional awards, they also celebrated the parts of basketball culture beyond performance on the court.

The All World 5 are a stylized group of mascots who stand for the global players who love and support NBA All-World. We drew their faces without defining features so players could imagine themselves as NBA All-World stars. A forced perspective makes them look like giants, a symbol of the heights players can reach by leveling up.

A strategy only matters if it ships. These are the pieces we designed and produced to carry it, from a shareable VFX moment to merchandise that fans drove across states to get.

Epic Moment was a new feature we designed to let players share their winning move straight to social media. A highly stylized VFX treatment amplified the hype of sharing, so players could show off their most Epic Moments to friends and rivals.

We built a ready-to-use toolkit in every aspect ratio, so internal and external creative teams could quickly produce branded marketing videos while staying true to the brand guidelines.

Dreamspace designed a wide range of sleek merchandise for marketing promotions, giving fans a reason to engage with the game.

Fun fact: the merch was so popular that one fan drove across multiple states to get a tee at an NBA All-World community event.

A social-first strategy was the right call for NBA All-World, as it is for most brands today. We covered every social need, from original assets for each event and announcement to witty captions and bio copy, and treated social as the top priority in every marketing effort.

Working closely with 8th Wall, the WebAR company in the Niantic portfolio, we developed the visuals for the game’s AR Drop Zone. We made them exciting and built on the AR technology, so everyday real-world spaces became places for playful interactions.

We also shipped the AR Vault and the AR Shoe Drop, two further AR moments built in the same visual language as the Drop Zone.

The campaign took NBA All-World from a Paris-first launch to out-of-home takeovers in Paris, Barcelona, Boston, and San Francisco, and gave the game a plan for the whole year: three audiences, one voice, five phases, and a set of platforms players could carry with them.

NBA All-World was live from January 24, 2023. Niantic sunset the game later that year, and the campaign’s social channels remain online as an archive. See the rest of the story in the game’s UI design and branding case studies, or another launch we ran, the CFMOTO global launch.