Microsoft Xbox Launch for Gears of War 4 Video Game on Amazon.com

OVERVIEW

On October 11, 2016, Xbox launched its flagship exclusive video game, Gears of War 4. To promote the release, the client wanted to utilize Amazon’s Gateway Hero Banner to drive the customer to a custom landing page highlighting a Prime Now Midnight Delivery option.

As the designer for this project, I carefully considered the creative elements and used Gears of War 4 character assets to create key art that met Amazon.com’s Hero placement specifications and regulations. The animated hero banner directed customers to the campaign landing page, which provided dual purchase paths for Prime and non-Prime members. I worked with an interactive designer to help create the background rain and lightning animation for the hero banner. I also designed the custom landing page that featured additional video game content, a link to the Twitch Livestream, and a shoppable experience for customers. The video game was promoted on the Prime Now landing page at the time of launch.

I was part of a Beta launch to create a design for the Fire TV in-video shopping experience.

CHALLENGES

One of the main challenges with Amazon’s Gateway Hero Banner is the strict Ad Policies around what kind of imagery can be shown. Since it is the first main image and on the home page, images had to be appropriate for all ages. In order to adhere to the ad specs and policies, I had to make sure to remove or crop into an area of the background that was neutral. I was also able to composite the three main character assets and crop them so that no weapons were seen. In addition to not showing weaponry, I had to do enough minor touch up to remove any visibility of blood. I edited the images that were both approved by Microsoft Xbox and by Amazon’s Ad Policy team. With the approval of this key asset, I was able to apply it to Prime Now hero images, Fire TV hero banner, and display media banners.

Another challenge while designing the Gears of War 4 landing page was that the campaign had to allow for Prime Now members and standard members to purchase the video game on the same page. The Prime Now service at the time was a different shopping experience, so I had to include a link that redirected customers to that service.

In addition to these previous challenges, I wanted to create an area where customers could watch the Kinda Funny Twitch live stream in the page. However, due to technicalities for our team, I was only able to provide a link to the Twitch live stream page, which redirected customers.

Some of the challenges, I was able to work through and find compromises, while other challenges had to be handled with alternate solutions due to limitations of our teams resources.