Walkers Rainy Days - Specialmoves
In 2010 Walkers challenged the British crisp eating public to predict the weather for a chance to win £10. AMV BBDO asked us to take charge of the visual and interaction design to create a beautifully fluid user experience. We said: ‘Great’.
Britain doesn't have particularly dramatic weather, really. We don't get tornados or flash floods, and average temperature graphs don't exactly give us a rollercoaster ride. Yet we talk about it so, so much, which is why Rainy Days was destined to be a huge campaign for Walkers. The idea was that every promotional pack of crisps included a redemption code, giving users a shot at winning a tenner by predicting where in the British Isles it was going to rain. Not only do people buy more crisps, they get to go for a prize and talk about the weather. Everybody wins. The result was a site where participants could predict the weather in a given section of the British Isles 3 days into the future. They could check back on the site to see if their prediction had been correct, and to see which other squares had won.
Our task was to make the user experience and design of the site as simple and effortless as possible, which was far from straightforward given the number of problems we had to solve. How could we let users predict the future, and see the past, in a clear and straightforward way? How could we use a map to convey a time of day, a date and a prediction for every user, for every day of the campaign? What could we do with the visual design of the site to convey all of this information in a playful and light-hearted manner? You can have the best idea in the world, but if it’s not easy to convey and easy to take part in, it just won’t work. We’re pleased to say, however, that it did. Rainy Days was a huge success for Walkers. Around 700,000 players took part using 900,000 promo codes. 385,000 of participants were new account sign-ups. Those numbers will certainly bring the sun out on AMV BBDO.