GREEN DAWN

Grand Prix

Case Film

MP3 Original Language

TitleGREEN DAWN
BrandUBISOFT
Product/ServiceTHE DIVISION 2
Category D04. Social Behaviour & Cultural Insight
Entrant DDB PARIS, FRANCE
Idea Creation DDB PARIS, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Alexander Kalchev DDB Paris Executive Creative Director
Alexis Benbehe DDB Paris Creative Director
Pierre Mathonat DDB Paris Creative Director
Idris Dabré DDB Paris Art Director
Marie-Elise Archambaud DDB Paris Agency Supervisor
Quentin Grimal DDB Paris Agency Supervisor
Geoffroy Sardin Ubisoft Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing
Guillaume CARMONA Ubisoft Marketing Director
Cedrick Delmas Ubisoft Advertiser Supervisor
Sébastien Ratto Ubisoft Advertiser Supervisor
Alexandre Guenounou Ubisoft Advertiser Supervisor
Marine Cremer Studio 5 Sound Production
Cédric Boit Studio 5 Sound Production
Clément Reynaud Studio 5 Sound Production
Alexandre Vicart Studio 5 Sound Engineer
Alban 404 - - Resident Gamer

View Script

Write a short summary of what happens in the radio or audio execution or campaign.

"Green Dawn" situates itself between the events of the first and second “The Division” games, and follows seven kids trying to make it in a world destroyed by adults and plague. You will discover the day to day life of Violet and her friends. Their thoughts about the future, their doubts about the adults and how they try together to rebuild their life and dreams. Green dawn describes a world where « tomorrow » is always attached to a question mark. Each episode lasts between two and four minutes.

Cultural / Context information for the jury

Gamers are notoriously hard to reach. They don’t like advertising, and they know more than any other community how to avoid it. 75% of gamers use Adblockers, VPNs, and most of them don’t watch TV. But at the same time, in the world of Ghost Recon wildlands, more than 13,7 gamers use their cars to travel one of the largest game maps ever designed, and in their cars, they listen to the virtual radio of the game. So, we advertised The division 2 by streaming our exclusive story to the huge audience of Ghost Recon Wildlands, using the in-game radio for a total cost of 0$ paid media.

Script. Provide the full radio advert script in English.

GREEN DAWN Ubisoft's The Division 2 podcast serie. RECORDED TRANSCRIPT UBISOFT DO NOT DISTRIBUTE EP:1 WIND CASTLE VIOLET (V.O.) Everything had been pretty stable… Once everyone who was going to die had died, at least. Even my parents. We’d all lost at least one parent. That may explain what brought all of us together. Seven kids like the seven days of the week, and a duty for each one of us. All between nine and twelve years old. We always moved together. The Murtaugh twins, Noah and Wiley, and the other three kids in the group — Shelby, Ivan, Amelia and me. Violet. Ivan leaned on Amelia. She was his big sister. Sometimes I felt really jealous of the kids who still had someone to care about. To the adults we were The Kids you Needed Looking After… which was irritating but kind of nice at the same time. Until the flood, we had lived with about a hundred other people in the lower floors of the Mandarin Oriental in Washington DC. The outside of the hotel was boarded up and fortified, and JTF soldiers often stopped by often to make sure things were okay. It's funny how OK sounds like "it could be worst" when your entire world is collapsing. They got water from rain barrels. It was a pretty safe place, compared to some. Things in DC were getting a little better than they had been over the winter. Maybe that was just because it was easier to feel good about things when flowers were blooming, and everything was green. Now we were staying up at the old Smithsonian Castle. We helped in the garden, and many times like today we would go out to find some stuff to help out in the camp. A couple of groups had decided to head over towards the east side, hoping that things were more stable near the military base there. What was called again? VIOLET Saeed ! What’s the name of that Army base over by the river? Not the Potomac River, the other one. SAEED The Lincoln camp. VIOLET (V.O.) I was glad Saeed was around. It was like having Google around even though Google was gone along with everything else. The whole area around the Capitol Building was a no-go zone for us, well, when I say us, I mean the kids. Adults didn’t understand that we could figure out how to survive just as well as adults could. But we have to get outside every day to find stuff. We spent most of the time hanging around the mall, as young kids used to do before the green plague. But the more we went there and the weirder it felt. Everything was like a museum. Not just the museums. Everything. The sports apparel shop, The BK, even the billboard welcoming tourist seemed like it had been made for a different world. The museum of the life we will never have. Isn’t it strange how people put things in museums so they wouldn’t be forgotten? Now one of the old things people remembered was the way things used to be before the plague. Field trips, weekend outings with parents, all the normal everyday things that people used to do. All these thigs were now part of The Civilization Museum. VIOLET Do you think one day, there will be a museum, you know, of life before the plague. IVAN Hmmm VIOLET (V.O.) Ivan was looking up and down the Mall. He was always their sentry, keeping an eye out for people who might be a threat. Docs from the camp said that kids who had been through a trauma did that. They called it hypervigilance. There were still a lot of bad people in DC. The government was gone, the Army was gone, the police were gone. Everyone had to look out for themselves. The Division agents couldn’t do it all. Saeed was looking at me. VIOLET I know. You want to go to the Air and Space Museum. But we can’t. SAEED Come on, I always wanted to be an astronaut. You know, see space, the stars, the infinite nothing... VIOLET And now? SAEED Now? It’s about getting out of this place. VIOLET (V.O.) Images of the challenger spaceship exploding in the sky few minutes after the launch flashed in my head. As if even the image of hope was sullied. The Air and Space Museum was one of our no-go zones. Supposedly bad people had taken it over as well. VIOLET We can't go there on our own. It’s too dangerous! SAEED Dangerous? Compared to what? EP:2 MUSEUM OF LIFE VIOLET (V.O.) The sky over the river was cloudy. It was going to rain. VIOLET Let’s go home, we can’t really carry any more anyways. VIOLET (V.O.) We had been away from the castle for over 3 hours. We were all hungry and tired. Maybe we hadn’t gone where we were supposed to go, but we were coming back with better stuff than the others were expecting. The others is the way we like to talk about the adults. It's not as if we are not a "group" they are just so protective that most of the time we felt like they are just looking down on us. Whatever. The grocery bags were stuffed full of dandelion greens and we even found a ton of cattails. I guess None of us had ever thought of eating cattails before. One of the women at the castle, Luiza, had taught us what to look for. She took the brown part of the cattails that looked like a hot dog and grounded up into a flower. Cattail pancakes were on the menu at the Castle now. And to be honest they were ok. IVAN Why don't we cut through the White House? VIOLET Maybe because the place is full of armed men?! IVAN Come on it's just JTF guys. There is nothing to be afraid of. It will be faster. VIOLET Well, it’s still men with guns. AMELIA Not all men are bad. You know that right? VIOLET True, only men with guns. IVAN And what do you do with the guys from the division? Humm. Our dad is from the division and he is a good man. VIOLET We are not going through the White House. End of discussion! And why do we still call it the White House? It’s not even white anymore. VIOLET (V.O.) All of the kids lost their parents and all of them made up stories about their parents to make themselves feel better. Ivan and Amelia never stop talking about their dad. A Division agent fighting in NYC. We all knew their dad was dead, but no one wanted to be the one to tell them. It was a kind of pact between us. Do not break each other’s illusions. They were our security blanket. The ones that helped us fall asleep at night and the ones that gave us the faith to wake up in the morning. Even I had a security blanket, but it was not my parents. In the first couple of days after things started to get bad, my mom was already sick then, and my Dad caught the Dollar Bug soon after. Both of them were dead a week after Black Friday. The people running the quarantine site kept me there for another two weeks. This is how I met the other kids. The other orphans. I know it's weird, but I felt like I have to use this word, because it was true and I had to face the truth. My parents were dead. I had seen them die. EP:3 THE OTHERS VIOLET (V.O.) After a 4 hours expedition we were finally back home. That's how I realized that I was starting to think of the castle as Home. Everybody was already in the dining hall. We took our precious loot to the kitchen. Dinner in the Castle was catch-as-catch-can, with small groups of people clustered at small tables or sitting on the floor with their plates. We were a little bit away from the main groups of adults but still close enough to hear some of their conversation. This was a good way to learn things adults didn’t want us to know. Launch time had become a kind of a prime-time breaking news tv show. Junie was at a table near one of the gallery’s big windows, deep in a conversation with three others. One of them was Mike Walker, who had led a group from the Mandarin hotel to the Castle after the flood. That was almost three weeks ago. MIKE We have to be careful. There was already pressure from over toward the Capitol, and now they’ve taken over the Air and Space Museum. Won’t be long before they come here. JUNIE Maybe, maybe not. We don’t have anything they want. MIKE They’re not just bandits, Junie. They don’t want to steal anything from us. They’re lunatics who want power. AMELIA So What? AMELIA MIKE So, they’re going to go looking for people they can have power over. VIOLET SHHHH! MIKE Don’t SHHHHt me! JUNIE I know who they are, Mike. And I think if we keep our heads down, just go about our business, we can trust the JTF to keep things under control. Anyway, this is a conversation for another time. MIKE If you say so. Seems to me they should know. JUNIE (MORE ANGRY AND NERVOUS) They already know a lot more than they need to. We’re the adults. We should protect them when we can. MIKE Junie, there are mass graves two hundred yards outside the window. Protect them from what? JUNIE From growing up faster than they already have! Sfx people talking and sounds of plates and glass. JUNIE OK Kiddoes, everyone who has finished their meal, time to bed. VIOLET (V.O.) As we were saving energy and electricity, bedtime was never far away from dinner time. We all went to bed nicely, like good kids. For a while, I have gone to sleep every night thinking about my old room in my old house. Was anyone living in the house now? Was there another kid sleeping in my bed, playing with my stuffed animals? Probably not. Probably the house was empty, with broken windows and its rooms all messed up from people looting it. SHELBY Do you think it’s getting more dangerous, Vi? VIOLET (V.O.) That was Shelby again. She started treating me as if I was her big sister, which was okay most of the time, but right now I didn’t know what to tell her. VIOLET It's hard to tell. I don't know how things can be more dangerous. I mean what does dangerous mean these days. What's normal what isn’t. I guess it's ok Shelby. Just sleep. Sweat dreams. SHELBY You too Vi. 'night everyone. EVERYONE 'Night EP:4 BACKFIRE SFX explosion and riffle from the outside. Scream from inside the building. IVAN What the hell! VIOLET Is everyone ok? AMELIA I am ok? Saeed? SAEED Look! VIOLET (V.O.) Saeed pointed to the window, there were flashes and fire near some of the museum buildings across the Mall from the Castle. The sky seemed to be painted in red and orange. Then the fire and screams get closer, and closer. It was as if the whole fight was moving like a tornado in one direction and then another. A wave of possibilities. It felt like the end of a basketball match, when the ball is in balancing on the hoop when the buzzer has already rung. Outside, on the Castle grounds, there were armed adults watching the battle. That meant they were worried. SHELBY What do we do? VIOLET (V.O.) Junie came in and shut the door behind her. JUNIE Okay. Back in bed, everyone. WILEY Junie? What’s going on out there? JUNIE Shooting. JUNIE But whatever it is, it won’t come this way. VIOLET (V.O.) She was tucking Amelia in as she said that. AMELIA But what if it does? JUNIE It won’t. Look - there’s a lot of arguments sometimes about what we should do. And you know why? Because none of us ever had to do it before. So, we all have to learn. VIOLET (V.O.) Junie settled herself on a long couch at Shelby’s feet. JUNIE Mike and I don’t always agree on how to do things. That’s natural. But we both want the best for everyone in the Castle. Especially you kids. You didn’t make this world, but you’re going to be the ones stuck with it. WILEY Thank you, grownups. JUNIE But you’re doing good. You’re sticking together. You’ll be all right. I hear President Mendez is getting things under control. Pretty soon there might be a Congress again. Then we can get back to moaning and groaning again about how dumb they are. VIOLET (V.O.) And what if there is no one left to groan? EP:5 RED CATTAILS VIOLET (V.O.) The next morning, everything seemed to be back to normal. Nobody wanted to talk much about what happened last night, but when it was time to go outside to find some goods, I honestly felt better about being in a big group, with adults. Even if I loved it when it was just 7 of us, I knew that we were safer with adults around. They started to walk towards the tunnel where there was this big lake. The twins were debating about what they were capable of eating to survive. NOAH And a frog? Would you eat a frog if you have to survive? WILEY Gross, that’s disgusting. NOAH You know French people think it’s very chic to eat frogs. WILEY But they also eat snails, and I don't think that’s fancy either. VIOLET (V.O.) Junie held up her hand for us to stop moving, stop talking stop anything we were doing. She’d seen people coming out from a little building just across Constitution Avenue. They were ragged, wearing mismatched clothes and looked different to each other. Different races, different haircuts. We thought at first, they were just a band of scavengers and robbers. DC was full of them. They were scary, but not to us. We were part of a big group, with five adults, nothing really serious could happen. How far from truth could I have been? sfx riffles and echoing JUNIE Get low, get low don’t move! Keep an eye on each other. Hey keep an eye! Sfx louder and screams of kids; VIOLET (V.O.) Were they running? If they were, we should run too. The rest of the kids hit the ground, as Mike and the other adults got their guns up and started shooting back. OK we have to run and get out of here. Sfx: impact of a bullet in the flesh WILEY HAAAAAA VIOLET Wiley! VIOLET (V.O.) I ran to Wiley, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the bullets. I always thought that if I found myself in this kind of situation, I would be brave, and do what I have to do. The truth is- courage is a lie. I was literally pissing in my pants. I find Wiley in the cattails. They were full of blood. It scared me to hell. I had to lie-down and press on his wound. WILEY Vi they shot me! VIOLET Listen to me, You’re okay. WILEY It hurts! I’m gona die. VIOLET Shut up, you’re not! You’re not! VIOLET (V.O.) Wiley rolled over, clutching in his wound. At this exact moment I wanted to run all the way to Alexandria and hide forever in my old room with my old posters and stuffed animals, sleeping until someone came to tell me that everything was going to be all right. But I couldn't. SFX: There were more gunshots. VIOLET (V.O.) I could hear gunshots getting closer. Mike was shooting back, the robbers kept coming. Bullets slashed through the cattails over our head. I couldn’t see Mike anymore. I couldn’t see where any of the adults were. The robbers were hiding between cars and other junk. I could see them moving. It was like a slasher movie when you see the killer passing from one room to another and you can't control yourself, screaming to the girl on the screen. Move, what the hell are you doing. You know what. You can't move. ROBBER LEADER Wrong part of town to pick flowers. Don’t you think? VIOLET (V.O.) He started over the footbridge, the rest of the robbers behind him. It was at that moment that I knew I was going to die. Sfx load gunshot echoing. VIOLET (V.O.) We were all going to die. EP:6 NEW DAWN VIOLET (V.O.) The shooting stopped, and somehow that made everything worse. JUNIE Ssshhh. Know. If things get bad, just don’t look. VIOLET (V.O.) Beyond the robbers, there was more movement in the trees. VIOLET Damn there are more of them. Look in the trees! VIOLET (V.O.) I knew that Junie had another gun, a square black pistol. It wasn’t gona be much help against ten robbers. Or more, if that’s who was coming through the trees. sfx Long and loud riffle echoing. The sound of a body falling down. ROBBER LEADER TAKE COVER! VIOLET (V.O.) A tall white guy wearing a backpack and carrying a rifle stepped into view. He raised the rifle and took aim. There was a glowing orange circle on his left wrist. The robbers didn’t know where the shot came from. They continued to shoot in Mike's direction while others tried to figure out where the division agent was. He fired, shifted his aim, fired again. Shifted once more, fired again. All in two seconds. Then he stepped behind the tree again. ROBBER LEADER Where the fuck is he? ROBBER I don’t know I can’t see him! VIOLET (V.O.) The Division agent stepped out again. One shot. Another robber down. ROBBER LEADER He can’t get us all with a fucking deer rifle. Go after him! ROBBER I’ll find you and kill you motherfuck..! VIOLET (V.O.) The robbers charged. Junie jumped up from the cattails and ran towards Mike, dragging him behind some bushes where at least there would be some cover. I looked back at Noah. VIOLET How is he? NOAH (crying) He’s hurt, Vi. He’s still bleeding. VIOLET (V.O.) Wiley was quiet and pale, his head resting in Noah’s lap. SFX: A rattle of gunshots sounded from the trees. VIOLET (V.O.) The robbers were firing into the trees. There he was. No, wait. This was an Asian woman, another agent, calmly stepping out to flank them. She had a different kind of rifle, one of the ones with the curved magazines. When she fired, it was a long burst that raked the group of robbers. They started to scatter, at least the ones that still could. Then the first Division agent reappeared at the other end of the trees and calmly shot another one of them. That left only two of the original ten. They ran for their lives through the trees back toward Constitution Avenue. The Division agents didn’t go after them. They met on the footbridge and crossed together. I think I will always remember the breath I took after that moment. A DIVISION AGENT Hey! You can come out now. JUNIE We need help! Two of us are shot. At least two. I don’t know where everyone is. A DIVISION AGENT “Okay, man. We’re going to get you a stretcher.” VIOLET (V.O.) Then I looked for the bodies of the other three adults, but there weren’t any. Then I realized that they had just left. Except for Mike and Junie the others had left. JUNIE What's wrong Vi? VIOLET The other adults, they ran away. If you and Mike weren't there we.. we would have been killed, abandoned. How could they? JUNIE Look Vi. Remember when I told you It was not easy to be a kid. Well it's not easy to be an adult either. Those times do not make it easy for anybody. We all are beginners here. You can't judge how people behave in that kind of situation. VIOLET Is it a situation or is it just our world?

Please tell us about the social behaviour and / or cultural insights that inspired your campaign

Green Dawn is a premiere, in its way to understand that a video game is a world in itself. Almost everything we know in real life exists in those virtual worlds. And in-game radios in Ghost Recon Wildlands already have a huge audience (13,7 millions of gamers). But game editors have forgotten that they own those medias. We reminded Ubisoft that the best way to talk to their target is when they are playing, and we could use the virtual radio of a game to advertise another game. Green Dawn became the first story that starts in a virtual world and ends in another.