Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend
Boom!’s Justin Crosby handled the Lara Croft PR campaign for Tomb Raider Legend at a previous agency. Following a critical mauling of 2004’s Tomb Raider videogame release ‘Angel of Darkness’ it looked like the Lara Croft PR bandwagon was tired and the whole franchise has run out of steam. UK game publisher and owner of the Lara Croft IP Eidos, needed the much improved game ‘Legend’ to be a success, not just to save the brand but it was crucial to the future of Eidos’s new owners SCI Entertainment.
Justin Crosby developed a 3 stage UK Lara Croft PR campaign focusing on the new face of the gaming heroine, 20 year old unknown model Karima Adebibe and the brand’s significant cultural heritage.
The strategic approach to the model reveal was one similar to the unveiling of a supermodel as the new face of an underwear/cosmetics brand. The agency focussed on Karima’s ‘rags to riches story’ having previous been employed as a check out assistant at fashion retailers Top Shop.
The second stage of the Lara Croft PR campaign focussed on feature generation which focussed on Karima’s transition to the world’s favourite cyber heroine. The campaign worked with the British Army to create an SAS style training day on which journalists included the Sunday Telegraph joined Karima in training for the role. Finally in order to focus on the game itself on launch the campaign campaigned for, and was awarded a Guinness World Record for the Lara Croft character as ‘most successful computer games heroine’. Crosby timed the announcement to run on launch and news stories included Daily Star, Daily Express, a half hour slot on Simon Mayo’s Radio Five Live show and four MTV/ VH1 shows. Launch broadcast coverage culminated in a live appearance on Sky News, BBC’s Holly & Stephen’s Saturday Showdown & London Tonight . Other notable features included double page spreads in The Sun, Daily Star and 6 page features in FHM and Nuts amongst other.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider; Legend reached Number 1 on release in the UK and was both the fastest selling video game of 2006 and one of the most successful in the Tomb Raider franchise. The campaign won the Best Consumer Campaign at the CIPR Awards 2007.
