The brief was pretty simple really...come up with an idea that would become the most popular Christmas viral in December 2004. The viral concept should also drive traffic to the Firebox.com site to boost sales of toys and gadgets.

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With parties and piss-ups galore, people are in wind-down mode in the run-up to Christmas, a game was chosen as the best viral mechanic as user profiles were similar to Firebox customers. And in order for the game to be successful and unique, a new and exciting addition to viral gaming would be needed…

So we came up with Speedy Santa (www.speedysanta.com/firebox), the most annoyingly bloody addictive game you’ve ever played. The idea is simple – drag Santa around his Lapland track in the quickest time.



Apart from being frustratingly compelling to play, players were given a global position at the end of each lap. And if you completed a lap of the Firebox track, you won a £5 Firebox voucher.

But best of all, we devised a system of private leagues where you could invite four friends or colleagues. Everyone in that league was emailed a personal URL and their scores were updated real-time.

These leagues proved a big hit and created a lot of office buzz. As did the game… Within four days, the game was number one in the FHM Top 100 games. The Speedy Santa game was played over 22 million times in the run-up to Christmas. On average, people played the game over 60 times each. 87% of people who played the Firebox Speedy Santa game clicked through to the Firebox.com site at a cost of under 4p per click-through.

Client happy. Agency happy. Millions of man-hours wasted. Job done.

Click here to view all our viral games