Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 – Hackerville




The much awaited superior browser - Internet Explorer 8 was launched worldwide last year by Microsoft IE 8
was pegged as the most ‘advanced’ and ‘secure’ browser in the Indian market and its features like SmartScreen
Filter, InPrivate mode, Automatic tab crash recovery added to the stability and performance of the browser.
We had to communicate this in an interactive & viral manner.

We had to reach consumers between 21-30 years of age who are active users of social networking sites & of
social gaming applications. We created an application on Facebook, the leading social networking site in India.

Since a lot of users tend to play with Facebook applications, we thought that the users should get a firsthand
experience of an event similar to that of a ‘virus attack’ or that of a ‘hacking event’. And what better way than
engaging with the user via an application which will give us just the necessary details to play around with the
private information of the user.

We created a Facebook application titled ‘Hackerville’ via which one could play around with the status message
of one’s friend. Hackerville was the coolest prank allowing users to mess with one’s friend's profiles and update
their status messages without their knowledge. All one had to do was to select one’s friends and sit back and
enjoy as Hackerville gets to work in a few hours.

But little did they know what hit them. Instead of playing the prank on the user’s friends, Hackerville played a prank
on the user him/herself. It accessed the user’s profile during the early hours of the day (so that they were less likely
to change it immediately) and sent bizarre messages – which were actually posted as a status update from the
user’s account. After the series of updates, users received a message in their FB inbox in a very friendly tone
about the real dangers of the internet and how anybody could be a victim of hacking / malware attacks / phishing
etc. A link took them to the IE 8 official website so they could download the safest browser.

Thus the secure browsing experience was conveyed to the user in an interactive manner.

We reached users through advertising in Facebook & in apps, after which it took off on its own.

The estimated reach of this communication through status updates published in newsfeeds of all users friends list
was almost 11 Mn (assuming an average of 150 odd friends per user). The click through rate on the link sent in the
final message was over 50%, i.e. 50% of people who received the message about IE8, clicked through to the IE8 website for download.

Client
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

Technologies
Adobe Flash CS3
HTML/CSS


View Creatives

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Media
Facebook Hackerville