Google: All of Brazil Plays

Google ZOO Brazil

Google: All of Brazil Plays

For the 2016 Games, Google launched a programmatic campaign and integrated platform to house all things Rio. Produced in collaboration with MediaMonks, All of Brazil Plays revolves around a personalized feed of original Rio content including daily videos and 42 sporty games. Everything on the platform is linked to produce a personalized experienced that automatically surfaces the best content based on the user’s interests. The 42 minigames were custom-designed for the platform and can be played with a customizable character that is also featured in programmatic banners that continue the personalized play across the web.

King-size Content Platform
All of Brazil Plays was launched a year before the Games by Google ZOO Brazil to let people discover Rio in the lead-up the event. The platform rolled out in multiple phases with new content, games and features being added with each release to build engagement while building the platform. Google’s ambitious project was made possible with the help of four selected sponsors that got exclusive rights to advertise on the platform.

One of the interesting things about All of Brazil Plays is that everything you see informs what content, video or game you’ll see next. For example, the folks from The ZOO teamed up with Google Local Guides to produce original YouTube videos showcasing the best things about Rio. This content was connected to the illustrated guide map of Rio that got populated over the course of the year to help visitors navigate the city during the Games. The map has a day and night-time mode and uses data and location information to show visitors the best things-to-do at any time of the day. The platform hereby provides daily answers to one of the most important questions of our time: ‘where the party at?’

Google’s selected advertisers are integral to the platform and are featured in or alongside the videos and content items. In addition to various promotions and campaigns, we also used some of the advertising space to introduce two animated characters (Zé and Julia) that act as the platform’s ambassadors. Over the course of a year-long YouTube campaign, viewers could see their comical love story develop in short pre-rolls that ran before the videos, connecting the wide and diverse stories of the YouTube Content Creators to the bigger narrative of the platform.

We also showed some serious animation muscle during the Games. Working together with the YouTube-famous Castro Brothers, The ZOO produced daily video recaps with topical animations that were illustrated on the spot by our Monks in Rio. The illustrations were then brought to life half a world away by our Animation Monks in Singapore to make the daily deadline for weeks in a row (time zones ftw).

Our Biggest Collection of Minigames (& Banners) Yet
To enable everyone to play, the platform’s 42 minigames are built with lightweight technologies to run smooth as butter even on a slow (mobile) connection. The controls and gameplay of the games are designed after the sport they represent and include elements like timing, reaction speed, accuracy, and sometimes straight-out button mashing.

But what really makes this gaming platform special are the programmatic ads that allow users to play the games on external websites, including YouTube. Through cookies and targeting, we served fully fledged versions of the games in banner format with the player’s own character and highscores. The same technology was used to introduce new players to the platform, serving the minigame of the sport they like best according to their browsing interests.

A Golden Production
All of Brazil Plays is a truly integrated production that necessitated (almost) all of our capabilities to make Google’s grand ambitions come about. The project required a record-breaking amount of illustration work, producing a beautiful mix of Google & the Games, and a pile of worn-out Wacoms. Our in-house animation department worked for months on end to bring the platform and all of its games to life, recreating the physics of each sport in a cartoony style under creative direction of The ZOO. And this year-long production marathon could not have been finished without the relentless work of all game designers and developers. In total, 12 bespoke game engines were developed to enable the production of 42 games in almost exactly 42 weeks. Now that’s a podium-worthy achievement.

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