7 Feet 8 Inches.
Brand activation | Event | partnership
NIGHTMARE
Anime Expo in Los Angeles is the largest celebration of Japanese pop culture in North America featuring guest panels, concerts, and gaming. We knew we had to show up huge at the event to keep up the Arby’s brand momentum with their anime and gaming audience.
Soul Calibur 6, the long anticipated new chapter in the Soul Calibur fighting games series, was scheduled to be released shortly after Anime Expo so we knew there was already existing cultural buzz around the game that could be tapped into. We reached out to Soul Calibur’s legendary game developer Bandai Namco and Volpin Props, a world class prop house based in Atlanta, and all partnered up to bring the new game’s lead character to life in such an epic fashion, Arby’s and Soul Calibur fans still haven’t stopped talking about.
We built fan-favorite Nightmare from Soul Calibur 6 out of hundreds and hundreds of Arby’s sandwich boxes, totaling over 1,700 square feet of cardboard. The project took more than 1,000 hours of construction and stood 7 feet 8 inches tall when assembled.
Arby’s fans knew Arby’s supported gaming, but seeing an activation of that magnitude at their prized event took their brand affinity to a whole new level.
Fans were invited to autograph pieces of Nightmare’s mail on site at the Anime Expo in LA.
We teased our installation the week prior with a detail photo of Nightmare’s chain mail.
Props to the team at Volpin Props who helped us on this epic build.
THE RETURN
We later surprised Arby’s fans and brought the Nightmare installation back at The Evolution Championship Series (EVO), an insanely popular fighting game event held in Las Vegas offering tournaments for various video games including Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Nightmare’s own–Soul Calibur 6.
Fans loved our Arby’s cardboard Nightmare statue so much, one of them even took the time to design it as a playable version of Nightmare using Soul Calibur’s in-game character builder. Wild.