As part of the rebranding of the Merge Gardens mobile game, Bond Agency launched a popular online series of 3D animated episodes, revealing the new story and lore bit by bit. But when airing episode 2, featuring a new game character from the the 80s, something unexpected happened. A short snippet of custom-made 80s music made for a brief sequence stole the show – by a fat margin!

Comments poured in. The message was clear: We want this song!

Without hesitation they decided to act on the opportunity. One of the most important decisions was to give this idea it’s own space to live, while still feeling related to the game. We wanted fans to question wether this was actually music from the 80s that they somehow just missed or forgot about and that Merge Gardens had simply found and used it in their latest commercial. Whether we cheated them or not, they certainly loved that we tried to do so.

Within 3 weeks Bond took the 15 seconds of music, made it a full length song track (with terrible lyrics), invented an imaginary band with full background story and brand, put them on Spotify and shot a full length music video (in 4:3 ratio and on camera lenses from the time period) with some funny hints to the game lore itself for the sharpest fans – oh and of course we did merch and album art too.

So did the fans like our effort? What started as small musical gimmick became the most engaging fan moment in the game company’s history and the song itself a key element in the game narrative itself going forward. All simply because we chose to have some fun with our fans. Keep you eyes and ears ready for new singles.