merck

Periodic Odyssey

During the lockdown era of the COVID-19 pandemic, young learners shifted to remote learning. Parents and educators faced challenges of fighting student  burnout with distractions just a click away. We asked ourselves: how can we make learning science through a screen effective, inspiring, and fun for kids?  

Create a new world in the game of Minecraft, pairing the game’s material  extraction with all of the periodic table’s 92 naturally occurring elements (a Minecraft first) to help students learn science as they play.

In partnership with Blockworks, an award-winning Minecraft  design collective, we created two  versions of the game: an Education Edition, approved for use in classrooms and including lesson plans for educators, and one for the Bedrock Edition so that anyone with access to Minecraft could play too.

Not only can each element be found in a zone that reflects their respective natural environments (Iron within the rocky terrain, Hydrogen in the water pools, Oxygen in the air, and other gases found in a dome zone), they also have similar properties to the real elements – better wear protective equipment before handling Chlorine.

Back at the science lab, players see the fruits of their labor visualized, amassing the collection of found elements, unlocking sections of the lab by doing so, and being rewarded with special tools to help with their search as the rarer elements become more challenging to find. It all adds up to turning screen time into learning time, and ultimately to spark inspiration in budding scientists.

We worked with educational consultants to develop lesson plans for the Education Edition vetted with a “green tick” from the Association for Science Education, verifying the scientific content, confirming it aligned with global science education curriculums.

We partnered with influencers representing Parents, Educators, and Gamers to amplify the reach of our Minecraft world​ and showcase the gameplay​. This amplification spanned TikTok content and ads, Twitch livestreams, YouTube recaps, Discord alerts, as well as paid and organic Instagram and Facebook content.  

We further engaged our priority audiences through organic and paid cinematic-style teaser videos across Facebook and Instagram, a Twitter Amplify pre-roll campaign, and an organic series of clue posts for parents to share with their young scientists and help them collect the more difficult-to-find elements, providing a parent-child gameplay moment at the same time.

1 Million + downloads in the first 12 weeks.

Influencer partners generated 223,000 impressions and 27,000 engagements.

Brand social content generated 58 million impressions and 30,000 clicks to the landing page.

Campaign received the Gold Honor in Education at the 7th Annual Shorty Impact Awards.