BTS is the type of international superstar group that brands can easily feel is the easiest slam dunk of their life. But despite that star power the brand success isn’t a guarantee - actually far from it. It was my job to understand why that was.

I set out on examining all of the partnerships that BTS had already done with brands. After examining the effectiveness of each partnership a common trait started to emerge from those that were successful: personality. In partnerships that actually allowed BTS members personality, quirks, and individuality to shine through their fanbase absolutely went wild and supported the brand. Those that just slapped their famous faces on an ad saw no such luck.

So we need to inject the bands personality into this project which set myself and the team down the path of immersing ourselves into the BTS Army, their rabid fandom. We gathered lore, lingo, and all the little things that only a real fan would know and started to figure out how we could create an easter egg packed video that would show the world we’re basically BTS Army too.

Paul Thiel, the Creative Director on the project, took that information and brought to life the incredible piece you can see below.

The asset helped generate 3.3 million downloads of the game, a number second only to do the day the game launched and was the second most viewed video asset of all time (only to original trailer) for Cookie Run Kingdom beating partnerships with the likes of Disney.

But the real win was in the comments where members of BTS Army eagerly pointed out easter eggs hidden for them winning us over one fan at a time.