VMLY&R: Intel’s eCycleLand

Intel and VMLY&R are teaching people to properly e-cycle their electronic waste (e-waste) with an interactive experience in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing.

Blending gaming entertainment with education, and launching on National Recycling Day (15 November), Intel created an island in Animal Crossing, a game with a surprisingly bad tech trash problem, with the game’s first ever e-waste e-cycling centre: eCycleLand.

With over 1,000 hours spent as a player creating eCycleLand, users could visit the island and turn in the Rusted Parts found in the game for a sought-after item. While in eCycleLand, players will be educated about the real ways they can e-cycle.

To launch eCycleLand, Intel and VMLY&R partnered with top gaming influencers who streamed their visits to the island. Once gamers saw this, they started to visit too.

This activation was accessible via Animal Crossing and streamed on Twitch and YouTube. In just two weeks, with zero paid media spend, eCycleLand had garnered over 4.6m impressions and 261,200 interactions across various platforms. As word spread across the gamer community about the island, players lined up, waiting 22 minutes just to get in (eCycleLand is a one-at-a-time experience). Once on the island, they spent over 14 minutes e-cycling their in-game e-waste and learning about how to e-cycle too.

Online the message resonated too, with a 99% positive sentiment score on earned social, Twitch, YouTube and 72,300 livestream views. More importantly, the interactive experience got people talking about a topic that previously wasn't on their radar – with 19% of online conversation about eCycleLand focusing specifically on the topic of e-waste. But we didn't just get people talking – we also inspired action as we boosted intent to e-cycle 46%.