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Submitted by NewGen

Bring the Anger: Angry Birds 10th Anniversary Creator Activation

NewGen built a creator and experiential activation for Rovio's Angry Birds 10th Anniversary, reaching Gen Z audiences and delivering a reported +76M IMPRESSIONS.

+4Mengagements
+76Mimpressions
+50Mviews

Case in 60 seconds

Awareness of the Angry Birds brand was high while engagement among Gen Z audiences was low, so the tenth anniversary of the franchise had to convert existing recognition into active participation rather than simply announce a milestone.

The campaign appears to turn on anger as the franchise's one universally understood asset, because a property Gen Z already recognises needs a reason to be acted on rather than recalled, and rage is something an audience can perform.

Bring the anger, an organising thesis that treats rage as useful rather than embarrassing by making it the mechanism the work runs on, with the brand's defining emotion turned into something that produces motion.

Rage rider scooters were created that move when screamed at, creators unboxed and demonstrated them with their own spin, and six creators with over 33,000,000 subscribers formed the Squawk Squad to compete head-to-head at a Rage Race event, while a physical venting machine in Times Square invited New York residents to take part.

NewGen reports +50M VIEWS, +76M IMPRESSIONS and +4M ENGAGEMENTS for the activation, presented as three headline figures without a stated period, platform split or breakdown between the creator content and the Times Square build.

Strategy Breakdown

Gen Z audiences, among whom engagement with the Angry Birds brand was low despite high awareness, and New York residents invited to take part at Times Square.
Anger reads as something to suppress in public, and the campaign inverts that by staging screaming as a sanctioned act in Times Square, with the page framing the position as anger can be good.
A decade-old mobile games franchise carries recognition that does not convert into engagement with a younger audience, so the anniversary had to supply a new reason to interact rather than rely on nostalgia.
Angry Birds supplies the emotion the whole mechanic runs on, which lets the brand own the behaviour instead of sponsoring it, since rage is already the property's name and premise.
Based on the available evidence, the work assumes an audience will act on an emotion when the action produces a visible physical result, which is what the scream-to-move scooter and the venting machine both provide.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • live event content
  • physical venting machine installation
  • unboxing and product demonstration content

Partners

  • NewGen

Participation mechanic

  • Screaming at the rage rider scooters to make them move, and using the physical venting machine installed at Times Square, which put the audience inside the mechanic rather than in front of it.

Creator role

  • six top creators with over 33,000,000 subscribers, named the Squawk Squad

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Engagements+4M ENGAGEMENTS
Impressions+76M IMPRESSIONS
Views+50M VIEWS

Why NewGen's strategy worked

  1. 1

    An anniversary works harder when it is built around a product an audience can operate, because the rage rider gave creators something to demonstrate and react to rather than a date to commemorate.

  2. 2

    Casting a named cohort and putting it into competition appears to extend a single activation across multiple posts, since the Squawk Squad and the Rage Race gave six creators a shared format rather than six separate briefs.

  3. 3

    Pairing creator content with a physical venting machine in Times Square suggests a route to making a screen-based emotion verifiable in public, which gives the campaign material that non-followers encounter directly.

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