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Video Game Launches With Risqué Promotion Aimed at Caffeine Fans

A Mafia III launch event in London spiked consumers' coffee with a potion served from bullet casings.

For Mafia III, 2K U.K. served Londoners coffee at 1960s throwback prices, spiked with a gunpowder-like caffeine booster—both nods to the game's themes.
For Mafia III, 2K U.K. served Londoners coffee at 1960s throwback prices, spiked with a gunpowder-like caffeine booster—both nods to the game's themes.
Photo: Nathan Pask

Game publisher 2K’s U.K. division launched action-adventure crime game Mafia III on October 7 with a caffeine-fueled promotion across the pond. The brand joined forced with TimberYard Seven Dials coffee shop in central London to sell coffee at 1960s prices—just 10 pence—in celebration of the 1968 setting of the game, which takes place in a reimagined version of New Orleans.

To further amp up the promotion’s impact, the brand worked with so-called “food architects and inventors” Bompas & Parr; the company first became known for its jelly-making, and now consists of a team of creatives, cooks, designers, technicians, and architects who work on events. The team custom created a special ingredient, inspired by the game, for those really in need of an extra jolt, and presented it in an eye-catching, on-brand way: Served in empty bullet cartridges, the “gunpowder” supplement was meant to enhance the caffeine effect from customers’ coffee, with a nod back to the crime world depicted in the game.

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