TKKG
TKKG
- #interactive
- #conversationalinterface
- #twitch
- #storytelling
- #livesound
- #newtechnology
- #mantikor
- #philippundkeuntje
With over 40 million copies sold and a cult following since the ‘80s, TKKG is one of the most successful audio drama series in Germany. For EUROPA / Sony Music and in cooperation with creative lead Mantikor, we decided to kick-start the genre into the digital age — with the first transmedial audio play experience in real-time.
With over 40 million copies sold and a cult following since the ‘80s, TKKG is one of the most successful audio drama series in Germany. For EUROPA / Sony Music and in cooperation with creative lead Mantikor, we decided to kick-start the genre into the digital age — with the first transmedial audio play experience in real-time.
For a TKKG Easter Special featuring the four young detectives, we locked ourselves into a virtual Writers’ Room and developed a modern and diverse story and concept. Our goal was to not only immerse the fans in the world of TKKG — we wanted TKKG to become part of the fans’ reality. To achieve this, we employed the communication media that fans were already using on a daily basis.
Following a familiar linear audio play with a cliffhanger, the listeners were then invited to join the private WhatsApp group of TKKG. Over the course of ten days, fans were invited to become a member of the young detective team ‘TKKG and YOU’ and solve the mystery of a missing Fabergé egg — in real-time. For maximum realism and immersion, our development partner YesDevs! employed a chatbot to pull all the stops the fans were familiar with from messaging groups: conversations and interactions with TKKG, voice messages, pictures and videos. Time-cued cross-media riddles and puzzles took fans from research on made-up Instagram accounts to analysing and evaluating pictures taken by a DIY surveillance camera. The huge amount of daily content was produced in cooperation with the creative agency Philipp und Keuntje.
After those ten days of interaction and mutual mystery solving on WhatsApp, the whole fan community was invited to take part in the grand finale on streaming service Twitch which was broadcast from our recording studio in Hamburg. In a live escape game scenario, fans helped the original voice artists to make a getaway from a life-threateningly cold server room. The riddles and puzzles that needed solving by the community were written in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Mittweida. Both the concept and the production of this transmedial experience broke entirely new ground concerning story-telling and technology. All the more, we were excited to see an overwhelming feedback with peaks of over 12.000 users that temporarily brought our servers to their knees. Among other accolades, ‘TKKG – The Cursed Easter Egg’ has been nominated for the prestigious PRIX EUROPA, won Gold twice at the CommAwards and was presented as a WhatsApp Best Case at the Reeperbahn Festival.
