European Telco EE's agencies supercharged a recent campaign with Unreal engine

From The Drum:

Physics engine Unreal has been used for years by game developers to create entire worlds. It’s the platform underlying titles such as Borderlands and Fortnite. It’s also an increasingly valuable part of the creative production toolkit.

London agency Collective has begun to specialize in the use of the software to create creative assets for the ad industry. Interest in the method and what it can potentially achieve is still nascent, however.

On one recent project, a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign for telco EE, Collective used Unreal to produce a large collection of video and still assets in just a matter of weeks. The work came together far faster than would have been possible using ordinary CG production methods.

Rachel Solomon, executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, tells The Drum: “We initially explored creating this work in a more traditional CGI approach but found challenges financially, within our timings and also creatively.”

Pressed for time and faced with an intimidating brief to create still images showing four gaming-inspired ‘worlds’ for a campaign linking EE’s broadband services with multiplayer gaming, it went to production studio Collective.