The Paper Baron can’t fly

The Paper Baron is a sweet black & white advergame launched by the Australian Defence Force to generate some buzz around the Airforce recruitment.

There’s nothing special in the gaming mechanism, it has been done dozens of times: your goal is to make a paper plane fly as far as possible. What actually got my attention in this project is the visual tone of voice, that looks definitely weird given who is using it for self promotion.

As said everything is just black & white, plus is all paper based, which makes the whole thing visually quite flat and even childish. It’s exactly the opposite of what you would expect from a campaign to recruit people that should work to engage and excite young Australians in order to get them interested in joining the Air Force.

I know that often to use an unexpected communication approach works to get people attention. But here I can’t imagine a twenty years-old something man being interested in throwing a paper plane in a paper sky. Also,
The agency is George Patterson Y&R.