How Dentsu Creative’s virtual influencer yields real results Yanis games the climate emergency

GREEK economist, activist and politician Yanis Varoufakis was at the Lions on Wednesday to join creatives trying to solve the climate crisis by playing the Climate Change Game. Working alongside young creatives from WongDoody ad and marketing agency; global chief creative and design officer, Grace Francis; and content producer and Gen-Z gaming enthusiast, Mary Kuper, Yanis plunged into the game as a “politician driving policy”. His opponent was Kuper in the guise of a teenage activist, and their goal was to lower CO2 emissions to net zero by 2050 by deciding on cuts across transport, energy, buildings and beyond, and on investment in climate adaptation.

But keeping temperatures below 1.5C by 2100 — the aim of the Paris climate agreement — will require some major sacrifices, as users of the game found out.

Varoufakis said some of the options for climate financing didn’t go far enough, proposing that 3% of global GDP needed to be invested in the clean energy transition.

But with only a certain amount of points to craft his climate policy and get to 2050, speaker with the help of “innovation partner” Dentsu Creative, which now has exclusive usage rights to the VI, thanks to CapitaLand. “We all love Rae,” said Stan Lim, Dentsu Creative’s chief creative officer. “But why do people connect with a fake human? Working with Rae has given us a lot of learnings in this area.”

You need to focus on five key areas: ethics, ideals, companionship, sensations and entertainment, he said. Meanwhile, brands connect with VIs because they deliver results, not least a 41% increase in profits for those who use characters in their promotion. Lim pointed out: “We fall in love with characters from games and movies all the time.”

The session ended with an appearance from Rae: “I love what we do and I’m so grateful for everyone who believes in me.”

Grace Francis questioned whether he was overinvesting in radical measures that might also threaten his poll numbers. “We have a moral duty when people are drowning,” he said. The game was developed by WongDoody in collaboration with the Financial Times, which also hosts the digital game on its site. Audience members were therefore able to play along live on their smartphones to try and beat one of the great thinkers of our time. Making complex climate modelling understandable to non-scientists was a major challenge.

Nonetheless, the Climate Game, which WongDoody describes as a “landmark piece of immersive journalism”, hit eight million impressions in the first 10 weeks. It was also featured at last year’s COP27 climate summit, and has drawn praise from United Nations climatechange stakeholders and Greenpeace, while picking up over 20 awards.

As the game at the Palais II progressed through to 2030, it portrayed the increasing impact of extreme weather, including heatwaves, as the players were encouraged to get serious about climate change.

Varoufakis supported a green hydrogen revolution, yet came second to the teen activist, whose emission cuts kept temperature rise slightly lower, as 1.42C.

The interactive storytelling experience showed what is possible “when people make tough decisions on a global scale,” speaker Grace Francis said.