Marketing Mayhem: Kensa does a boardgame

So, what is it?

A creative marketing board game which helps to navigate your way through 2018 successfully. The year is full of opportunities for marketing your business – as well as perils. Can you make it through 2018 before your competitors without committing any design crimes or falling victim to scandal along the way?

Design & Illustration 60% 60%
Packaging 30% 30%
Others bits & pieces 10% 10%

Setting up

Each player picks a coloured Kensa counter to represent them in the game.

Objective

Reach the end of the year before your competitors, trying to avoid any marketing mishaps
along the way.

Movement

Each player takes turns to roll a dice and moves his or her counter along the board. For a quicker game, use 2 dice.

Special dates

If you land on a green or red square, take a corresponding Kensa saves the day or S**T happens card from the top of the deck and follow the instructions.

You win!

The first player to reach the Finish wins – fair and square!

When Kensa saves the day

The year is full of marketing opportunities, if you’re lucky enough to land on a green square you can pick a Kensa card and get a boost. Coincidentally, these cards also promote our services and how we can help our clients.

Sometimes, S**t Happens

Even the best laid plans can be disrupted by something as simple, like people going on holiday, or sinsister, like an incompetent colleague getting involved or management doing a 180. Land on a red square, and you’ll get a glimpse of the things we fear most.

Stacking the deck

7,500 cards needed manually bundling into sets

Making the rules

The game had to actually be fun to play, and that took a lot of thought! How many dice should you roll? How many special dates should there be? How many spaces should the cards move you back or forwards, and how does all of that affect the pace / average length of the game? Cue; lots of play testing with crude prototypes.

Building the board

The board itself needed to lie flat and as it was going to be sent as a mailer, ideally it would contain all the pieces in a neat package too. We designed a bespoke gatefolding folder with double high capacity pockets, specified in a rigid plastic board stock with a soft touch finish.

Building the decks

Each game included 30 cards – 15 positive ‘Kensa saves the day’ cards and 15 negative ‘shit happens’ cards. Aside from the time spent designing them, we also had to split hundreds of cards into individual decks and bundle them up.

The finishing touches

Every detail of the game was considered to keep it on brand, from the colour of the dice and the pouch they come in to bespoke Kensa logo shaped tokens in a range of colours.

Packaging it up

To ensure everything arrived in one piece the dimensions were designed to fit snugly into a jiffy bag, with a bespoke shaped foam insert to prevent things getting crushed and a sticker to seal it all together. The hardest part was assembling all 250 of them!

Here’s one we made earlier

Originally it was planned to have the tokens be Monopoly-style pieces based on our Kensa service icons. We developed a set of 3D printed prototypes but they proved too flimsy to survive the journey in the post, so we coated them in gold leaf and kept them for our personal set.