Ubisoft Watch_Dogs: Digital Shadow

Ubisoft wanted a campaign that could extend the themes of Watch_Dogs into the real world and reinforce the idea that personal data is more revealing than most people realize. The original brief called for multiple digital tent-pole moments connected to PAX, the trailer reveal, and other beats in the launch calendar.

I joined the concept team to develop ideas that supported those moments and tied directly to the game's surveillance narrative. Early sessions focused on mapping user journeys and exploring how to connect marketing goals with the underlying lore. As budgets tightened, the work narrowed to a single execution that became Digital Shadow.

This was during a window when Facebook's open graph still exposed meaningful connections and behavioral signals. We used this to build a narrative experience that felt like a personal audit. Instead of 'hacking' users, we reframed publicly available data into a story: who interacts with your posts, who you ignore, which relationships look unbalanced, and how those patterns could be exploited through simple social engineering. The impact came from showing people how exposed they already were.

My work centered on shaping the narrative structure, refining how we interpreted data, and building quick prototypes that helped the client understand the tone, flow, and boundaries of the experience. Digital Shadow became the lead social campaign for the Watch_Dogs launch and a clear expression of the game's core themes.