Furby: Furbtree

The Christmas build-up is often dominated by the must-have toys of the year – and 2023, gave us the ultimate nineties comeback to add to our Christmas lists. One of the world’s most iconic toys has been wonderfully evolved. New generation Furby combines nostalgic delight with thousands of new tech-features. As the festive shopping period got under way, we needed to turn initial launch excitement into genuine purchase consideration.

Our fuzzy friend was already going viral as the internet reacted to the prospect of this curious AI powered creature taking over the world. The lore of Furby world domination was too good to resist – we decided to bring the theory to life, using AR technology (Augmented Reality)  to playfully hijack Christmas. Furby would soon take over wish lists, infiltrate shopping baskets and make their mysterious presence known in cities across Europe.

In an innovative, AR-powered content stunt we worked with one of the UK’s best developers to turn festive fir trees across Paris, London, and Berlin into giant AR ‘Furbtrees’ made from hundreds of blinking Furby toys. We partnered with leading meme and culture pages, fuelling speculation that Furby was taking over the world and sparking debates around the validity (and availability!) of our Furby Christmas trees, before finally seeding these trending images to the media.

The AR powered images and videos went viral. Targeted social posts ensured our content was seen in the right places, by the right people – with papers across the globe picking up the story and driving masses of earned coverage. This was an AR first for Hasbro EMEA, Furbtrees combined data-driven insights with the power of augmented reality, to create a groundswell of noise around these lovable toys during the peak of Christmas spending.

“We knew there was a huge media appetite for Furby following the relaunch of the much-loved product in summer 2022, however, with Christmas fast approaching, we wanted to make sure Furby was front of mind with parents and shoppers. We needed the idea to be relevant to key markets, drive engagement around the brand and ultimately give sales that final push before the big day. The Furbtree activation was a genius way to meet the objectives. By leveraging the AR content trend, we managed to generate social buzz and virality, drive cut through in earned media and ultimately ensure everyone was talking about Furby. Using the ‘is it or isn’t it real?’ hook gave us the ability to really engage with consumers across the markets, and resulted in a powerful execution that the whole business was excited about.”  

Julia Swan | Regional (EMEA) Communications Manager