Last year, Swedish IT consulting company, Castra, managed to create quite a stir with a recruitment campaign written in languages from Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The campaign went viral on Reddit, was praised by Captain Kirk actor William Shatner and got its own page on the Klingon Wiki.

Now comes the next “geeky” campaign from Castra and agency, We Are More. This time the assignment was to market Castra’s offer to potential clients. A classic sales brief with an unexpected fun solution – a card game called Consultants of IT.

Consultants of IT  is a collectible card game where Castra’s consultants battle server crashes, data breaches, microwaved fish and other terrifying threats risking to destroy the player’s IT department. The game is likely the first ever where the profession of IT consultants play the main role.

“Our consultants deserve all the accolades they can get. They are already heroes saving our clients every day, but surely ‘backend barbarian’ sounds a bit cooler than ‘system developer’?” stated Julia Lazar, marketing director at Castra.

The game mechanics in Consultants of IT are inspired by classic collectible card games such as Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. Each player builds their own deck consisting of consultant cards, threat cards and buff cards which they can then use to duel against other players. The first combatant to spend their entire budget will see their IT department lost.

“Browsing a sales cataloguse is no fun. But hopefully it will be more exciting to play one. This is an interesting new way for us to showcase the width of our offer while continuing to build Castra’s brand as Sweden’s geekiest IT consulting company. There are many board game lovers out there in the world of tech. Hopefully they will be as charmed as we are by this magical game,” Lazar commented.

The Consultants of IT starter box contains 60 playing cards, a rulebook and game tokens. It can be purchased at consultantsofit.com and from Swedish board game retailer, Alphaspel. Several expansions are planned this autumn.

“This project has been a real challenge, from designing the game mechanics to creating unique copy and illustrations for all 60 playing cards. Seeing the result makes me proud. All of us, except for Ida, our production manager, are thankful that Castra dared to bet on this idea. We can’t wait to see how it will be received,” commented Björn Eklind, art director at We Are More. 

Credits

Creative Agency: We Are More
Agency Team: Björn Eklind, Johan Nerman, Ida Tenggren, Linda Tiderman, Mikael Andersson, Erika Lindblom, Alexander Skoglund, Pontus Tenggren

Motion & Photography: Magnus Jälthammar @ Whytho

Geek Consultant: Johan Weisz @ McGinty

Client: Castra
Client Team: Emil Ahlenius, Julia Lazar