Every year Activision releases a new Call of Duty game and every year they continue to break records with each installment. Because of the annualized nature of the series, timing the marketing is key, in order to maximize the profitability of DLC of the prior release in the series, before moving on to the next.
In the case of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 however, the marketing strategy was tossed out the window when Kotaku infamously spilled the beans on the title, revealing everything about the game, from box art, the official logo, characters, locations to maps lists, weapon info and story spoilers. So, how did Activision handle the situation?
This occurred nine months before the release of the game and Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg offered a response to the leak days later, explaining that they were going to make the best of the situation.
“While it’s definitely not cool to steal other people’s intellectual property, and while it’s definitely not cool to leak stuff that’s not yours, there are ways that you can respond that actually turn the lemons into lemonade, and that’s what we tried to do on Friday.”
At last week’s CES event in Las Vegas, Hirshberg rehashed the story and explained how it affected him and his staff . He was in therapy when it happened and like most people at the company, didn’t know how to react. They quickly held meetings where they decided to take a positive approach and make us of the opportunity instead of focusing on the negative.
“Like it or not, our launch just started. It wasn’t on our timetable and we didn’t instigate it, but it’s out there, folks, and we can’t put it back in. And our fans didn’t do anything wrong today – they’re having a great day! They’re really interested in this game, they really want to know what happened, they’re poring over all of the details trying to figure out what’s true, what’s not, is it real, is it not – and we weren’t ready for this, but we’ve got to deal with it.
“And the wrong way to deal with it is to let the process of figuring out what happened with the leak be the public-facing sort of marketing message. That has to happen and that’s important work, but that’s not the dialogue you want to be having with your fans. Because you go into that silverback gorilla corporate lockdown mode and it’s not appealing, it’s not fun.”
And the result of this was that fans got to see the pre-planned TV Spots for Modern Warfare 3 a full month early online, one day after the leaks, confirming all of the information that had been revealed. Two days after the teaser trailers, the game’s release date was confirmed and pre-order opportunities became available, followed by the official Modern Warfare 3 website launching a few days later.
“The greatest value in this digital connected world is the value of transparency, so we figured, let’s just be straight with people, let’s tell them what happened, then let’s lean into it.”
“A little fire of interest about our game just got started today, and on most other days of the year we would come in and say, ‘Hey, everyone’s on the internet talking about us,’ and that would be a good thing, right? Why is it because we didn’t instigate it and we didn’t control it, why does that instantly make it a bad thing? It’s not.”
“So what we did was we took the fire of interest that had been lit and we poured gasoline on it.”
In the end, Activision won out with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 debuting as the biggest entertainment launch ever. Fortunately for them, the brand and built-in fanbase remain unaffected by the leak. The timing also worked out since Activision had most of their marketing materials ready to go at the time.
If you’re a fan, enjoy the 9 months if incoming MW3 DLC and look forward to what could next-gen Call of Duty games from Treyarch and Infinity Ward.
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Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.
Source: Ad Age (via Eurogamer)
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Now let’s see them put a positive spin on metacritic scores.
Haha too soon?
I think a lot of people just voted MW3 down on purpose. The haters, BF3 people and whoever else that wanted to score it low for whatever reason. I don’t care what game it is, no game deserves a 0/10 and it was tons of that on metacritic scores so the numbers weren’t exactly fair, that’s common sense. I can see 6/10 or something like that but those real low numbers were ridiculous.
the game is garbage, full of camping young teens and testosterone filled older ones. there is no properly bal;ance between guns and perks, visuals are boring, at least 5 guns have the same audio (g36, ak47, tmp, scar L or H). maps are pretty stale and dull (only cool one being the blown up shopping centre). levelling is ridiculously easy and not that rewarding.
i can go on all day about how this game eats the old gun stuck on the bottom of my shoe, but i think that’s enough truth for one day
the sad thing is, they will keep on making money b/c people are to stupid and ignorant to say no and move on to other games to teach them a lesson – releasing the same s*** every yr wears out a franchise and that people want to see change, not the same bs churned out for the sake of making money.
You think that’s bad (re: gamers)? Join a BF3 game on PC and watch the in-game chat.
That’s the nature of gamers in all shooters and it’s sad and disgusting.
I’m confused, why use the people who play the game as an excuse to hate it?
Smh, you guys take it to the extreme.
If nothing has changed in COD, then you still like it. From beginning to end, you played the older ones then you know what to expect. How can you love MW2 but hate MW3? Doesn’t make sense. Too many contradictions and silly complaints. Makes you guys look like whiney babies, I’m sorry but its true.
Here’s a shocker, you can love BF3 and not hate COD. Why do so few gamers know this?
Your obviously a BF3 fanboy.
My message above is to jwalka