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2022 One Show - Direct Marketing

Mystery Sniper

Agency INGO / Stockholm + Activision Blizzard / Santa Monica + Raven Software / Middleton

Client Activision Blizzard / Call of Duty

Category

Innovation & Transformation / Innovation in Direct Marketing

Annual ID

OS22_DM106M

About the Work

Background

Call of Duty has had a reputation for creating immersive single-player campaigns. A reputation that has dwindled in recent years. Recent games have been criticized for a lack of depth in storytelling and characters.

When introducing the next game in the series Call of Duty Vanguard – the focus was to promote its strong single-player campaign. Vanguard takes place during WWII where we follow newly introduced characters that take on the Nazi regime.

The strategy became to build a relationship with these characters before the launch of the game, in particular a character by the name of Polina Petrova – a sniper based on the most successful female sniper in history.


Idea

Call of Duty Warzone is Activision’s free-to-play multiplayer game. It has a strong community of over 100 million players. A great media channel to build hype around the next Call of Duty.

In Warzone, 150 players drop simultaneously onto a big map. Every player shares the same simple goal – to be the last one left alive. If you succeed, you get to see your in-game character get evacuated off the map by helicopter as the sole winner. A holy scene for the community that not everybody gets to witness.

As the first-ever teaser of Vanguard, we introduced one of the main characters by making a change to the ending scene of Warzone. Instead of successfully getting evacuated by the helicopter. Polina Petrova unexpectedly stole the victory in front of the winning player’s eyes.


Results

• Cutscene randomly placed in thousands of completed Warzone matches
• Coverage in most of the major gaming press. (GameSpot, IGN, Gamesradar, Polygon, NME, Uproxx, Inverse, Venture beat, etc.)
• 500+ reaction/discussion videos uploaded by the community on TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, Instagram, etc.

Examples:

PrestigeIsKey – 1,4m subscribers
Inkslasher – 1,08m subscribers
402THUNDER402 – 742 000 subscribers
@esportscenter - 526,1k followers
@zeffgaming – 1,4m followers
@sallyisadog – 2,5m followers

Well received by community:

"Undoubtedly, this new CoD: Vanguard Warzone teaser has injected more excitement in the community and a desire to see the new game officially revealed soon."
– @charlieINTEL (Biggest independent site for the COD-community)

2022 Awards

Total Points: 3

Merit

Credits

Agency

INGO / Stockholm

Client / Brand

Activision Blizzard / Santa Monica

Production Company

Raven Software / Middleton

Art Director

Max Hultberg

Copywriter

Magnus Ivansson

Chief Creative Officer

Bjorn Stahl
Pelle Sjoenell

Chief Marketing Officer

Fernando Machado

Creative Director

Eric Biessman

Strategist

Simon Bäckelin

Account Manager

Rickard Allstrin

Managing Director Go-To-Market

Anna Malmhake

Production Manager

Klara Jonsson

Senior Visual Director

Michael Sanders

Vice President & Head of Marketing

Tyler Bahl

Vice President Consumer Marketing

Carolyn Wang

Vice President, Call of Duty

Jim McMullin

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