The One Show

The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.

2023 One Show - Gaming

Corrido Of Duty

Agency Archer Troy / Mexico City + Activision Blizzard / Mexico City

Client Activision / Call of Duty
BACK TO RESULTS

Annual ID

OS23_GA029M

About the Work

Context: 5 out of 10 of the most violent cities in the world are in mexico, because drug cartels have impacted our society. It was time to challenge world’s perception of our country. So, to solve a problem, we need to change reality. Music does that. And we have a unique music genre for it: narco corrido. A popular music genre that glorifies narcos and their crimes. Idea: We used the most unexpected solution to change perception and to enhance identity. Call of duty presents: Corrido of duty. The narco music genre, now sings to the good guys. For call of duty’s most recent launch, we summoned “banda ms”, the most famous corrido band in mexico. Together, we created and composed “corrido 141” exclusively for the franchise. A song dedicated to the good guys of the game. An action that revolutionized the gaming world and turned upside down the narrative of this music genre for the first time. No more narco songs, now we sing for heroes. The song was included during the campaign mode as part of the missions and also on the ending credits of the game. Many players declared the song gave a new feeling to the end of the campaign as an anthem of teamwork as the story of the franchise was rebooted with this title. People took it as their anthem and even as a local idea it reached everyone in the world. Never has a videogame embraced a country’s culture like this. Now when you think of mexico, you’ll think of the good guys. And instead of hacking a videogame, we hacked culture, with a game. Results: Top 1 video in activision history with positive sentiment Top 1 video in cod history without gameplay footage + 40 million views on youtube + 70 million plays in music platforms (spotify, apple music, deezer) 1.41 billion impressions 1.09 million comments 1 billion game sessions 1 billion dollar sales Highest grossing entertainment opening of 2022