This commercial is for the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, and Nintendo DS. Within 5 days of its release, it had approximately 1.6 million hits. That’s right, MILLION. In FIVE days. Wow. That’s more views than I will ever get on my own YouTube channel. This commercial is great not only because of its good directing and videography, but also because, as the marketing blog ViralCurve points out, of its concept and its use of celebrities. As soon as I heard that Kobe Bryant (and Jimmy Kimmel) were in the latest Call of Duty commercial, I had to see it ASAP.
Now I was contemplating on getting Black Ops for a while, reading reviews and watching a lot of trailers, but I still wasn’t fully convinced, but after seeing this commercial, I knew I had to get it! Being a huge Kobe Bryant fan, I fell out of my chair laughing once I saw that he was in this commercial. “There’s A Soldier In All Of Us” is the perfect phrase at the end of the video, as they showed the different types of people who play and enjoy the game, from females in business to kids to construction workers to celebrities, encompassing a vast demographic segment.
Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t buy the game for the sole reason of seeing this commercial. My perceived value of this game was high because of the amount of playtime it would offer me through the campaign’s enticing storyline and the multiplayer features (playing against other people online). I also learned that Best Buy was holding a launch party for the game, and that they would be handing out a ton of free stuff! Now figuring that I was going to get the game in the future anyway, why not just get it now and get some free swag at the same time too?
This commercial and launch parties across North America and the U.K. aren’t the only ways that Black Ops is being promoted:
Yup, Activision partnered up their Call of Duty brand with Jeep to make a limited edition Jeep Wrangler based on vehicles used in-game. It’s selling for approximately $33,900.
Now that’s a lot of promotion for one game. Did it pay off? Well, Black Ops had the biggest launch of any form of entertainment in history this past November 9, making $360 million in it’s first 24 hours of sale. That number only takes into account sales in North America and the UK. It’s also still rising; it hasn’t even been a week! I guess you can say all the promotion paid off, don’t you think? Time for me to grab my controller, I’ll see you guys online…
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~ Watch the unboxing of my Black Ops copy, see all the free swag I got, and hear some of my thoughts on the launch party experience! Click here!
~ Read more posts by ViralCurve in their blog, The Viral Marketing Blog.
