Activision sought to engage fans and create a cultural conversation around Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to drive game pre-orders and awareness among new audiences by leveraging the broad pop culture appeal of their newly revealed "Zombies in Spaceland" trailer. Showcasing new gameplay footage featuring the game's multi-player Zombie mode in fun and innovative rich media units to spur conversation and social sharing across Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google was critical to campaign success.
To reach its audience at scale, Activision partnered with Resolution Media and OMD to develop a fully-integrated multi-platform advertising strategy utilizing advanced targeting, audience segmentation and custom creative to:
- Excite and engage consumers via full-length game trailers and fun, snackable cut-downs
- Retarget core audiences to drive awareness and pre-orders and reinforce brand advocacy
- Reach new and qualified audiences at scale through conversion tracking and lookalike modeling
- Develop fun and innovative rich media units that could be extended internationally
To effectively execute this strategy, Resolution:
- Utilized first-in-gaming state-level geo-filter targeting and localized artwork on Snapchat to mimic a zombie outbreak spreading across the U.S. over four days
- Launched global execution of a Snapchat Lens with international partners (spanning the US, CA, UK, DE and AUS), which turned selfies into zombie karaoke faces singing along to the classic '80s hit "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, complete with a mic drop
- Adopted a full-funnel sequential messaging strategy on Facebook to serve custom ads to users based on in-game behavior and prior social engagements
- Tailored video formats to align with creative best practices across Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to effectively engage users
Through the effort coordinated by Resolution and OMD, Activision sparked massive interest in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and its multi-player Zombies mode, generating 175M total impressions, 11M video views and a 350% week-over-week increase in pre-order clicks across all utilized channels.
Additional results:
- Snapchat geo-filter and lens reached 33M users and drove 48M interactions in North America, accounting for 6.8 years of play time in a single day
- 2x platform benchmarks on the swipe-up rate for Snapchat video ads
- 70% lift in pre-order clicks when using 2-step sequential messaging on Facebook
- 53% lift in ad recall on Facebook and Instagram
- 40% lift in purchase intent among hardcore gamers on Snapchat
