Case Study: Call of Duty: World at War

After Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s tremendous success bringing the franchise into the present day, Activision’s next title in the series, Call of Duty: World at War, took what many hard-core gamers considered to be a step backward by going back to World War II. Our team’s challenge was to prove the skeptics wrong, and show that World at War was truly WWII like you’ve never felt before.

To do this, we created an integrated global campaign including 3 TV spots, 5 Interactive executions, 2 Print ads, and a Viral Video. We consistently “showed gamers the money” through high quality game-play video in Rich Media banners and on TV. In fact, our team was the first in the nation to run Full-Screen HD Video in a MySpace Homepage Takeover. We also created a custom Rich Media execution on IGN.com where the consumer was invited to pick up a Flamethrower from a banner ad and virtually burn through the page.

The result? The naysayers were silenced and the skeptics were converted – Call of Duty: World at War’s day-one sales beat Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by more than 50%. And in just a few months since launch, the title has sold nearly 8 million units worldwide – almost matching the numbers seen in a full year by Call of Duty 4.