With the release of Halo 3 fast approaching, I thought I’d take a look at how Microsoft and Bungee used the internet to promote the third iteration of their insanely popular Xbox game series.
Microsoft and Bungee followed a five phase campaign, involving both online and offline marketing efforts. It started with a TV ad that aired during Monday night football called “Starry Nights”.
The commercial was soon uploaded to youTube, and has received 3,781,245 views at the time of this posting.
Halo 3 Trailer: Starry Nights
Phase two invited fans to visit halo3.com and enter for a chance to play a multiplayer beta version of Halo3. 750,000 people entered, and by the end of beta testing 820,000 people had participated. It was a bold move by Microsoft and Bungee to open up their unfinished game to that large a number of potential critics.
The third phase was a viral campaign that involved an online/offline scavenger hunt that included, cryptic forum posts, a fake ad in Best Buy circulars, more cryptic email, and people holding cryptic signs in the streets. The viral campaign was targeted mainly at die hard Halo fans, people uninvolved with the Halo games probably wouldn’t get it, myself included. Check out the gamedropblog for some great pictures, video, and more detailed description of the Halo 3 viral campaign.
The fourth phase was all about cross promotion. Several companies including Mountain Dew, Pontiac, Burger King, Game Stop, and 7-Eleven are all promotional partners. These are primarily offline marketing efforts, but they have spilled over onto the internet in the form of banner ads and web pages like mountaindewgamefuel.com and pontiachalo3.onlinepromo.com.
Phase five includes the airing of the new TV spots, launch day events in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles and Miami, as well a 10,000 retail stores that will open their doors at midnight to sell Halo 3 to all the die hard gamers who need to have their copy tonight.
Halo 3 TV Ad: “Believe”
Halo 3 TV Ad: “Museum”
Halo 3 TV Ad: “Two Soldiers Reminisce”
Along with its well orchestrated, big budget marketing campaign, Halo 3 got its fair share of free word of mouth marketing thanks to a large number of gaming blogs and forums. Amazon’s army of affiliate marketers have also played their part by posting pre release articles hyping Halo 3, hoping to entice their visitors to click on their affiliate link and pre-order at amazon.com (it’s worth a shot).
In the final days of the campaign PR is also playing a major role, so expect to see and hear “news” of the Halo 3 launch in your local paper, on the radio and on tonights newscasts.
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Good point Nick, when I was searching youTube for Halo 3 there was just as much content created by fans as there was by marketers.
And thanks for the video, it was hilarious.
Nial
September 24, 2007
The Buzz around work is crazy for this release. Granted Microsoft is one of our clients. We have people taking there personal day tomorrow to play Hallo 3 all night tonight once it’s released.
Here was a great cross promotional ad that was released with Mountain Dew & Halo 3. It also has that international flavor. It could almost be included in the Funny Fridays links.
I guess an interesting question to ask is… how can someone take what they did here and translate that into something else.
another product.
Maybe a digital software product, information product, subscrption site or anything else for that matter.
How would you break down what they did into a set of “actionable” steps?
Interesting question.
Dave
dave
October 6, 2007
Hello. The fact that the video received more than 3,781,245 views says everything. Excellent campaign, and besides YouTube is lately one of the best marketing tools.
