ABOUT

CONCEPT
In March 2020, the world changed – as Call of Duty released Warzone, its free-to-play Battle Royale.

Warzone’s mission: take back the hotly-contested Battle Royale throne from the franchise’s fiercest competition yet and reassert cultural domination.

In previous years, the Battle Royale space had become more competitive than ever, with the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends’ free-to-play Battle Royale action keeping millions hooked.

Warzone was our way of disrupting the genre and bring Battle Royale fans into the Call of Duty universe, along with providing a new way for existing fans to engage with the franchise.

Our campaign had three major objectives during 2020, to land Warzone with a bang:

ENGAGE PLAYERS – smash an impactful first year for Warzone, bringing more than 75m+ players into the new game

EXCITE TALENT – recruit a variety of ambassadors + creators from different passions areas for our audience to engage with Warzone and share it with their fans

GROW PLAYERBASE – aggressively expand the Warzone community beyond the Call of Duty ‘core’ and tap into other potential player’s passions (e.g. football, music)

This juggernaut of a game needed a juggernaut of a campaign to reassert Call of Duty’s domination of pop culture and make Warzone the game that our audience couldn’t bear to miss out on.

To do this we needed to hold the attention of lapsed and new players by showing them that Warzone offered exciting, intense gameplay, and the most energising Call of Duty experience yet.

To make this happen, our creative strategy was to…

GET: Players who are Battle Royale fans

TO: Believe that Warzone is the game where all the action and entertainment with friends begins and ends

BY: showing that they need to be in the game otherwise they’ll be at risk at never being in the know

Our creative platform was: YOU HAD TO BE THERE – making clear Warzone was THE place to be in 2020.

Our approach was to elevate Warzone beyond the realms of video games into becoming one of the landmark cultural hits of the year, bringing in fans from all corners of the worlds of music, sport and lifestyle to drive home this was a gaming experience that could not be missed – from members of the mass public to mega-stars from pop culture.

EXECUTION
The COVID-19 pandemic hitting soon after the launch of Warzone meant our approach had to be almost entirely digital-first, with no opportunities to engage fans via the immersive, exciting Call of Duty events the brand had become known for.

Ambassador and creator partnerships, as well as content production all pivoted to being created at-home and we had to find a way to capture the brash, exciting Call of Duty tone of voice remotely and use it to reach our international fanbase effectively via a range of channels.

Warzone brought with it content drops every 60 days to deliver impact, engagement, and positive community sentiment across markets and beyond the core player base.  

Anticipation started in early 2020 with a global preview event for EMEA’s biggest YouTubers and streamers in LA. For launch, we hosted this top-tier talent and created press tool kits supplying all EMEA markets with proactive features and assets for local media, followed by coordinated streams and VOD content to ensure Warzone exploded onto the Battle Royale scene.

When lockdown hit and key workers were a focus for the public, we did our bit and created ‘Cash Squads’, which saw three celebrity fans united in a challenge – the better they do in a Warzone game, the more money they win for key workers. Our pandemic heroes watched on as sports stars Jesse Lingard and Jofra Archer teamed up with rapper Aitch to try to win key workers up to £10K. 

We partnered with streetwear brand Fresh Ego Kid to create bespoke merchandise, seeded to ambassadors across EMEA and embedded into football culture – a key passion for potential players – through engagement with football stars across Europe including Dani Carvajal, Joe Gomez, Jack Grealish and many more.

To further our link to football and mark the launch of the opening of Warzone’s in-game stadium, home to Verdansk FC, we created a social-first activation which fictionally 'signed' World Cup winner Paul Pogba and teased via social media and his channels.

Further ambassador activations targeted individual football players and clubs to make sure players were rewarded for playing and talking about our game, supported by over 200+ media interviews to share their passion about the game as the new social playground for sports teams. 

Finally, we created the biggest-ever Warzone Creator Tournament with YouTuber Vikram ‘Vikkstar’ Singh Barn, which saw streamers square off to earn their share of a $210,000 prize pool across nine weeks.   

RESULTS
erall, Call of Duty Warzone has been the gaming smash hit of 2020 with now over 85m players globally.



Our campaign cemented Call of Duty: Warzone at the heart of popular culture in 2020 and saw it become the fastest-growing Battle Royale game in history, with an active, engaged playerbase of over 85m players – delivering best-ever engagement for the franchise in the current gaming generation, while meeting all objectives.



A Call of Duty title like no other, each content drop for Warzone was strategically used by the Hill+Knowlton team to deliver impact, engagement and positive community sentiment across multiple markets, going far beyond the ‘traditional’ Call of Duty core playerbase – reaching a vast audience, all of whom are now hungry for more content as Warzone moves into its second year in 2021.