While we might argue that Infinity Ward's 2009 follow up to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, likely earned the lion's share of its sales through Infinity Ward's history of making quality games, building a strong and loyal fanbase, and, well, the very fact that it was a sequel to an insanely high-selling game, the marketing team behind MW2 would likely disagree. Speaking at this week's MI6 Conference (and picked up by VentureBeat), contract marketing team The Ant Farm discussed some of the reasons that the sequel's advertising campaign worked so well -- and helped the title sell millions more copies than it would have without.

"With us, it became a challenge of basically breaking it down to 'how do we engage the core first?'," explained Ant Farm executive creative director Rob Troy. "By the time you see the invasion on US soil, which was a secret for a long time, you definitely wanna go out there and kick some ass." For him, the marketing campaign was about slowly doling out aspects of the story while keeping fans in the dark about specifics, and resulted in a resounding success. We have to imagine landing commercial premieres during major sporting events likely helped out the sales as well, not to mention those MW2-branded energy drinks. Also, hey, blowing up castles is always a good way to advertise your product -- let's not kid ourselves, folks.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/03/the-ant-farm-talks-successes-of-modern-warfare-2-marketing/

Posted: Apr 05, 2010 7:29 pm