• by Aaron Baar , October 31, 2014

Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty” is one of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet, and with refreshes of the game coming on a regular basis, the selling of the game needs to become bigger and better every year. 

Once again, “Call of Duty” is bringing some star power to its launch campaign, enlisting director Peter Berg (“Battleship,” “Lone Survivor”) and frequent collaborator actor Taylor Kitsch (“Battleship,” “Lone Survivor”) to mimic the game’s first person perspective in a live action manner. 

“This game is amazing,” Josh Fell, creative director at 72andSunny, the agency behind the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. “But to a broad audience it can be intimidating. With the live-action treatment, we really get to open up how it feels to play this game to people who maybe haven’t played in awhile.”

The 90-second spot, which began airing Oct. 30, begins with the first-person viewer getting hit in the space. The view turns to Kitsch, who kicks a box to the viewer, with the order, “Wipe that punch off your face, and put this on.” Inside the box is the game’s signature exoskeleton suit, which enables players to do superhuman feats. The two then venture in the game’s world, where they accomplish many of those feats, including giant leaps into the air, climbing along the sides of moving trucks, and punching through doors. (The spot, set to the driving soundtrack of the Raconteurs’ “Salute Your Solution,” also features a cameo from “Gone Girl” actress Emily Ratajkowski, as a hallucination that turns into a goat.) The tagline for the campaign is, “Discover your power.”

“Our job was to capture what made this [new game] special,” Fell says. “The excitement and thrill of throwing on an exoskeleton and soaring 50 feet in the air. Or running through a wall rather than around it.”

Activision Blizzard has been running “Call of Duty” trailers that feature the game’s play (and an easily recognizable Kevin Spacey who portrays the role of the game’s villain) over the past few weeks. The live-action commercial, in addition to broadening the audience for the game, is also meant to showcase the game’s real-world intensity. 

“We get to capture the camaraderie and fun and, ‘Dude? did you see me do that?’ nature that you feel when playing the game with your friends, [which] never really translates in game footage,” Rey Andrade, also a creative director at 72andSunny, tells Marketing Daily. “But there comes a responsibility with that. If we’re going to do live-action we have to show people something they haven’t seen before. We’ve all seen some pretty amazing first person GoPro videos. But there’s never been an action film on this scale shot with this technique.”

Having shipped more than $1 billion in games for first-day sales of its previous incarnation, “Call Of Duty:Ghosts,” last year, one might think the franchise could rest on its laurels when new iterations come out. But competing in the entertainment category, where competition can include the next Star Wars movie as much as the next game, means Activision Blizzard is always looking to top itself, Fell says.

“‘Call of Duty’ always sees themselves as a challenger brand,” Fell says. “The champs don’t get to stop training. You have to keep swinging harder and faster. That’s the spirit in which they build their games and that’s what we try to follow in the marketing.”

In addition to the live-action and gameplay spots, Activision will run digital and out-of-home advertising, and has enlisted partners such as Xbox, Mountain Dew and Doritos, as well as retailers Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Wal-Mart, to promote the game’s Nov. 4 release.