That faux-PSA host died as she lived. Like an idiot.

“We loved her because she really embodied that self-righteous, self-important do-gooder who felt like she was overstepping her bounds a bit,” brand VP of creative Andy Pearson tells Muse. “We watched a lot of old charity commercials” to fine-tune the approach.

“This just felt like a fun, natural partnership for both sides” of the marketing equation, he says. “Zombies seem to capture our collective imagination in pop culture.”

LD has a history with such fiends, plus a track record for campy, subversive horror and skewering TV media tropes.

“We now have an extensive library of zombie stock footage,” Pearson says. “If anyone needs to buy it off us, please let me know.”

Sounds like a bloody good stocking stuffer.

The new game (with zombies!) drops on Nov. 10.

CREDITS

Co-Founder/CEO: Mike Cessario
SVP of Marketing: Dan Murphy
VP of Creative: Andy Pearson
VP of Marketing: Greg Fass
VP of Design: Frank Dresmé
Creative Director: Will Carsola
Associate Creative Director: Stu Golley
Senior Brand Manager: Tia Sherwood
Senior Social Media Manager: Rachael Mumford
Senior Nihilist: Brendan Kelly
Video Editor: Tyler Beasley
Director: Dave Canning
Executive Producer: Johnny Eastlund
Senior Producer: Cookie Walukas
Senior Producer: Tatianna Rodriguez
Production Coordinator: Rylee Brown
Director of Photography: Matt Clegg
Production Designer: Michelle Patterson

Activision: Call of Duty, ‘141 ft. Banda MS’

This campaign for Activision from Archer Troy, Mexico, features a music video with the most popular Mexican band and the most famous video game in the world. We get a Mexican corrido song in tribute to Task Force 141, battling narcos and organized crime.

Mosca, ‘Todos Somos Unicos’ (‘We Are Unique’)

This back-to-school work for Mosca from Uruguayan agency Verne aims to combat bullying and celebrate diversity by showing us how boring it would be if we were all the same. Our strength comes from our differences—everyone has something special to contribute.

Cerveza Victoria, ‘CEMPASÚCHIL’ (‘We are Living Offerings’)

Cerveza Victoria and Ogilvy Mexico present a fresh film that celebrates the Day of the Dead. The campaign aims to address death from a completely positive perspective. The goal is reinterpreting traditions and helping them blossom as viewers remember their loved ones.

Yerba Armiño, ‘From Uruguay to Space’

In Uruguay, mate is a symbol of friendship, deeply rooted in the culture and part of the nation’s identity. With that in mind, Yerba Armiño launched a campaign developed with Dogstar and director Oliver Garland. A TV spot develops a story produced in zero gravity, dramatizing the bond between Uruguayans and mate.

Angie Schlegel, ‘El Amor Va Con Todo’ (‘Love Goes With Everything’)

Peruvian agency Cumbia highlights a recent collection by Argentinian designer Angie Schlegel. We see 42 ‘prêt à porter’ looks or, in the words of the dressmaker, “utilitarian haute couture.”

Instituto Sou da Paz, ‘Trigger Pen’

Independent agency Tech and Soul crafted this impactful initiative. The work raises an alarm against the excessive weaponry of the Brazilian population, showing us that a simple signature can make a pen just as powerful as any gun.

One thing we’ve always liked about Activision’s Call of Duty—now ancient, as gaming franchises go, being 20 years old this year—is how its advertising unfailingly invests us in the mythology of heroic leaders, and teams that feel bigger than the sum of their parts. It has kept doing this even as its universe expanded, which ain’t easy: A futuristic space setting, like that of Infinite Warfare, has dramatically different emotional stakes from earlier games set in World War II.

But hell, they manage it.

COD’s latest by Mexican agency Archer Troy is no different. You get the romance of heroes, the overpowering love of a team. Yet it contributes to the IP’s gaming and advertising universes in ways that are fresh and surprising.

For the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and for the Latin American market, the agency and brand worked with Banda MS—a band that plays banda-style music—to create “Corrido of Duty.” Corrido is a musical genre of narrative ballads that romanticize stories of oppression, outlaw life and other underdog themes. The result is a corrido, played in the banda style, for the game’s 141 task force, which in Call of Duty lore represents the “best handpicked group of warriors on the planet.”

“Two industries that previously seemed impossible to mix, banda music and the world of gaming, come together in one voice through an unprecedented collaboration,” says Mike Arciniega, creative vice president and founder of Archer Troy. “The most influential regional Mexican band of the moment and one of the most popular video games in the world become one under a song in Spanish, more Mexican than ever and that we are sure everyone will sing while enjoying the game.”

The campaign launched ahead of the game’s drop late last year in Latin America, supported by the music video above and a Spotify release complete with lyrics. The video’s packed with easter eggs that reference aspects of the new game, like maps, new characters and clues to challenges.

Stylistically, it does serious justice to Banda MS and Call of Duty, whose fan bases collide in a Venn diagram we can’t even begin to imagine. You get the full brassy impact of banda and the relatable romance of the corrido style, wonderfully contrasted with what you see onscreen: It’s gritty, being a warrior. What makes it an adventure worth having are the people you’re with and the vision that drives you … not glamour, which is clearly in short supply.

“With a portion of the single player campaign set in Mexico, we knew that we had a unique opportunity in Mexico and the Hispanic market with Modern Warfare II,” explains Rodrigo Pérez, Call of Duty’s senior brand manager in Latin America. “It has been exciting creating something special for the fans of Call of Duty and Banda MS, that we have never done before.”

In the months since launch, the campaign has bled into the international market, transforming the 141 corrido into an anthem whose galvanizing quality hits hard throughout the single player portion: It’s heard at critical moments in gameplay.

“Corrida of Duty” will be representing the franchise in upcoming award shows throughout the year. The video has been viewed over 39 million times, making it one of the most-viewed videos in COD history; on Spotify, it’s been played 17 million times.

Nice work here by Archer Troy, which in the last few years rapidly became one of the most competitive independent agencies in Mexico, judging by the number of awards it has racked up. We look forward to seeing what else it’s got up its sleeve.

It’s a fun way of trying to broaden the game’s appeal to potential new players. And the plot twist in the middle, while sinking the original premise, does make the piece warmer than it would have been—and probably saved Garry from some déjà vu nightmares down the line.

“I still remember Deep Blue vs. Kasparov back in 1997,” Activision CMO Fernando Machado tells Muse. “That was such an iconic moment in time. So when BSSP brought us the idea of bringing Kasparov to learn and play Hearthstone against an A.I., we felt we had something powerful to play with. Hearthstone is a very cerebral game. It’s easy to learn but hard to master. Kasparov also loved the idea and was all-in. He really invested in learning the game. In fact, he is still playing today and climbing the ranks of the game.” 

“Kasparov’s battle against the A.I. was iconic,” says Sinan Dagli, BSSP’s executive creative director. “We wanted to make sure we told the tales of the match in 1997 and set the scene for Garry’s new challenge in Hearthstone. The documentary approach gave us the freedom to show Kasparov’s incredible journey of learning Hearthstone and going up against A.I. once again.”

Oppenheim has also been a big Kasparov fan ever since seeing the documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. “I first watched it when I was 10 years old, and its hyper-stylized, paranoid thriller elements—made up from the stuff of everyday life—really stuck with me and went on to influence my work as a director,” he says. “Kasparov is the perfect documentary subject. One of the greatest strategic thinkers alive, he’s a natural fit for Hearthstone—a game that, much like chess, requires a deep amount of strategy, preparation and mental acuity. Being involved in this project, and getting to work with a legend and one of my personal heroes, was a dream come true.”

CREDITS

BSSP
Sinan Dagli – Executive Creative Director
Ed Patterson – Creative Director
Jeff Hornung – Creative Director
Justin Hargraves – Creative Director
Will Sands – Associate Creative Director
Robison Mattei – Associate Creative Director
AJ Marino – Account Director
Gustavo Feria – Account Executive
Shelby Deffterios – Creative Project Manager
Chrissy Wamsher – Senior Producer
Tess Rockers – Senior Producer
Liz Corsini – Head of Production

Blizzard Marketing Team
Fernando Machado – Chief Marketing Officer
Pelle Sjoenell – Chief Creative Officer
Walter Kong – Executive Producer
Todd Harvey – Head of Marketing
Matt Small – VP, Global Consumer & Digital Marketing
Marcella Ziccarelli – Consumer Marketing Manager
Rachel van Essen – Associate Consumer Marketing Manager
Shelina Kurwa – Associate Counsel
Lara Tran – Senior Producer
Meaghan de Wolf – Associate Marketing Manager
Melissa Smith – Brand Manager
Ajay Ravi – Senior Marketing Manager
Josh Kerwin – Senior Director, Publishing
Scott Conway – Senior Brand Manager
Andrew Reynolds – Senior Director, Corporate Communications
Fabio Lo Zito – Public Relations Manager
Cristiano Alburitel – Global Director, Consumer Marketing

“These were situations I would normally capture,” Alex says in the film. Adds Sebastiano: “I was impressed with how kinetic and immersive it all was. As photographers, this is what conflict looks like.”

Below, check out a few of the resulting photographs.

The campaign, from the agency GUT, is the first big example of boundary-pushing work at Activision from Fernando Machado, who joined the company as CMO earlier this year from Burger King. We spoke with Machado about the concept and the execution of the campaign.

Muse: Where did the idea come from?

Fernando Machado: The idea is from GUT. We knew one of the key points of difference of the game was the quality of the graphics and how realistic and immersive they are. It becomes more real, more real, more real to the point that it starts to blur the lines between virtual and real. The technology used on this specific game is called photogrammetry, which is basically a one-to-one scan of your environment. So, one of our briefs was to tell that story. People like me will geek out on the tech behind it, but the challenge was, “How can you tell the story in a way that, even if you’re not so into gaming, or not so into first-person shooters, it’ll be an interesting story?”

The head of our motion capture studio, Mike Sanders, was working on this technology to create a portal into the game. It works in the motion capture studio because it detects the movement, and it’s like a window into the engine of the game. That was being developed not necessarily for this idea, but when GUT saw the brief, and saw the technology that was coming, they came up with this idea.

How do you feel the photos turned out?

I think it proved the point. I look at the pictures and I bet if I just posted them many people wouldn’t realize that’s a game. They took lots of images. We made a selection with them. And we are doing out-of-home [ads with the photos]. With some of the images we have a partnership with Bleecker Trading where we’re going to sell some of the pictures, with the money going to the Call of Duty Endowment Fund. So in the end, it’s also doing something for a good cause.

I can also see this being controversial. Do you feel it might be seen as glorifying or trivializing real war?

I think it’s all about the way you execute. The main intention was not that. It’s the opposite of that. It’s to show respect. We could have done the images ourselves, and it would have been much easier to do that. The intention is to showcase in a creative way how realistic the game is, not to glorify war.

Why these two photographers in particular?

There were many options to choose from. We chose these two because they did have lots of work in very reputable newspapers. And because they were really interested in the idea and were willing to partner and collaborate.

So, the goal is to tell a bigger story that might appeal to non-gamers, to get more people playing the game?

I think the truth is, these days is hard to find a non-gamer. I think people may end up choosing different types of games. So when I see an idea like this, I think it’s an idea that does have the opportunity to capture the attention, the hearts and the imagination, of people who might not be playing Call of Duty today. I am always looking to do things in a different way, and go above and beyond the typical executions we always do that we know work really well.

So, this is an example of how you’re going to try to expand the type of work we see in this category?

I think that’s always the challenge, right? That’s the fun part of the job. How can we find the next frontier in terms of ideas in advertising and creativity in general? One of the things that got me most excited about working in gaming is that it’s really the crossroads of technology, entertainment and creativity. The industry is evolving dramatically. Hopefully we’ll be able to do some cool stuff and get ahead of that curve.

It must have been nice to reunite with GUT, as well.

We have some really strong creative partners. We have a long-term partnership with 72andSunny. There are lots of things coming for Call of Duty: Vanguard that are from 72. But it’s great to have GUT on board. Truly, they are very amazing creative folks, and they will surely help us continue to evolve the creativity behind our franchises.