Launching God of War: Ascension
The God of War franchise is PlayStation's most important first-party franchise - a cornerstone of the console's identity for almost a decade. So, when I was tasked with launching the 7th installment (4th "primary series" installment) in the epic Greek mythology-based action/adventure saga, it came with a great deal of pressure. We faced a many, many million unit sales target expected to carry our fiscal year, an extremely aggressive pre-order target, and the expectations that come with a position as the tentpole title in a year where PlayStation was making the push to overtake Xbox as the top-selling console globally. We were also faced with a more challenging problem though - 6 titles in 7 years with s0mewhat-limited product innovation, and a market over-saturated by the God of War brand over the previous years left us with a core user base suffering from brand fatigue, and the remaining serviceable available market disinterested in the franchise. However, we managed to reinvigorate an ailing market and turn God of War: Ascension into one of the biggest entertainment launches of the year. We did this through a successful re-brand, impactful creative assets, major partnerships with Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, and The History Channel, and smart use of an advertising budget tens of millions of dollars large (including Superbowl advertising).
Goals
- Successfully re-brand God of War to appeal more to rejectors and lapsed fans.
- Leverage huge pre-announce anticipation, hugely new feature set, and top-tier creative to expand God of War audience and meet aggressive pre-order and sales goals.
Re-branding an epic franchise
Re-branding an IP with as much brand equity as God of War can be even more treacherous than branding something from scratch (just ask Airbnb). Past God of War games had always centered their positioning around helping gamers become the ultimate alpha male, and also leaned heavily on the mythology of the game's world. That was all fine and good for our core fans, but if we wanted to expand our audience, we needed to tap into those people who had been rejecting us. Our research showed that these users found the game's characters too aggressive and one-dimensional, and little appeal in the mythological elements of the story. Thus, we set out to re-brand around a more human, relatable character positioning; using imagery and messaging which told the story of a man and his trials, rather than the God of War and the monsters he was conquering.
In addition to adjusting the sorts of imagery we displayed, our rebrand also involved a significant logo rework for the franchise. We did this for a few reasons: 1) to demonstrate to users who had previously dismissed the franchise that this was a new and different direction for the franchise, 2) to avoid confusion around the possibility that this may be a continuation of the main story (this was a prequel), and 3) to generate speculation and subsequent buzz around why the logo might have changed and what it might mean to the franchise. To this end, we moved away from the traditional "stone" look of past series logos, into a more "inky" visual language, while still maintaining familiarity through similarities in serifs and fonts.
The biggest game announce in PlayStation history
With Ascension, we wanted to go huge for the initial announcement of the title. We wanted to leverage the extremely passionate fanbase we already had to amplify our announcement by building mystery and speculation around our campaign. To that end, we started our announce campaign by dropping a cryptic teaser image with the question "Will vengeance bring redemption?" and the date of our announcement across PlayStation's social channels and owned properties, driving users to like our Facebook page or sign up for the live announcement. This drove a huge amount of speculation through not just the God of War fanbase, but the entire PlayStation user base. We kept up the heat through a live countdown on PlayStation.com right up until the announcement.
For the initial announcement, we held an embargoed press event at Santa Monica Studios debuting the game's announce trailer and answering some initial questions about the game. The trailer we released was focused on establishing the story as a prequel while adding depth to Kratos, the main character, and re-positioning him as a more human and relatable character. For fans, at the date we specified, we changed our PlayStation takeover imagery and hero videos to the announce trailer, and hosted a live stream on Facebook of the game's director announcing the game and answering questions, with huge numbers of fans tuning in worldwide. We also amplified this announcement through a targeted digital ad buy across Facebook, SEM, and display ads on a few key enthusiast sites.
Mid-campaign: Expanding the audience
Now that we'd re-hooked the existing fanbase, and established our "new and improved" story bonafides, we shifted our mid-campaign focus to expanding the game's audience. One of the primary ways we planned to do this was by adding a fully-fledged deep multiplayer experience to the game - one which would appeal to a segment of gamers who loved the franchise's fast-paced combat, but didn't care for the story. The middle of our campaign was designed to draw new gamers into the franchise by letting them experience this mode, while simultaneously engaging existing core fans through tying the multiplayer experience into the game's single-player story.
We created a huge beta program for the multiplayer mode, both to gain product feedback, and build hype. Access was tiered, with exclusive early-entry windows for our most engaged fans in order to manufacture additional demand, as well as gradually scale server load to ensure quality experience. A major part of this system was the launch of our Rise of The Warrior campaign, which came alongside an overhaul of godofwar.com (which was also PlayStation's first mobile-responsive website). Rise of The Warrior was an online social competition in which users who signed up were split into two teams and competed for shareable in-game and online rewards, including early beta and demo access, while simultaneously experiencing an online graphic novel which told a story tying the player's multiplayer character into Kratos' primary tale. Hundreds of thousands of users participated, with huge levels of engagement and earned organic reach through sharing. Throughout this campaign, we also gradually released new "god" trailers to introduce fans to the new mode's mechanics, and start building discussion around which god users would pledge themselves to most.
Launch: Going big & getting back to our roots
For the launch window of God of War: Ascension, we turned things up to 11. The focus was once again back on the single player experience and the new story featuring a gentler, deeper Kratos. As such, we put on a full-court press with retail POS takeovers, weekly PR beats, extensive paid digital campaigns ranging from Facebook buys to YouTube mastheads, and a huge TV buy. Some key co-marketing partnerships helped us further amplify our reach beyond where our own dollars could take us - by creating exclusive in-game 300 and Vikings content, we secured major promotional support from Warner Brothers and The History Channel, while we also pioneered intra-Sony partnership by placing an exclusive demo on the Total Recall blu-ray in exchange for retail and above-the-line ad buy support. The asset central to our launch campaign was a beautifully-produced live-action Superbowl ad we created titled "From Ashes" showing the softer side behind Kratos' motivation. All-in, we managed to drive over 10 million organic views of the trailer, driving massive pre-order volume and enabling us to exceed our intimidating targets.
