HALO 4 – GOLIATH vs. DAVID

Business Situation Halo 3 had been one of the biggest video games of the 2000s. Not only was Halo 3 the top selling game on Xbox in 2007, but it had gone on to sell 11.73M copies globally over its lifetime - earning it the accolade of being the fifth best selling Xbox game of all time. The game has the distinction of receiving a 93% rating on Metacritic and is recognized as besting Spiderman 3 and Harry Potter in 2007 to break the record for the highest grossing entertainment property in 24-hour sales. (Source: VG Chartz, Metacritic, Xbox)

Problem was, all of that was five years ago.

Since 2007 our competition in the first person shooter category had dramatically upped their game, most notably the Call of Duty franchise. In the five years following the launch of Halo 3, the Call of Duty franchise sold a stunning 97.4 Million games worldwide. Meanwhile, the Halo franchise launched two Halo games that diverged from the central storyline of Halo 3, and had sold just 23.4 Million over the same five-year period. Halo had lost first person shooter fans in such volume that by the dawn of 2012 the franchise was being perceived as “stale” by fans and casual gamers alike in polls and rankings everywhere. Most telling, in a benchmark survey of 40,000 gamers conducted annually by gametrailers.com, Halo 4 ranked tenth in anticipation behind virtually every competitor in the first person shooter category including Call of Duty. (Source: VG Chartz, Xbox Research Chelan Research Report 120911, Halo Franchise Equity (US, UK, FR) July 2008, Halo3 Gamers_0907_1107_kimest)

Call of Duty wasn’t only more popular than Halo as a franchise overall, but in the fall of 2012 (launching the very next week after Halo 4) they would also be launching their biggest title ever, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 with a reported 100-million dollar global marketing budget. With only XXX for our worldwide launch in media, a fraction of their advertising spend, we would have to make every dollar count. Finally, (just to make it a challenge), we were tasked with launching Halo 4 on November 6th 2012, the very same day as the U.S. Presidential Election. (Source: AdWeek 2012, SMG Media Plan)

Campaign Objectives: Our client’s goals were ambitious. Xbox’s primary metric of success would be built on year one sales with a X-Million unit sell through goal for 2012, exceeding the goals of all previous Halo launches, and of which 25% needed to be in pre-order sales. To accomplish these business goals, Xbox asked us to find ways to ignite passion specifically among the six million lapsed Halo gamers who had left our franchise in search of bigger and better thrills. The goal was to get all of these former Halo fans talking about the new game, so that their excitement would infect a broader audience. (Source: Halo 4 IMC Plan 11.8.11)

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The Story Of Halo Halo is a first person shooter video game about a futuristic intergalactic battle between mankind and an alliance of evil aliens known as “the Covenant.” This sprawling storyline was wrapped up neatly after nearly seven games with the victory of mankind over the menace.

The hero of the Halo franchise is an elite warrior “John-117,” better known by his nickname “Master Chief.” The Chief is a renowned hero within the Halo storyline and has also become an icon of the franchise in general. While his background is somewhat mysterious he is known as being a bit like “Superman” – unstoppable and unfailing in the heat of battle. Master Chief hasn’t been a playable character in the franchise since 2007 when he was put into deep cryogenic sleep in the concluding chapter of Halo 3.

Halo 4 marks his return.

Research Story: Going into research, our goal was to identify what could reinvigorate interest in Halo and Master Chief in the minds of gamers. The key challenge would be identifying how to handle the return of Master Chief and identify the most relevant way to present Halo’s iconic hero.

Partnering with the Xbox research team, we decided to bring gamers into a unique, non-traditional environment (a converted warehouse space) to engage them in a conversation about Heroes, Enemies, and Resurrections in pop culture and video games. These workshops included a range of gamers based on their engagement with the Halo franchise: the hardcore Halo Fans, the casual Halo players, the lapsed Halo players (those who had left the franchise long ago), and finally non-Halo players.

During these workshops, we were able to explore valid messaging territories for Halo 4, as well as evaluate the potential of three communication platforms for Halo 4 (that had emerged from an earlier quantitative study with Halo fans). The three platforms were: a story about a new threat in the game, a story about the game as reinvented or resurrected, and a story about the game that focused on heroism. (Source: IEB- Project Chelan Quant Testing Sept 2011, Xbox Research Chelan Research Report 120911)

The consumer research uncovered two critical insights: first, it became clear that the idea of “the new threat” held the most potential to distinguish Halo. We learned from gamers in detail about so-called “holy shit” moments in gaming, where a previously unknown threat suddenly appeared in the game. Forcing gamers to adjust their tactics, thinking, and assumptions on-the-fly and all at once was extremely powerful – and it’s what gamer cultural currency is partially based on. The refrain, “did you get to level three yet!?!” was built on a backbone of memorable “unpredictable threat” moments. Importantly, it was clear that these gamers were more excited to play against a new enemy than they were to play as an invincible hero.

Second was an interesting, although somewhat cynical finding. Master Chief, the hero of the Halo franchise, had a critical weakness - he wasn’t very relatable. Master Chief was perceived of as a flawless, emotionless character whose super-human abilities made him a little boring. Since the original launch of Halo, the cultural interpretation of heroes in our society had changed. The flawless superhuman hero was no longer interesting or attractive to gamers living in the age of the flawed, human hero: a Batman or Jack Bauer, or even the first responders who ran into burning

2 towers or the soldiers we know living in our neighborhoods. Gamers wanted vulnerable, relatable, human, characters—heroes who struggled with their role or who were uncertain about their ability to succeed. And, Master Chief as not perceived to be one of those kinds of heroes.

These two key insights helped form a core campaign idea: Rather than talk about the hero, we would talk about the enemy. We would use all marketing communication to tease, create and demonstrate the power of this new threat to the Halo universe. By dramatizing the enemy in the face of having an iconic and well-known hero, we would send a critical signal to gamers: this wasn’t a game that they had played before—Halo 4 would be something new. And, this new threat could change the way that Master Chief is perceived.

No longer the invincible, flawless hero - this time, Master Chief would be the underdog. (Source on Section: Chelan Research Report 120511 F1: Vendor Alternate Routes)

The Strategy DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH IN SPACE

Campaign Description: Examining the elements of the Halo 4 storyline, we took a hard look the central antagonist – an ancient alien monster who has been slumbering for 1000 years – the “Didact.” This creature, while central to the plot of the game, wasn’t the focus of any early marketing or PR efforts thus far. The Didact was an untapped resource and with our strategy we knew he could provide the fuel we need to get the Halo 4 campaign off the ground.

To bring our creative idea to life we had to make the Didact a larger than life Goliath who gamers would recognize as an overwhelming and exciting new challenge to play against. To accomplish this we had to dramatize what made the Didact powerful. Analyzing the fiction with developer 343 Industries, we developed four key elements that would form “the signature” of the enemy: a glyph shape, a distinct color, an orange scanning motion, and a frightening sound. We then would take this signature and use it to explain the Didact’s key superpower, the ability to control, manipulate and disrupt technology. Together these elements would form a visual campaign identifier that we could use to drive early awareness of Halo 4 and the campaign as a whole.

Our integrated idea took root across all channels. We began by doing the unexpected. At the E3 gaming expo, rather than show Master Chief, we told the story of the Didact monster attacking and destroying a starship. Kicking off the campaign with the absence of the hero created a tremendous response with gamers who naturally wondered, “where’s the Chief?” Digitally we executed dozens of homepage takeovers where we literally took over the page with the enemy’s disruptive signature. Socially, we disrupted the communications of gamer hotspots like IGN with our symbol, fueling speculation about the game. On television we disrupted soccer matches with virtual advertisements, and interrupted TV program intro packages. Online we premiered a full- length 2-minute trailer, portraying our hero Master Chief helplessly strung up and interrogated by the overpowering Didact. Finally, on launch day we hand-crafted a gigantic red glowing L.E.D. (the largest L.E.D. ever flown) a perfect replica of the Didact’s symbol, and then flew it down the Thames and over downtown London by helicopter. Our enemy had arrived.

3 Business Results: By staying focused on the enemy rather than the hero, we radically shifted the dialogue around the game. We moved to the number one spot in anticipation on several benchmarked gamer indexes, and as launch day approached, Nielsen ranked Halo 4 as the most anticipated game of the year. (Source: Nielsen Wire “Halo 4 Tops List” N= 4,823 gamers 7/13/12, Gametrailers.com, Kotaku, IGN, Gamespot)

As our launch day approach we were in indeed dramatically outspent 2:1 in media by our competitors in the AAA action gaming category.

Despite this disadvantage, Halo 4 was able to pull off competitive and sometimes comparable Brand Recall, Brand Linkage and General Recall metrics as our biggest competitors in the AAA titles category proving the effectiveness of our creative.

4 Launch day was huge, beating opening sales records for every Halo game ever sold, including Halo 3’s 24-hour franchise sales record.

We went on to beat our KPIs with 7.5M units sold in 2012 and exceeded our pre-order goal. To make our success even sweeter we defeated Call Of Duty: Black Ops II in weekly pre-order sales the week leading up to launch, suggesting that our campaign had successfully re-energized our lapsed fans. (Source: Xbox, VG Chartz)

Online, our epic full length two-minute game trailer portraying Master Chief helplessly trapped by the Didact antagonist received over 3-million hits during launch week and our stunt in London resulted in a Twitter reach of 32.3 Million with nearly 20,000 Facebook likes. (Source: Roundhouse Xbox Social Media Agency, YouTube, Kotaku, XBOX EMEA HQ Report “Glyph on The Thames” 2012 )

Despite overwhelming odds, a small media budget, an Election Day launch, and monster competition, we had successfully rebooted the franchise with Halo 4, and opened the door for new games to come.

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