Context There are few FPS brands as big as Call of Duty. However, its mobile division is new to the scene and finds itself in competition with other titles in the market that have a more established base. In an effort to help buid a community around the mobile version, CODM organized, in partnership with Sony Xperia, a World Championship that would attract talents from around the world and bring awareness to the CODM competitive scene.
To help set up CODM for long term adoption and growth, Biborg was brought onboard to help produce assets that heralded the arrival of the World Championship’s regional Playoffs, aimed at getting key market audiences excited (Asia, Western Europe, North America and Latin America) and getting them to subscribe to their local YouTube channels to watch their tournament live.
Challenges Our main campaign objectives were to not only build hype and awareness around the regional playoffs and World Championship, but also to drive subscriptions to local YouTube channels across all key markets.
However, there were a few creative challenges we faced. For starters, we had to promote an esports event at a time of the global pandemic. We had therefore no access to real life footage (teams, crowd etc…) as the tournament took place online only. We also had to create a hype trailer without necessarily building hype around already established teams as the tournament was truly open to anyone.
Creative Thinking Biborg wanted to bring all the ceremony and excitement of American Prime Time Sports to this championship. The video had to be big, bold in order to hype the viewers. The aim of this trailer was not to show the story behind the game, but really the stakes of the tournament. We focused on showing the esports spirit and ambiance you can have when you play CODM as a team. To do so, we decided to add live game comments on our video, focusing mainly on key dynamic and decisive moments.
We also had to take into account that to create an international package for the regional tournament, every video had to be on point with the local region it was made for. Our video would be ensuring those channels grow their fan base.
Our creative answer To get over the lack of real footage of live matches, our creative team decided to build a 3D decors that would remind the viewers of regular professional esports halls. Those sequences added to the competitive spirit of the video.
We created a total of 21 videos divided between the 5 regions with three different formats : 30s, 20s and 6s. The text cards were all localized in relevance to the regions. For the Japanese edit, we went a bit further by recording Japanese live commentaries to best fit with Japanese audience expectations.
Our videos were pushed live for Casual Browsers to see when the action of the Playoffs was at its peak, driving them instantly on the active YouTube Stream of their region.
Follow the Youtube of Call of Duty Mobile : Global ; Japan ; LATAM.