Marketing for Halo 3
Encyclopedia
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
video game Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
was the focus of an extensive marketing campaign which began with the game's developer, Bungie
Bungie
Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of...
, announcing the game via a trailer at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 2006. Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, the game's publisher, planned a five-pronged marketing strategy to maximize sales and to appeal to casual and hard-core gamers. Bungie produced trailers and video documentaries to promote the game, partnering with firms such as Digital Domain
Digital Domain
Digital Domain is a visual effects and animation company founded by film director James Cameron, Stan Winston and Scott Ross. It is based in Venice, Los Angeles, California...
and Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film.Founded in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger as RT Effects, Weta Workshop has produced creatures and makeup effects for the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys...
. Licensed products including action figures, toys, and Halo 3-branded soda were released in anticipation of the game; the franchise utilized more than forty licensees to promote the game, and the advertising campaign ultimately cost more than $40 million.
While Halo 2s release had set industry records, the mainstream press was not fully involved in covering the game; part of Microsoft's strategy was to fully involve casual readers and the press in the story. The saturation of advertising and promotions led Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
to state: "The release of Halo 3 this week was an event that stretched far beyond our little gaming world. Everyone from the New York Times to Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
wanted to cover it."
Released on September 25, 2007, Halo 3 became the biggest entertainment debut in history, earning more than $170 million in a few days and selling a record 3,300,000 copies in its first week of sales alone. Halo 3s marketing won several awards, and was cited as evidence of the increasing mainstream popularity of games.
Development
Jerret West, a global group product manager from Microsoft, said at a marketing conference that Halo 3Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
s marketing team had a mandate from Microsoft executive Peter Moore: "Don't screw up." Much of the marketing organization was handled by Microsoft's former corporate vice president of global marketing, Jeff Bell. A key challenge the team identified early on was that core gamers knew the game was coming out, but there was "a perception problem... we wanted to invite people into the console and into Xbox 360 and to play Halo 3 as a mass-market entertainment product," according to product manager Chris Lee. Since Halo 3 was released as an Xbox 360 exclusive, part of the marketing push was to sell more Xbox consoles, which had encountered sluggish sales.
Microsoft planned advertising and promotions to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers in a five-pronged marketing strategy. The first stage was to kick off marketing via a television commercial. The second stage was a beta test of the game to drive preorders and press attention. The third stage was the start of an alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
. The fourth phase was partner promotions, capped off with a final advertising campaign, titled "Believe".
Though Microsoft used forms of viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
for promotion (including the alternate reality game or ARG), the main focus of the company's efforts was traditional media outlets. Because there already was interest in the title among the gaming community, Microsoft did not feel the need to run a social media campaign, instead banking on the gaming community to spread the word itself. The focus on traditional media would help expand the fan base beyond established gamers and convince the public that the game was a cultural milestone. To build public interest, Microsoft made public statements that Halo 3 would surpass media sales records, including the July 2007 record of $166 million set by the launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Microsoft's target was to sell 1.5 million copies of the game. Marketing research suggested that the "Halo faithful" could only be counted on to buy 75% of that amount, meaning that 375,000 copies would have to be sold to non-fans. Thus marketing goals were to attract an audience beyond the Halo nation, and to break sales records; in short, to "make Halo 3 a true cultural phenomenon". The team upped their goals to not only selling the target number of copies, but making Halo 3 the biggest entertainment launch ever.
Promotional videos
A significant form of marketing was done by the release of videos. While Bungie often partnered with other companies to create advertisements, they also produced their own video documentaries, or "ViDocs", detailing the behind-the-scenes development of aspects of Halo 3, including redesigning enemy Brutes, additions to multiplayer, and other game features. The first ViDoc was released shortly after the game's announcement and was a "making-ofMaking-of
In cinema, a making-of, also known as behind-the-scenes, is a documentary film that features the production of a film or television program...
" style video, while the final ViDoc made its debut on September 20, 2007.
Trailers and shorts
Halo 3 was officially announced via a cinematic trailer rendered in real-time, shown at MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's press conference at E3 2006 on May 9. The trailer is set in the dry plains of Africa, with the ruins of a space elevator
Space elevator
A space elevator, also known as a geostationary orbital tether or a beanstalk, is a proposed non-rocket spacelaunch structure...
and other damage visible. The Master Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
is slowly revealed walking through smoke and dust, occasionally obscured by distorted images of the artificial intelligence Cortana
Cortana
Cortana is a fictional artificially intelligent character in Bungie's Halo video game series. Voiced by Jen Taylor, she appears in Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2 and Halo 3, in the prequel and epilogue of Halo: Reach, as well the novels Halo: The Flood, Halo: The Fall of Reach, ...
transmitting a message composed of portions of the character's lines in the Cortana Letters, as well as a line from the poem "The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men is a major poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics...
". The distorted voice of Cortana was a deliberate clue to the character's predicament in Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
, with a Bungie staff member stating, "We don't know what has happened to her...We don't know it's Cortana. It could be any sort of bizarre, almost Satanic sort of voice. Something seems wrong." The trailer featured music by Martin O'Donnell
Martin O'Donnell
Martin "Marty" O'Donnell is an American composer known for his work on video game developer Bungie's series, such as Myth, Oni, and Halo...
, with the addition of a piano and brass section to the classic Halo theme.
Advertising company McCann Erickson
McCann Erickson
McCann Erickson is a global advertising agency network, with offices in more than 130 countries. McCann is a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of Companies, one of the four large holding companies in the advertising industry....
created a second trailer that was aired only once on December 4, 2006. The video used a mix of computer-created graphics and live action; computer graphics were produced by Digital Domain
Digital Domain
Digital Domain is a visual effects and animation company founded by film director James Cameron, Stan Winston and Scott Ross. It is based in Venice, Los Angeles, California...
and directed by Joseph Kosinski. The spot, dubbed "Starry Night", was seen by 7.9 million viewers in its broadcast and watched more than 3.5 million times on YouTube by September 2007. The final trailer, shown during E3 2007 on July 11, consisted of actual campaign cinematics and gameplay.
The video teasers for Halo 3 included a series of videos directed by Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp is an Afrikaner-Canadian film and advertisement writer and director. Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated effects. He is best known as the co-writer and director of critically acclaimed...
, the proposed director of a possible Halo film produced by Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...
. Unlike previous trailers and videos, the shorts were the first to depict the Halo universe in a live-action setting. The production was a collaboration between Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film.Founded in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger as RT Effects, Weta Workshop has produced creatures and makeup effects for the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys...
, Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp is an Afrikaner-Canadian film and advertisement writer and director. Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated effects. He is best known as the co-writer and director of critically acclaimed...
and Bungie Studios. When asked about the shorts, Neill said that he hoped that it would help to interest movie studios in his currently inactive movie project, since it lost its studio support in October 2006. GameTrailers
GameTrailers
GameTrailers is a media website that specializes in video game related content. It provides free access to original programming , game trailers and recorded game play. Along with standard definition , many of the video clips are offered in a higher resolution .Users can upload videos, create...
released a compilation of the three videos edited together, titling it Landfall.
The first live action video, titled Arms Race, was originally shown at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2007. It was followed up by another short, Combat, which featured Covenant and human vehicles and weapons. The final video in the series aired on October 4, 2007 and was used by Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
to promote their reality show Last One Standing
Last Man Standing (UK TV series)
Last Man Standing and latterly Last Woman Standing is a BBC reality TV show that was first aired on 26 June 2007...
. The short ties the events depicted to the beginning of Halo 3, which begins as the Master Chief plummets to Earth.
"Believe" campaign
Diorama
The word diorama can either refer to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
over 1200 square feet (111.5 m²) in size and over twelve feet tall, with handcrafted human and Covenant figures represented at one-twelfth scale. According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather than computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy—war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief."
The diorama was built through a collaboration between Los Angeles, California-based New Deal Studios and Stan Winston Studios. Director Rupert Sanders had actors stand in for the marines, capturing their facial expressions and using them as the basis of the miniatures. Character assets from Bungie, including alien models and armor, were recreated and rebuilt for reuse. The twisted city ruins the diorama is set in were inspired by bombed-out Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
suburbs. Special attention was paid to creating a photo-realistic setting which was recognizably Halo.
Public beta testing
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
on Xbox Live
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It is currently the only online gaming service on consoles that charges users a fee to play multiplayer gaming. It was first made available to the Xbox system in 2002...
. Players could also buy a specially-marked copy of the Xbox 360 title Crackdown
Crackdown
Crackdown is an open world, third-person shooter video game for the Xbox 360. It was released in North America on February 20, 2007, and worldwide by February 23, 2007. Crackdown was developed by Realtime Worlds, and distributed by Microsoft Game Studios. It was conceived by Realtime Worlds...
, which allowed players to download the beta upon its release.
The public portion of the beta consists of matchmaking play on three multiplayer maps: Valhalla, High Ground and Snowbound. The public beta also contained a limited version of the "saved films" feature, which allows players to save and watch their played games. The day the public beta began, problems were reported from owners of Crackdown that they could not download the beta. Bungie announced that the Microsoft team found a solution and that the issue would be resolved shortly; a patch was distributed for Crackdown that fixed the problem. Bungie also extended the beta until June 10 to compensate for the issue. According to Jerret West, global group product manager, allowing users into the beta created "a psychological investment" in the game. "The idea was basically to make the beta launch huge and let the tastemakers make the launch for you... to really drive it beyond the gaming press." The beta caused a spike in preorders for the retail version of the game.
Alternate reality game
A component of Halo 3s marketing was an alternate reality gameAlternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
or ARG called "Iris". Alternate reality games, which involve cross-media gameplay and player participation, had been previously used for the promotion of Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
in the form of the influential and award-winning I Love Bees. Soon after the Halo 3 public beta ended, a user named "AdjutantReflex" appeared in the official Halo 3 forums on Bungie.net and began posting. A Circuit City advertisement was leaked onto the web days earlier, revealing the web address of an interactive comic which could be manipulated to reveal the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es of another series of sites. One website was the home of the "Society of the Ancients" a group supposedly interested in evidence of Forerunner artifacts left on Earth. Another featured a Forerunner object which gradually revealed text logs and video clips.
Merchandise and promotions
WizKids
WizKids, Inc. is an American New Jersey-based company that first made its mark in the game industry producing collectible miniatures wargames. WizKids was purchased by and is a subsidiary of National Entertainment Collectibles Association. The company was founded in 2000 by Jordan Weisman, a...
developed a Clix
Clix (miniatures)
Clix is a miniatures wargaming system developed by WizKids. It is characterized by the use of a dial wheel in the base of miniature figurines. The dial can be turned to represent the statistics of the figurine.Clix games include:* Creepy Freaks...
collectible miniatures game
Collectible miniatures game
Collectible miniatures games or CMGs are a form of miniature wargaming that is also similar to collectible card games — the primary difference being that while CCGs are card-based games, CMGs feature miniature figures....
entitled Halo ActionClix which was released on September 18, 2007. The tabletop game features miniature figures from the Halo universe, including characters and vehicles. Halo ActionClix figures were occasionally bundled with the game in promotional packs, and Gamestation
Gamestation
Gamestation is a chain of UK retail shops selling used and new video games, and was the second-largest specialist video game retailer in the UK until it was bought out by Game in 2007...
stores in the United Kingdom offered a Master Chief figurine to the first 1000 pre-orders of the Halo 3 Legendary Edition.
While previous Halo action figure series were produced by Joyride Studios, Todd McFarlane
Todd McFarlane
Todd McFarlane is a Canadian cartoonist, writer, toy designer and entrepreneur, best known for his work in comic books, such as the fantasy series Spawn....
produced several sets of Halo 3-related action figures. In addition to articulated figures released throughout 2008, McFarlane also released 12" inarticulate and more detailed figurines in November. Other companies which produced Halo 3 figures and statues include Kotobukiya, a Japanese company specializing in high-end statues and replicas, and Weta Collectibles, a division spawned from the famed physical effects company Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop
Weta Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film.Founded in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger as RT Effects, Weta Workshop has produced creatures and makeup effects for the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys...
. Weta Collectibles auctioned four of the statues in their lineup, specially cast in solid sterling silver, for auction on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
during August.
Microsoft collaborated with other companies to produce Halo-themed merchandise and promotions at retailers and vendors. Pepsi-Cola created a variant of Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew is a citrus-flavored carbonated soft drink brand produced and owned by PepsiCo. The original formula was invented in the 1940s by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman and was first marketed in Marion, VA, Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee. A revised formula was...
called Game Fuel. 7-Eleven
7-Eleven
7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co...
sold a Slurpee
Slurpee
A Slurpee is a flavored frozen drink sold by 7-Eleven. In 1967, 7-Eleven licensed the product from the ICEE Company, and began selling it as the Slurpee.-Slurpee history:Machines to make frozen beverages were invented by Omar Knedlik in the late 1950s...
version of the drink. Burger King
Burger King
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...
announced a special promotion starting September 24, 2007 featuring Halo designs and characters on food wrappings. Microsoft sponsored the #40 car driven by David Stremme
David Stremme
David Andrew Stremme is an American stock car driver. He is most notable as the 2003 NASCAR Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year, winning the award while running a part time for several different teams. He currently drives the #30 Chevrolet Impala for Inception Motorsports.-Early life:Stremme was...
for Chip Ganassi Racing
Chip Ganassi Racing
Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates is an automotive racing organization with teams competing in the IZOD IndyCar Series and the Rolex Sports Car Series. It is owned by businessmen Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates. They have won 4 Champ Car, 3 Indy Racing League and 1 Grand-Am championships...
in the Dover 400 Nextel Cup Series. The racecar featured a Halo 3 inspired paintjob featuring the title for the game printed prominently on the hood and rear bumper, as well as large pictures of Master Chief on each of the rear fenders.
Launch and impact
More than 10,000 retail stores in the United States held midnight launch parties for Halos release, in addition to other locations around the globe. MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
coordinated its own multiple-city launch parties, and Bungie staff members travelled around the world to host parties, in addition to a launch party held at Bungie's workplace; Larry Hryb
Larry Hryb
Lawrence "Larry" Hryb , also known by his Xbox Live gamertag Major Nelson, is the Director of Programming for the Microsoft gaming network Xbox Live. His blog "Xbox Live's Major Nelson" provides an "inside" look at operations at Microsoft's Xbox division. He picked the gamertag Major Nelson after a...
attended the New York City launch party. Sponsored launches featured prize giveaways and chances for fans to play Halo against celebrities and Bungie team members. The BFI IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
Theater in London was devoted to Halo 3, while some areas in the United Kingdom cancelled midnight launches fearing unruliness from the large crowds.
Halo 3 was phenomenally successful upon release. The game made $170 million in US sales on the first day of release, generating more money in 24 hours than any other American entertainment property up to that point. Halo would make an additional $130 million by week's end and sell 3.3 million units by the end of the month. By 2008, Halo 3 had sold 4.8 million units in the United States for a total of 8.1 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling game of 2007 in the United States.
Critics and publications pointed to the massive marketing and launch of Halo 3 as evidence that video games had "finally hit the mainstream". Video game critic Steve West of CinemaBlend.com pointed out the Halo 3 phenomenon as evidence of the mainstreaming of video games, stating that "...Like movies, radio, and television before, games are becoming more and more accepted in the popular culture." To capitalize on the mainstream attention, Joystiq
Joystiq
Joystiq is a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 that has since become one of the most successful sites within the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs. It is the centerpiece of WIN's own network of video gaming blogs, which also includes a blog dealing specifically with the popular MMORPG World of...
sister site Xbox360Fanboy noted, "Microsoft contends that such a [marketing] push is necessary to maintain the appearance of 'a big budget, mass media event'."
At the PRWeek awards Microsoft won the "Technology Campaign of the Year" along with Edelman
Edelman (firm)
Edelman is a global public relations firm with consumer, finance, healthcare, technology and industrial practices. It employs over 3,600 people in 53 offices around the globe. Edelman was founded in 1952 by Daniel J. Edelman and is today led by his son President & CEO Richard Edelman...
for Halo 3s launch. At the 2008 ANDY Awards, the "Believe" campaign won the "GRANDY", the grand prize. Halo 3s advertising also won five "gold cubes", one "silver cube" and two distinctive merit certificates at the Art Directors Club Annual Awards Ceremony, most of the awards relating to the Believe campaign.
External links
- HD announcement trailer, on Microsoft.com. (Direct link - WMV)
- Bungie Media Player at Bungie.net
- 720p E3 2007 trailer of Halo 3 Campaign (WMV - 720p720p720p is the shorthand name for 1280x720, a category of High-definition television video modes having a resolution of 1080 or 720p and a progressive scan...
- 92MB) The E3 2007 trailer - New Deal Studios
- Article about New Deal Studios and Halo 3