Ubisoft Blankets TV With Snowboarding Ads
It takes a lot these days to grab people's attention, and Ubisoft realizes that they'll need to do something special to get gamers to notice Shaun White Snowboarding. To that end, they're shelling out $10 million on an unconventional advertising strategy leading up to the game's November 16 launch. First up, on October 8, Ubisoft has bought up all the commercial airtime for the first two episodes of this season of South Park.The first episode will feature three commercial breaks of two minutes each for Shaun White Snowboarding, Prince of Persia and Far Cry 2. The second episode will be all Shaun White Snowboarding.
"It's the first time they are going to see the game, so we wanted to give them a nice grasp of what it looks like," said Danny Ruiz, associate director of brand marketing, Ubisoft, San Francisco. "This is a better alternative to running a bunch of 30-second ads that piss people off because they've seen them so many times."
On launch day, White himself will appear on ESPN throughout the day talking about the game, and then on November 19, Ubisoft will be creating a "White Out" across Viacom channels like MTV, Spike, and Comedy Central where viewers will see their screens turn into snow for five seconds, then a two minute trailer for the game. Keeping with the snow theme, the spots will also air before the movie It's Always Snowing Somewhere during its limited run.
Honestly, I can understand wanting to try something different, but is a longer commercial really better than a 30 second spot? I'm still going to fast-forward through both of them. I don't watch any TV live anymore, so my DVR FF button gets quite a workout. I hardly ever watch commercials. Maybe its time to think beyond TV?
Ubisoft Ads Invade 'South Park' [Adweek]
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 7 October 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: advertising, far cry 2, prince of persia, shaun white snowboarding, south park, ubisoft
God forbid they spend that money on maybe, making a better game?