MSI-GMP-2011 29 January, 2011 Halo 3: Heroic Marketing How does a video game shatter all-time records set by the biggest of Hollywood movies? How do you take a video game of hardcore loyalists to a mainstream audience? This is the tale of such astounding feats and how to achieve them. This is the tale of strategizing and implementing a marketing plan by using creative as well as media forces across numerous channels to tell an epic story. This is a tale of Halo 3 – the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Halo 3 was a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie exclusively for Xbox 360. The game was the third title in the Halo franchise and concludes the story arc that began in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2. The game was released on September 25, 2007 in Australia, Brazil, India, New Zealand, North America, and Singapore; September 26, 2007 in Europe; and September 27, 2007 in Japan. On the day before its official release, 4.2 million units of Halo 3 were in retail outlets. The game grossed $300 million in sales in the first week alone. By the first week of January, 2008 it sold over 8 million copies. In addition, more than 1.7 million copies were pre-ordered in the United States, making it the fastest pre-selling game in history. 1 The Xbox 360 title beat previous U.S. sales records set by blockbuster openings for entertainment events such as the release of the movie Spider-Man 3 and the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. [1] (Exhibit 3) Halo 3‘s launch was even cited as a primary reason for the failure of the Ben Stiller movie, The Heartbreak Kid, which opened at the box office on the same weekend. 2 1 Microsoft News Center, Oct 4, 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-04halo3firstweekpr.mspx 2 David Davies “U@PLAY: Movie flop blamed on Halo 3 release” San Antonio Express-News, Oct 19, 2007 Sudeep Kumar, student of the XLRI GMP 2011 batch, prepared this case for the course Marketing Strategy & Implementation. This case study is meant as the basis for class discussion and understanding the field of study rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. The case makers have tried their best to provide the sources of the information provided but do not owe any responsibility towards the accuracy of information provided by the sources. The material is not protected by copyright but please request permission to reproduce this case study for academic purposes by dropping me an email [email protected]
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MSI-GMP-2011 29 January, 2011
Halo 3: Heroic Marketing
How does a video game shatter all-time records set by the biggest of Hollywood movies? How do
you take a video game of hardcore loyalists to a mainstream audience? This is the tale of such
astounding feats and how to achieve them. This is the tale of strategizing and implementing a
marketing plan by using creative as well as media forces across numerous channels to tell an epic
story. This is a tale of Halo 3 – the biggest entertainment launch of all time.
Halo 3 was a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie exclusively for Xbox 360. The
game was the third title in the Halo franchise and concludes the story arc that began in Halo: Combat
Evolved and continued in Halo 2. The game was released on September 25, 2007 in Australia, Brazil,
India, New Zealand, North America, and Singapore; September 26, 2007 in Europe; and September
27, 2007 in Japan.
On the day before its official release, 4.2 million units of Halo 3 were in retail outlets. The game
grossed $300 million in sales in the first week alone. By the first week of January, 2008 it sold over 8
million copies. In addition, more than 1.7 million copies were pre-ordered in the United States,
making it the fastest pre-selling game in history.1
The Xbox 360 title beat previous U.S. sales records set by blockbuster openings for entertainment
events such as the release of the movie Spider-Man 3 and the book Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows.[1] (Exhibit 3) Halo 3‘s launch was even cited as a primary reason for the failure of the Ben
Stiller movie, The Heartbreak Kid, which opened at the box office on the same weekend.2
1 Microsoft News Center, Oct 4, 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-04halo3firstweekpr.mspx 2 David Davies “U@PLAY: Movie flop blamed on Halo 3 release” San Antonio Express-News, Oct 19, 2007
Sudeep Kumar, student of the XLRI GMP 2011 batch, prepared this case for the course Marketing Strategy &
Implementation. This case study is meant as the basis for class discussion and understanding the field of study rather
than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
The case makers have tried their best to provide the sources of the information provided but do not owe any
responsibility towards the accuracy of information provided by the sources. The material is not protected by copyright
but please request permission to reproduce this case study for academic purposes by dropping me an email
Given the intricacies of the video gaming industry, video game marketing and history of Halo‘s
success, the challenge and the response can be summed up in two statements of the marketing team:
“We were asked to get those people who didn‟t care about Halo; who didn‟t play Halo; or who didn‟t know
about Halo, to buy Halo 3 – a futuristic humans versus aliens science fiction video game. So, we changed the
question from „how do you market a video game?‟ to „how to you honor a hero?‟”
Master Chief as hero4
Chris Lee, global group product manager, took up the thread of how the marketing for Halo 3 was
designed to humanize the game's lead character, Master Chief, and bring in a wider audience than
the adrenaline-soaked core gamers the series resonates best with.
According to Lee, "The marketing statement was really based around Master Chief. We did some
research, and found out that people thought of Master Chief the same way they think of Robocop
and the Terminator, a killing machine... we had to humanize him to reach a broader audience."
Noting that 2006-07 was filled with political, celebrity, and athletic scandals, the creative team
working on the ads reasoned that "there was an opportunity to elevate the status of Master Chief to a
hero." This was accomplished with a variety of ads which show "veterans" of the sci-fi war depicted
in Halo 3 recollecting their fictional memories of Master Chief's battlefield heroism.
Said Lee of the core gamer dilemma, "The challenge we had, and it was identified early on – we
didn‘t have an awareness problem, people knew it was coming out. It 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." His advice? "You should find another way to do the message for your
audience." The strategy was clear right from the start: using the launch to create a platform for the
game to take off towards success. However, there had to be a build up to the launch.
While most major game titles begin their campaigns weeks before the launch to build the buzz, Halo
3 differs greatly. A full 16 months before the game‘s launch, Halo 3 was officially announced via a
cinematic trailer rendered in real-time, shown at Microsoft‘s press conference at E3 5 on May 9,
2006.6 The trailer is set in the dry plains of Africa, with the ruins of a space elevator and other
damage visible. The Master Chief is slowly revealed walking through smoke and dust, occasionally
obscured by distorted images of the artificial intelligence character Cortana transmitting a message
composed of portions of the character's lines in the Cortana Letters. The distorted voice of Cortana
was a deliberate clue to the character's predicament in Halo 3. (Exhibit 8)
4 Nutt, Christian “Analysis: Microsoft on the secrets of marketing Halo 3” Gamasutra, Apr 11, 2008 5 E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry
presented by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) 6 Ocampo, Jason "E3 06: Halo 3 announced, plot details revealed" Gamespot May 9, 2006
Halo 3 : Heroic Marketing
XLRI Jamshedpur – GMP 2011 Page 5
What followed can be classified into five phases of the Halo 3 marketing program. (Depicted in
Exhibit 1)
Phase 1: Starry Night
During Monday Night Football on December 4, 2006, Microsoft hit 7.9 million households (and 1.8
million of its target 18-34 audience) with an eerie spot featuring Master Chief grabbing his helmet
and jumping into the fray. Tag: "Finish the fight."
It showed Master Chief recalling his childhood in the heat of battle. "That really put a human face
on Master Chief," said Lee. "We aired this one time on Monday Night Football one time, nine
months in advance of the launch of the game... It was very expensive... [but] as soon as it was
broadcast it was made available on the web... people watched it once on TV and then again and
again, tens of millions of times," Lee revealed.
The style of the ad itself was designed to not be jarring to the TV-watching audience, eschewing
game graphics for real actors and lifelike CG. However, it worked on another level, as it introduced
new gameplay concepts to a watchful core gamer audience – such as Master Chief's use of the
Bubble Shield, a new defensive item introduced in Halo 3.
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 2007.7
Phase 2: The Beta
In April 2007, Bungie announced that fans could win a chance to try out the multiplayer component
of Halo 3 from May 16 to June 6 (later extended to June 10). Players could enter the beta in several
ways:
Those who signed up on Halo3.com website following the Starry Night commercial
The first few thousand players to register after playing three hours of Halo 2 on Xbox Live
Those who purchased specially marked copies of the Xbox title Crackdown
According to Jerret West, global group product manager, "We had a massive beta, and a lot of
people were talking about whether this made sense at all for a game of our magnitude." However,
the beta wasn't necessarily about testing the game's technology, from West's perspective. "We
wanted to drive preorders. For Halo, it's all about day one."
Allowing users into the beta created "a psychological investment" in the game, according to West.
"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." Thanks to the beta, "we saw a spike of preorders
25% week over week," West revealed.8
7 Hartley, Matt "The play's the thing" The Globe and Mail Sep 22, 2007 8 Nutt, Christian “Analysis: Microsoft on the secrets of marketing Halo 3” Gamasutra, Apr 11, 2008
Halo 3 : Heroic Marketing
XLRI Jamshedpur – GMP 2011 Page 6
In other words, as per Brandweek: Before the beta expired on June 10, 820,000 participants spent
more than 12 million hours of playing online. Using its saved films feature, where you can capture
snippets of gameplay and download it, more than 350 terabytes of Halo 3 data was downloaded
from Xbox Live (which is the equivalent of 82 million music downloads).
Phase 3: Project Iris
A component of Halo 3's marketing was an alternate reality game 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 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 ‗secretive‘ to send fans on a quest to know more
about Halo. This was followed up with a fake ad planted in media circulars, to seek out clues via an
online/offline scavenger hunt to unlock new information about Halo 3 and its back-story.
As per a Microsoft spokesperson: "Iris is a spiral campaign designed to take gamers on an incredible
journey through the Halo Universe. Led by an 'unknown' hand, users will discover bits of previously
unknown information about the Halos, the Flood, the Forerunners, and the true origins behind the
Halo trilogy. It's designed to give us more information on how the great conflict all began, as we
build up to the climactic conclusion of the series on 26th September.‖
By August 9, 2007, about 47 days before the launch, over 1 million Halo 3 titles were already sold in
pre-orders in North America alone.
Phase 4: Promotional Partner Activity
Much like movie franchises look to secure key category partners, so did Halo 3. Microsoft
collaborated with other companies to produce Halo-themed merchandise and promotions at retailers
and vendors. Various games, action figures, collectible toys, collectible miniature games were
released in September.
Microsoft lined up a veritable army of marketing partners:
Pontiac, which committed $5 million in media to the game's launch
Pepsi, which created a variant of Mountain Dew called Game Fuel especially themed for
Halo 3
7-Eleven sold the Slurpee version of the drink
Burger King used Halo designs and characters on food wrappings
Other partners included Game Stop, Samsung, Doritos and Comcast
In addition, Halo 3 was the official sponsor of the Projekt Revolution tour that year, featuring
popular groups like Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance which enjoyed huge fan
following with the same category that was Halo‘s audience.
Halo 3 : Heroic Marketing
XLRI Jamshedpur – GMP 2011 Page 7
Phase 5: Believe
Beginning September 11, 2007, the estimated $10 million-plus Believe campaign was the grand finale
to the five-pronged attack that Microsoft had launched a year back. This carefully orchestrated
onslaught intended to elevate Master Chief to epic levels of a real hero thereby making casual fans
interested and core fans rabid. In their own words:
“Speaking to Halo fans they told us that Master Chief was a heroic figure, and the story of this hero was the
main reason they wanted to play this game. Master Chief represents the very tenets of a hero – bravery, sacrifice,
duty, and selflessness. These themes are consistent with the qualities of real heroes, and classic storytelling
throughout history – they are universal and timeless themes that speak to all of us. Instead of telling people about
the action they were going to experience, like most video games, we needed to emotionally engage them is this
potentially epic story that they could come and play a part in themselves.”
The creative task was then to make people believe in Master Chief as a hero, and believe it in a
respectful and reverential way – as they did for real heroes of history. This meant taking the story out
of the virtual world into the real world. Also, it meant taking the story to the whole world.
A week before the Believe campaign, Microsoft re-ran Starry Night ads. Followed by ads
that dramatically introduced the audience to the diorama featuring the John 117 monument,
hand crafted version of a historic battle in which Master Chief heroically led his troops to
victory.
The effort centered on an immaculately constructed diorama9 depicting the great battles of
lead character Master Chief. (Exhibit 9)
The Believe website allowed visitors to pan the length of the massive diorama over 1,200
square feet (110 m2) in size and over twelve feet tall, with handcrafted human and Covenant
figures represented at one-twelfth scale10
With this as a backdrop, warriors that did battle with the game's hero provide testimonials to
his greatness.
Statues were erected in honor of Master Chief (Exhibit 10)
Murals were painted and street plaques were dotted around Europe commemorating
fictional battleground sites (Exhibit 10)
In the UK, a war photography exhibition was held in cinemas
All of the work came from the same core concept, but was brought to life in very different ways in an
experiential nature so that consumers could engage and spend time with Believe. Not only did the
campaign embrace multiple touch points, it expanded them across the globe in non-repetitive
manner.
9 Diorama is a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase
for a museum, usually used to represent historic events 10
Aditham, Kiran "The Diorama Deconstructed; Modeling mayhem". Creativity, Oct 1, 2007
Halo 3 : Heroic Marketing
XLRI Jamshedpur – GMP 2011 Page 8
The Grand Finale
With the notion of Master Chief as hero now firmly entrenched, and a legion of consumers ready to
Believe, what followed was a massive PR frenzy to drive an awareness push just before the launch.
Some of the highlights were (Exhibit 11):
More than 10,000 retail stores in the United States held midnight launch parties for Halo's
release, in addition to other locations around the globe
The BFI IMAX Theater in London was devoted to Halo 3
Celebrity film-style premiere parties were held and streamed over Xbox Live
All the major newspapers and magazines from New York Times to The Sun covered the
launch and devoted several column inches during the pre-launch hype
The Result The marketing team at Microsoft was able to achieve both the objectives. Halo 3 had gone
mainstream and broken all the records by creating a true cultural phenomenon. 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. It 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 one of the
best-selling game of 2007 in the United States. (Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 4)
Critics across the mainstream and specialist press appreciated Halo 3 as a game and the marketing
strategy also went on to win several awards for creativity and strategy. (Exhibit 7)
"Halo 3 embodies our vision for the future of entertainment, where some of the world's greatest creative minds
will deliver a new generation of interactive storytelling." – Bill Gates
Halo 3 : Heroic Marketing
XLRI Jamshedpur – GMP 2011 Page 9
Exhibit 1 The Halo 3 Marketing Timeline
04 Dec. 06 25 Sep. 07
May 07 - Jun 07
Beta Testing
04 Dec. 06
Starry Night Aired
Jun 07 - Aug 07
Iris ARG
11 Sep, 2007 - 25 Sep, 2007
Believe Campaign09 Aug. 07
1 million pre-order sales
Source: Compiled by case writers
Exhibit 2 Top Selling titles in 2007 (Americas)
Source: VGChartz www.vgchartz.com
Exhibit 3 Top grossers – Opening Weekends (until 2007)
Rank Title Opening Date
1 Spider-Man 3 $ 151 m May 2007
2 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest $ 136 m July 2006
3 Spider-Man $ 115 m May 2002
4 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith $ 109 m May 2005
5 Shrek 2 $ 108 m May 2004 Source: IMDB www.imdb.com