World of Warcraft's "what's Your Game" Campaign

About the campaign:

The campaign I’m going to talk about is called “What’s your game?” – a multi-channel video campaign using 16 to 79 second videos or commercials with celebrity endorsement from various entertainment industries as representatives which includes Chuck Norris as “The Hunter”, Ozzy Osbourne as “The Dark Prince”, Mr. T as “The Night Elf ‘Mohawk’”, William Shatner as “The Shaman”, Verne Troyer as “The Mage”, Jean-Claude Van Damme as “The Troll”, Willy Torendo as “The Paladin”, Aubrey Plaza as “The Orc” and other celebrities or stars such as Steve Van Sandt, Vic Mignogna and Alexandre Astier. This campaign was launched to promote a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called World of Warcraft which is still number one of its kind so far. The campaign was designed by Blizzard Entertainment’s marketing team and was carried out through a series of TV and online (mostly YouTube) short video commercials, through a time period of roughly three years since 2008, each time before or with the launch of a new expansion of the game. The representatives leave the audience with impressions exactly like that of their movies, music, shows or TV series do, but this time, combining with the in-game features, 3D Machinima animations, epic lines, funny short sketches and with a finishing line “What’s your game?”. While showing off their in-game characters, the representatives each introduces the game in either funny, outrageous or gentle way, but all of them refer their alter ego to themselves. Also, some commercials were also followed by in-game events, the most popular one was “Mr. T’s Mohawk grenade” which was obtained by talking to Mr. T’s alter ego in the game, and would turn players into a Mohawk-head for five minutes.

Business objective:

The business objectives of the “What’s your game?” campaign were: firstly, promoting the game to nonsubscribers, which include offline video game players or players of other MMOs, by showing off the game features and its influence in a non-traditional way – celebrity endorsement; secondly, attracting the attention of non-players who are not familiar with video games, let alone massive multiplayer online video games, by connecting well-known faces and stars with their in-game character (most of these characters look extremely like those stars) and using the personal influence of selected celebrities and their word-of-mouth to persuade the audience into experiencing the free trial and, ultimately, becoming subscribers themselves; thirdly, consolidating the existing subscriber base by showing them the epicness of their game (so far only the World of the Warcraft has managed to get celebrity endorsement) and making them feel unique amongst other video game players, be it offline or online (no other games have celebrity endorsement). Although keeping the existing player from going away or switching