Viral vs. traditional marketing, new commercials from Blizzard prove to be both
Companies will do almost anything to get advertising out to their target audience. We’ve seen viral videos, PR stunts, and even lame Super Bowl commercials, but is World of Warcraft now looking at its user base for its marketing strategy?
We’ve all seen them before, viral videos are the type that entertain to a point that we say, “Bob has GOT to see that.” Then send a link to all of our friends. It’s well known that these videos reach quite a large audience, but more than that the audience remembers them better than commercials mainly due to the fact that they are actually entertaining. With this combination it is an advertising dream come true, except for the fact that almost any time that a name brand is placed on a video it slacks in views.
Bring in Blizzard’s newest ad campaign. Possibly inspired by SouthPark’s World of Warcraft episode, it features characters inspired by and “played” by celebrities. The first two commercials were of William Shatner dressed in something reminiscent of Jedi Robes singing the praise of being able to throw elemental spells and Mr. T showcasing his “Night Elf Mohawk” which he claims to just may have hacked the game to create his own class (it’s only a warrior).
With the popularity of these two commercials, Joystiq tells us that Blizzard has released two new ones for their French and Spanish speaking customers. Jean Claude Van Damme is now commenting on how he can bring out the sheep in us all, and Guillermo Toledo boasts his paladin combat moves in more than one way.
So now that World of Warcraft is making commercials with pop culture icons, when are they going to listen to the masses and bring in Chuck Norris?
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