Killer Ads for Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a game that sits poised to strike a minor revolution in gaming. The game's free-form platforming, allowing players to interact with all of the geometry in a level, is so easy and intuitive that many are comparing it to the sense of freedom first felt in Super Mario 64. It also gave the team at Ubisoft the enviable burden of trying to sell Assassin's Creed to the broad audience they feel the title deserves.

Now, Assassin's Creed obviously isn't Halo 3, and will not have the same level of money thrown around for it. Still, Ubisoft has used all of its resources to try and make the game very visible both online and on TV. If the game does not live up to its sales expectations, it will certainly not be for lack of trying from the teams responsible from either the development or marketing.

We talked with Ubisoft's Danny Ruiz, group brand manager, and Andrew Hui, senior brand manager, to find out about their marketing vow for Assassin's Creed.

Just keep on flying

Most people's initial impression of Assassin's Creed came from the game's first full trailer at E3 2006, which demonstrated the setting for the game, the protagonist and his purpose. More subtly, it established gameplay elements, such as crowd control, free-running, and the emphasis on the kill and the escape. The trailer turned heads and even hinted at the game's connection to events in the future.

"For the initial trailer, it was important to touch on the game's cool features and also better understand its next-gen features. It was a large part of our strategy for the reveal of the game [at E3 06], so we used a cover story in Game Informer to gain some attention for the title and the Montreal team put together a demo [shown behind closed doors] that won over a lot of the critics," detailed Hui. "We wanted to keep people engaged after that, so we used designer diaries. This is one of the first true next-gen games you'll see out there, so that's why we did designer diaries, to show people the next-gen difference."

"Consumers are heading towards the 'show me don't tell me' prerogative. All of the different videos are very integral in positioning [Assassin's Creed] as a must have title," added Ruiz. "One thing you may not have known about the trailer is, while it touched on the hero, the setting, and the escape, it actually had another neat detail: Altair actually planned the kill so that he would be right in front of the church when the clock struck 12 and the people let out, demonstrating the critical nature of timing."

Along with the developer diaries, one of the notable game trailers for Assassin's Creed featured electro rock band Unkle. The song, Lonely Soul, is melancholy suggesting the hero Altair's mood. Its downbeat tempo also matched the action of the game to make an exceedingly cool montage.

"I have to give credit to our Montreal studios," commented Hui. "It was designed to create empathy for Altair, highlighting some key moments of the game and ultilizing slow motion to emphasize the good parts of the game."

Did you catch the game and hey... did you watch that commercial?

Closer to the release date of Assassin's Creed, TV spots started to appear for the game in various prime time slots. By contrast to the previous trailers, these were more like movies in the way that they set up the story and scenario of the game. This was a conscious decision, as Ubisoft wanted to try and draw in a larger audience for the game beyond the core gaming crowd that was probably aware of it already.

"The trailer is on TV as well as online, and the style shows that as games become more mainstream, our marketing has to meet it," said Hui. "Beyond gameplay, we wanted to show the depth of the story and the emotions of the character and make them feel how powerful it is to play Altair. We do kind of want to reveal something towards launch that shows the full 360 degrees of the game and of [Altair's] capabilities. This is something you employ closer to launch to [help new consumers] find out more about the game."

"Our core audience is males 18 to 34, typical for gaming, but comparing our game to others is hard. We worked with all the major networks, like ESPN, Spike TV, and Comedy Central, to make sure our campaign had broad reach. We started with a commercial during the fourth quarter of the Patriots/Colts game – the most-watched NFL regular season game on a Sunday afternoon ever," he continued. "We also bought out November 17th South Park, so the only thing consumers saw [during the breaks] was three two-minute ads for Assassin's Creed. That was the South Park that was about Guitar Hero, so it was somewhat appropriate as well. [The trailers] covered various qualities, highlighting why [the game is] a 'must have.'"

"One of the mandates from the higher ups at Ubisoft was to match the innovation of the marketing campaign to meet the gameplay," noted Ruiz. "We had a cliffhanger trailer for the TV ad, sending them online and giving consumers an incentive to find out more about the game. The South Park buyout had also never been done before – the three two-minute TV ads fed into different audiences for the game and we're proud about the results."

Set up for the kill

Working alongside the TV and online campaigns was the official website of the game, assassinscreed.com. From very early on, new trailers (and info about the game) were broken there first. It was simplistic, but it offered a good sampling of what Assassin's Creed had to offer.

"We wanted to create a destination that works for the mainstream audience, so we decided to create a video only website," commented Hui. "All the trailers tie into things we've done on TV."

"What stood out to me was how it became an information hub," added Ruiz. "We wanted people to learn everything about the game from the video we prepared."

The campaign ultimately encompassed much more than online and TV spots. It was rounded out using special offers and promotions that tried to broaden the audience for a game that probably would have only reached a smaller, core audience only a few years ago. It's all befitting for an anticipated and genuinely cool looking game.

"We have been focusing a lot on the TV spots, but our job as marketers is to have everything to work together. There was a special deal for GameStop, which used a special code and gave people incentives to pre-order the game; it also emphasized the online aspects of the ad campaign. We even sent out iron-on patches for the game. Having all these elements come together to drive pre-orders is a common goal we've worked towards for the past few months, pulling all the audiences together and putting forth all the appealing elements for the game to make it a must buy," concluded Hui.