Some properties seem to transcend the normal bounds of their mediums to become true pop culture phenomena, ingrained in the minds of people of all sorts nearly everywhere. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was the fastest-selling book ever, selling more than eleven million copies in its first twenty-four hours. Spider-Man 3 broke opening weekend box office records in 29 countries, and was #1 in all 107 countries that it opened, bringing its international total to $231 million. Finally, Halo 2 sold 2.4 million copies and earned roughly $125 million in its first 24 hours on store shelves.

If that wasn't evidence enough that the Halo franchise was ready for consideration among the world's largest pop culture franchises, consider this: Halo 3 is expected to do even better. A significant factor that no doubt is helping to contribute to this is the truly epic and blockbuster advertising treatment that Microsoft is giving the game, spending an estimated $40 million in its promotion. It's so massive it's even been parodied by Ctrl+Alt+Del, Penny Arcade and GameDaily.

We talked with Jerret West, Global Product Manager for Xbox Games & Games for Windows, about how Microsoft wanted to take Halo 3 beyond the normal scope of games right from the start.

Every epic marketing campaign has to start off somewhere, and what more appropriate way to kick things off than with Monday Night Football? The "Starry Night" trailer was the introduction, so to speak, that the general public had to Halo 3; it featured a nice mini-story to engage people and a demonstration of some of the game's action. Its timing during an important mainstream sporting event was also a demonstration that Microsoft was looking to expand out awareness of Halo 3 from the usual gaming crowd (who'd probably know the game was coming out anyway) to make things even larger than Halo 2.

"Before we did [the Monday Night Football ad], we recognized that Halo had transcended videogames and had become a pop culture phenomenon," said West. "We wanted to treat [the game's ad campaign] like a blockbuster movie launch. We also wanted a bunch of rich content out there for people to see.

"We wanted a teaser ad [to start out with], so we put together a 60 second spot. The big difference between this and something like a movie trailer is the layered message. Even if you didn't know what Halo is, it was interesting viewing. For the Halo hardcore, there were things they hadn't seen demonstrated before, like the Bubble Shield. There was also a lot of speculation online over whether or not the boy [in the trailer] was Master Chief. They even overlaid the star map image and tried to find if it was on earth. 7.9 million people tuned into that spot when it originally aired and it's had 1.5 million downloads on YouTube alone."

The next major step in the campaign was more slanted towards the hardcore players: a multiplayer beta. Players could sign up online, but they could also get involved with the beta by purchasing an early copy of Crackdown. Packing the beta invite into Crackdown surely enhanced how the game performed on the market, and giving out the free betas helped spread awareness about Halo 3 in more than one way.

"We wanted to focus on the interactivity of the game," explained West. "We wanted to get the hands in the game of people saying, 'Is it unique compared to Halo 2?' so we wanted to put it into their hands and show them why Halo 3 is so good. We also wanted to show there's a wonderful story, and that you get to not only watch, but also play and we wanted to get people excited about the new features in the game.

"We were expecting a few hundred thousand [to sign up], but 820,000 people played the beta in 3 weeks. So now we have 800 thousand evangelists for the game and it's really positioned us to have a great launch. It's provided us a tangible proof point that you normally can't do with a marketing campaign and Halo 3 provides a specific opportunity to show off Xbox Live."