Acclaim Marketing: And You Thought Sony Was Bad

[Psykoboy2]

A favorite magazine of mine, Mental Floss (http://www.mentalfloss.com/), recently listed the top 10 guerrilla marketing companies and the folks at Acclaim made the list.

Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/06/27/acclaim-makes-list-of-top-guerrilla-marketers/) was kind enough to give us a list of those efforts:


* Offering cash to the first five UK citizens who'd legally change their name to Turok, apparently 3,000 people offered.

* Shadow Man 2 they offered relatives of the newly dead to put promotional ads on the headstones of their recently deceased. They pulled that one.

* Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance they apparently considered "bloodvertising," which would have bus shelter ads seep a red liquid onto the street.

* And finally, offering to pay all speeding tickets in the UK the day Burnout 2 released. They had to retract this one also because of the potential danger.

[Serapth]

I dunno, the Turok and Gladiator scams actually sound brilliant.

The Burnout 2 one though, is a fucking masterpiece of advertising. What did they do in the end? Nothing! And still word of mouth got out.

The Shadowman thing... yeah, thats all kinds of fucked up.

[jeffool]

Yeah, that last one takes the cake. (Though the first two are rather retarded as well.)

[Rock Bandit]

Ugh, the Shadow Man thing. I still remember the comic (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/04/02) PA did about that one.

[Tyler Durden84]

i wonder how many people actually did put shadowman on a family members grave only to find out it got pulled before they could remove it.

[Loganrapp]

The Shadow Man one is wrong in every sense of the word.

But the Burnout one? Brilliant. Because they knew they were going to retract it. No marketing guy is going to go, "oh, no one's going to bitch about that one." But they look good, because they first offer to help, but then "realize" it's a wrong move and quickly correct it.

And the Turok one's a brilliant idea too. If people are willing to change their name, why not?

The "bloodvertising" thing is stupid, because all people are going to know is that their streets are slick with some red blood, with no idea why. Good thing they didn't even go that far.

--Which is why I wonder why this got put up there. They considered it, but didn't actually go through with that. Well, marketing people consider all sorts of crazy shit. That's their job. And then the executives are the ones who say "yes, let's do that one," "no, let's not." So I don't see why the Gladiator one got mentioned against them. Seems kind of forced to make them look worse.

[Rafer]

All these Acclaim promotions were just made up to get publicity, there was never any intention of really doing them (I guess). Sad really.

[ProfPuppet]

Read all of these before, but they still make me wonder what the hell the executives and marketing people were thinking. Acclaim: home of good drugs, mediocre games, and bad judgement.

[LongStepMantis]

A little tasteless but brilliant marketing, even if it does make them seem a little like a Japanese game show equivalent of marketing.
The tombstone and ticket ideas were too much, but I'm guessing, as others have stated, they knew that from the beginning.
Evidently Acclaim has a next-gen hype machine.

[NationalKato]

What, this is surprising? C'mon, I thought it was common knowledge that marketing reps and ad execs have no souls?

[BPM]

"Bloodvertising" for the Win. They should of made Headstones "bloodvertise." :p

[Wyrm]

Anyone in advertising will tell you ALL of those are bad ideas.

[Psykoboy2]

Anyone with a brain in advertising will tell you ALL of those are bad ideas.

Fixed that for you.

[Stinking Kevin]

Didn’t they once also pay new parents to name their kid Turok? (Or at least offer to?)

Coincidentally (or not?) I was leaving the grocery store parking lot just yesterday when I passed a late-model semi-pimped-out black Ford Taurus with tinted windows and "TUROK 1" vanity plates. Maybe just a big fan of the comics or something, but all those old Acclaim shenanigans immediately leapt to mind.