Marketing the world’s most successful video games from Call of Duty to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater - Tyler Bahl, Activision

0:07Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored CMO. Now, in this special series, we are partnering with our very good friends at NBCUniversal to do a special series focusing on CMOs that have used the game-changing power of sport to transform their brand. This episode, we're going to be joined by Tyler Ball, the CMO of Activision. Now, if you don't know, Activision are one of the world's biggest game developers. They produce games like Call of Duty and my personal favourite, Tony Hawk Pro Skater. This is an amazing episode and Tyler's bringing a lot of insight into how they've used the power of sport to transform their business.

0:42Here it is. Tyler from Activision, welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Well, can't wait to get into gaming because it's a fascinating industry, really big industry and a lot going on. But maybe before we do that, tell me a little bit about your journey here. But I'm particularly interested to know what happened at Quibi as well because you had quite a wild ride, didn't you? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm kind of a 14-year-old boy living my passions. And, you know, I worked in sneakers at Reebok. I worked in music at Columbia Records. I worked at Google and tech. And then I had an opportunity to go into streaming for Quibi, working with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman.

1:20And so it was an amazing opportunity. It, you know, lasted about nine months. You know, we launched right on top of the pandemic. And we were launching 10-minute episodes or, you know, 10-minute quality episodes. and you had about nine hours of Tiger King, you know, in the month of April right after COVID. And so the idea didn't fully land, but I still believe in it. And I think it had a lot of potential. And then after that folded, you know, I moved over to Activision and got to work on my favorite video game with Call of Duty. So you are living proof that you can follow your passion, not just your talent and still be successful.

1:55I mean, you have to stay humble and hustle, but yeah, you could totally follow your passions and you just have to have that grit and determination to go after it. Now, I was thinking about gaming because I was a big gamer as a kid. And I'm probably, well, I don't know, I should ask you actually whether I'm stereotypical of most people, but I probably gamed until I was maybe 16, 17. Then life took over and, you know, had to get a job and all that kind of thing. But I was up in the attic digging out the games I used to play. And back in the day, literally using cassettes, loading out, running, had to wait for five minutes while the cassette loaded the game into the computer.

2:28I imagine a little bit has changed in the few years since it's been, since I used to play. But tell me about the kind of gaming industry. How big is it? Like what's hot in the industry? Yeah, I think, you know, there were a couple of systems in the 70s, but I think in the 80s, it really took off, you know, with Pac-Man in 1980. And then thinking about the NES system, which really kind of was the catalyst for kind of what we think about gaming today. And then you go into, like I remember in my childhood, it was like the Wizard movie with Fred Savage, right? And there was these video game competitions and it's evolved.

2:58And every decade since then, everyone's grown up with gaming and stuff. And so you think about the addition of 3D graphics, you think about online communities and connectivity. And then you think about, you know, moving on to COVID, where it just was this, you know, kind of threw gas on the fire in order to kind of expand from there. And so, you know, gaming is really the center of culture at this point in time. I mean, it's a$200 billion industry, it's bigger than books or movies or music. And so it's really taken over. But I think really, it's become part of people's identity, right? And it's part of their lifestyle now.

3:33And I'll ask you, are you a gamer? Well, I'd probably say no, but you'll probably tell me I am. Yeah, I mean, like, think about all the ways people play right now with, you know, on mobile devices, you know, thinking about, you know, Candy Crush, you know, from our sister company King, or thinking about, you know, the New York Times being a gaming company now where you're playing, you know, the crossword puzzle, or you're playing Wordle. And so there's so many ways to play. Even LinkedIn has gaming now. And so I think the definition of a gamer has evolved. And I, you know, I ask people that all the time.

4:04They're like, I'm not a gamer. And then I look at their phone and they have all of these. Actually, that's a good point. I did. I did check this out that there is one game in your portfolio that I play probably every day. My sort of guilty little secret. Can you guess what that is? Well, I'm a fan of the podcast and I know that you're a skater. So my assumption is that you are a Tony Hawk fan. Well, I'm a massive, massive Tony Hawk fan. If I had the time, I would be all in on Pro Skater. I mean, like, he's my guy, right? I'm a kid from the 80s. I followed Tony Hawk, like, growing up. Well, I brought you, I don't want you to carry anything too heavy back for the man, but I brought you this mini skateboard from the Tony Hawk Games.

4:42Unbelievable. And we're really excited. We're bringing Tony Hawk back this year. So, you know, on July 10th, we're going to remaster three and four Pro Skaters. So all the original parks, all the original skaters, but it also brings up this idea of like nostalgia, right? So it's all the things that you loved. And, you know, as a kid, you know, the game came out almost 23 years ago. But now, you know, we're freshening it up in different ways, obviously bringing HD graphics and bringing it to new platforms like Switch 2. But in addition to that, you know, we're bringing SpongeBob SquarePants to the game.

5:18And so he is going to have a skate park there. we have Michelangelo from the Ninja Turtles, right? So we're doing things to freshen it up and we're even doing collaborations with like Doom and bringing that franchise over. So it's this kind of catalyst of, you know, what's old is new again, but also bringing a fresh take to it. I wonder with Tony Hawk. I mean, I was a really big fan of Bones Brigade and Tony kind of growing up. Did the game make, I presume the game itself also made him much more famous than he probably was because he was probably a kind of skate cult icon. But what do you think the role of the game had in popularizing him?

5:52Yeah, I mean, for all the people that didn't skate, you know, it was the only way that I, you know, had a connection to skate culture. And so playing this game, obviously, the music, right, the parks themselves and then all the skaters. Like I knew all the skaters from the game itself. So I think it really did a lot to really expand skate culture and really, you know, obviously the catalyst of him having, you know, five or six games and then now us all remastering them. And he's still as relevant today as he was back then from a skate perspective. So I think it was really, you know, it was a partnership.

6:25And I think it's also helped, you know, grow his profile. Yeah, that's very, very cool. So what's the profile of someone who will play kind of Tony Hawk Pro Skater? So is it people like me that were kind of OG fans of him growing up? Or has he brought a new generation of skate fans in through the game? It's both, right? I mean, you think about it, it's like, you know, I played as a kid and I want to play again. And then it's also introducing the game to my kids. for the first time and being able to play. And so I think that's the fun of it is that you're able to kind of connect to different generations.

6:56Like, you know, my parents didn't really understand gaming, right? And as a concept or, you know, I think my mom, you know, did buy the Atari, you know, 2600 and we had one in our house. But I think at the same time, now every single generation since the 80s has grown up with gaming. It's just part of their household and the consoles or devices are already there. And now with mobile, it's just, you know, everyone has access to it. And so that's enabled just about anybody to play a game like Tony. And I think what people also forget is like, you know, as a parent, of course, your kids then get into gaming.

7:25So I started off with a ZX Spectrum 81, like 4K of RAM, you know, with literally Pac-Man in black and white or green screen. And then, of course, my kids will be on an ultra modern kind of console. And it's just amazing to see how it's kind of moved on in that time. Yeah, and it was consoles for a while. And then I think the PC, you know, audience has just continued to grow. And so, I mean, to be able to really trick out and customize, you know, your system and, you know, continue to update it. And it also has its own kind of subculture within gaming, right, of being a PC player versus a console player.

7:59And so, and then you see some new devices that, you know, that are coming out, like Xbox just announced, you know, their new kind of ROG Ally X. And I think being able to carry a PC in your luggage, right, and have all those high-end, high-fidelity games, I think is, you know, kind of unlocking additional opportunity. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about how you launch a game, because I think Pro Skater is coming out, isn't it, in a couple of weeks' time, so we're kind of just on the edge of the launch. I had a little bit of an experience with gaming. I launched Mountain Dew in the UK, and we did a collaboration with one of your competitors, actually, Halo 4, and we had Master Chief on pack on the bottle, and we called it Game Fuel.

8:38We turned it red rather than green. And I've never seen a reaction like it. It was just mind-blowing. So bear in mind, this is an energy drink that you'd pay two pounds or three dollars for. Right. And people were queuing up at midnight. I mean, we literally launched it at midnight, like in line with the game. And we had all these kind of people on social media photographing and filming huge queues and sort of celebrating the fact they'd bought an entire case of Mountain Dew. And I think we sold about four months stock in the first week. But I've never seen like as a cultural moment, I've never seen anything quite as it's probably similar to when the iPhone back in the day used to do a launch.

9:13and people would go crazy over that. But is that how it is? A game launch is like that still? Yeah, I mean, I think it's even bigger. I mean, we don't see as much people lining up at GameStop anymore because, you know, a lot of a majority of the purchases are happening digitally. But I think the fandom is still there, right? And I think the energy and excitement. I mean, we see the same things for our partners, whether it's Monster or Little Caesars and, you know, and brands like Polaris that we work with, that the fans get really excited because it's part of their identity now, right? It's becoming, you know, I like to think of Call of Duty as a lifestyle brand, right?

9:48Like it's not just having your hands on the sticks. You got to think about it. Like there's actually more people watching video games now than playing video games, right? And that was something that was very foreign to me. When I was a kid, I just wanted to have my hands on the sticks. My brother was playing and I was just really annoyed and I'm waiting for him to get off. And I think now people actually enjoy watching games, right? And so it's part of their lifestyle. and you might not be a Call of Duty player, but you might be aware of Call of Duty. You might be a mom buying the game for your relative and stuff.

10:20And so thinking about, okay, that overall cultural audience and now with this transmedia gaming, it used to be you would buy the book rights, right? And then you'd turn it into the movie or the TV series and then you'd expand to amusement parks. And now it's starting with gaming, right? And you see the success of Fallout and you see the success of Minecraft, going to a billion dollars. And it's starting with the cultural element of it and then expanding from there. Yeah. Now, for anyone who's not into gaming, this is wild, right? Because you actually have big stadiums where people are going live to watch people play.

10:56Correct. Not actually play. I mean, that is incredible as a live experience. It's taking it really from offline world completely in, sorry, the online world completely into offline world, isn't it? So how much of the business is now like the live version of it? Well, esports is really big. I mean, I think you have to go back to, I think about my days working at Reebok and, you know, with athletes. And so if you think about Nike or Adidas, like the athlete is the kind of the center of the bullseye, right? They are, you know, the apex of their sport. And, you know, they are kind of the ambassador for the sport.

11:27But then when you kind of go out from there, you know, there's people that run three to five times a week. There's people that run two times a week. But then 80 % of people buy sneakers and don't actually do anything in them, right? and just wear them to have comfort. And so you've got to think about that same thing from a gaming standpoint. There are these elite players that are really good at their sport, right? And they are the catalyst for competition and being able to kind of evangelize for the sport. And then you expand from there where you look at, okay, building on the fandom of people that want to be like them and admire and want to play competitively.

12:02And then you have ranked modes in some of these games where you as a fan can even be in your own competition and make it into some of these tournaments. And then you have everybody else that is just kind of casual and doesn't want to be as sweaty and wants to play. So I think it plays a really important part of that ecosystem from a gaming standpoint. And it's something that we continue to invest in and be excited about. And are these players, are they kind of earning a living doing this? Is this like their full-time job? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, whether it's playing in the competitions or streaming live, the audience for streaming is huge, which are even bigger probably than the eSports audience, where you can just set up at home and be able to play the game for the first time, and you can be a streamer and an influencer, right?

12:47And I think that potential to hustle and grow an audience is really powerful and just connect with your audience. It's kind of wild, isn't it, that going back to where we started, following your passion, that you could actually grow up, be really obsessed about gaming, and then turn that into a career. It's something that just didn't exist 10 years ago, is it? No, I mean, you know, technology has made it so much more accessible, right? And I think you just need, you know, a YouTube or a Twitch account or even on TikTok now. We're seeing a lot of live streams. And, you know, I think obviously it's competitive and you have to have something that differentiates you and makes you unique if you want to build a really big audience.

13:25But, you know, it's a big part of our marketing funnel. And, you know, we're looking at who the latest streamers are. We're actually investing in a lot of streamers. So we just did something called Level Up Labs. And we brought 10 female streamers in and, you know, on the come up, right? Like just getting started and, you know, introduce them to the marketing team. And then we show them how we make content, how we capture content. You know, we brought them to the studios. We show how we make the games and how we do motion capture. and then we put them in a room where they got to play a new mode and create content and have exclusive access for that content in advance.

14:00And so, you know, it's an opportunity for us to kind of invest in the next wave of streamers. And over time, you know, we think that's going to pay off dividends by having those relationships. Yeah. What's the ratio out of interest between male and female players? Yeah, I think in, you know, with our competitors competitive set, I think it's something like 75-25, so 75 % male and 25 % female. And it's something that we've been investing a lot in. So we did a big push around International Women's Month and just highlighting all the iconic characters, female characters that have been in the games over the last 23 years in Call of Duty.

14:36And then we did this Level Up Labs initiative. We just announced that we have Kiernan Shipka, an actress who's going to star in our next game. And so it's an area that I think was underserved and I think something that we want to invest in more. If you think about there's 100 million Warzone players, that's our free to play game that anybody can jump in to. You know, that's 25 million women that are out there playing the game. Now, you know, I realize most people don't believe that that's that. But definitely look at some of the third party research and look at some of our competitors. And it's all in that kind of similar space.

15:09Now, they might not be the most vocal or they might, you know, you might not know, but they're playing the game. Right. And I think it really speaks to, you know, I think people have a perception of what Call of Duty is. And I think in reality, there's so many different ways to play the game, right? So you obviously have the mainline game, which is like the big blockbuster that we release every year. The free-to-play game in Warzone. And then you have our mobile game, COD Mobile, which has over a billion downloads, right? And so anybody can jump in and start to play. And then I think in addition to that, there's so many different ways to play.

15:40So like in the free-to-play game, I play this game called Plunder. and it's like you run around and collect cash and you can engage and have combat but at the same time, it's really just about who collects the most money. So you can be really covert, not see anybody and still win the match. And then we have other modes like prop hunt which is you can be a refrigerator or you can be a tire or a sofa and you hide in the map and it's hide and seek. It's adult hide and seek in a lot of ways and you have to go find that individual hiding in the map and hunt them down and stuff. And then you have Zombies mode, which I think is really accessible.

16:15Anybody can have fun shooting some zombies and stuff, right? And so I think that makes it much more approachable. But I think when you look on the outside, you kind of have one perception of what the game is. And I think when you start playing it, you realize that there's actually so many different ways to play. Yeah. There must be some psychology into how games work and what makes games so entertaining to do. And so how much of the success of a franchise is down to kind of the product experience versus the kind of marketing you put behind it? Yeah, when we look at all the research and we stack rank what players value inside of the game, it really comes down to one thing and it's having fun with your friends.

16:52And I know that sounds so cliche for a CMO and a marketer to come in here and to say that, but definitely like look into it because I think it's all about this social connection, right? Like it's about playing with my buddies, you know, on a Friday. And so I think in a lot of ways, you know, I think we could change the game dramatically and still people would come on and play the game because it's that, you know, those bonds that they've made over many, many, many years, right, of playing the game together. And I think, you know, that hasn't changed since I've joined the company about, you know, four and a half years ago.

17:25It's always the number one reason why they come. And it's always the number one reason why they leave is because their friends are there or they're not there and stuff. Right. And so for us, it's really about fostering those social connections and really, you know, tapping into culture in a big way. I think when you think about the game itself, we have all these amazing studios and they're the storytellers. They're creating amazing experiences every single year. And that's the heart of what makes a game successful. But what they're looking for and I think what we're looking for in the crossover is the same thing.

17:56It's like, OK, how do we encourage people to have fun and embrace the fun in the game? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You've been doing Call of Duty for quite a long time now as well. It must be one of the longest running franchises of anything, I'd have thought, compared to even kind of Hollywood movie franchises. It's been going for quite a long time. And am I right in saying 23 editions now? Yes, there's been 23 Call of Duty games and we're on our way to the 24th. And I think in a lot of ways, it's a brand over time that has stayed consistent. It's obviously a military simulator in a lot of ways.

18:28but it goes back to it's always been part of culture, right? And so on the marketing side, we like to think it's culture first, combat second. I think in a lot of ways, it's, okay, how do we foster that connection? How do we make sure that we're the center of sports and entertainment and music? And that's always been part of the DNA, even going back to the old days and stuff of some of the creative that we've put out into market. And now there's even more opportunity to bring that into the game, right, where you see all these IP collaborations, bringing Squid Game into Call of Duty for the first time and some of the artist collaborations that we've done over the years.

19:05Or even we were talking about the music in some of our trailers and how iconic it is. And so that's part of the DNA and what's really made it successful. Yeah. And going back to the kind of, I guess, how do you launch a new edition? So 23, almost 24 times in, how do you keep the energy and build on what you've done before and launch it? Because I know you did a really kind of cool campaign last year called The Replacer, which I thought was a very clever way of very good insight into kind of gaming culture. Yeah. How did that all work? Staying number one is really hard, but we have some principles, right?

19:37So from a marketing standpoint, we like to think about stature, swagger and scale, right? So stature is doing things that only Call of Duty can do, right? And we think about swagger. It's like, how do we infiltrate culture in innovative ways? And then we think about scale. Like, how do we reach as many people as possible? And so, you know, with some of the campaigns that we developed last year, I mean, the first one was called Truth Lies, and that was really introducing the game of Black Ops 6. And it was all about government conspiracy and, you know, not trusting what was happening in the world.

20:08And it was election year. I think about half the world, you know, the earth was, you know, voting and stuff at that time. And so we went up to Mount Rushmore and we blindfolded it. And so I think in some ways we wanted to be very provocative and we wrote the truth lies across the president's faces and, you know, really kind of land this idea of is this something only Call of Duty can do? And I think blindfolding Mount Rushmore is both big, culturally relevant and very unique and stuff. With the Replacer campaign, you know, the Replacer was actually an old concept. It was from Black Ops 2 from about 10 years ago, but it was from the live season.

20:44And so like when we, not the main launch, but, you know, throughout the seasonal launches, and he was a character, it was played by Peter Stormare from Prison Break. We wanted to bring him back in a big way. And I think one of the things that we observed was, one, all this media fragmentation of like, okay, how do you show up in a lot of different places? Two, I think with a video game, it's really hard because it's like, it's gameplay. It's, you know, capturing content from the game. How do I get that on a talk show, right? how do I get that on a podcast if there's all these new mediums? So by bringing Peter in as our replacer, you know, it enabled us to put him in a lot of places that we weren't able to kind of tap into before.

21:24So the replacer replaces you in your day job. So he'd replace you on the podcast so that you can go play Call of Duty. And, you know, normally we'd shoot a big spot, you know, 60 or 90, and we'd cut it into shorter formats and maybe do some social content on the side. and that would be the campaign. Here we had 40 different assets, right, that we created, each one bespoke custom to the audience and it enabled us to do so many more things. So we had the replacer on Jeopardy. We had the replacer on Wheel of Fortune. We had the replacer on the cover of People magazine as the sexiest man alive. We took the replacer and worked with, you know, all kinds of with DAZN and Europe Sky Sports.

22:05And so all of these different talent, some of them he worked with directly, some of them he replaced, like Anthony Edwards and the NBA. And so it really kind of allowed us to kind of put this character in so many different places that Call of Duty normally doesn't show up. Yeah, it's a very, very, very clever idea. And how did that impact on the launch? Can you trace the results back from that campaign to the amounts of people that downloaded the game? Yeah, I mean, we look at awareness and we look at social conversation. You know, I'm big on KPIs and our inside team. You know, we worked on what actually moves the needle and looked at 2 ,000 different KPIs.

22:44And really, the more people talking about Call of Duty, the better, more success that we'll have. Right. And so in generating not only awareness, but also, you know, purchases. And so, you know, this campaign was one of our most engaged campaigns. And it was also the game Black Ops 6 ended up being one of our most engaged games right off the bat and stuff. I think we sold some of the most units on PlayStation and Steam. And then obviously with Xbox and Game Pass, it's kind of offered a new dynamic for us from a business standpoint that allowed us to tap into even a wider audience of all these subscribers who could play Call of Duty for the first time if they haven't before.