Activision’s Eric Hirshberg On The Modern Warfare 3 Leak
In a week that has seen Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 go from Internet speculation to a full scale leak which provoked the release of not one, but four teaser trailers, it is a wonder that Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg hasn’t booked himself into rehab.
Thankfully Eric Hirshberg is not in rehab, and has in fact been talking to Joystiq about finding out about the leak and then turning the whole affair into a positive for Activision and Modern Warfare 3 — which has a release date of November 8, according to major retailers.
“While it’s definitely not cool to steal other people’s intellectual property, and while it’s definitely not cool to leak stuff that’s not yours, there are ways that you can respond that actually turn the lemons into lemonade” Said Hirshberg.
“It would be really easy to just obsess over the event, which was the leak, and obsess over how it happened, and that’s only looking backwards, and in the meantime, your launch just started. And you aren’t always in control of the schedule and the dialogue, and you need to be comfortable of those rapids in this day and age. That’s actually one of the things that separates good marketing from great marketing today.”
Hirshberg went on to say how the team tried to see the leak from a fans perspective and how they could “go to bed with a marketing win.” Soon after, the four teaser videos were released a couple of weeks early to excited Call of Duty fans.
“We woke up with a marketing crisis and wanted to go to bed with a marketing win, so what we did was we kind of took that exact conversation we were having in our conference room outside and had it publicly in social media. Through our various channels, through Robert Bowling at IW, through Facebook and through our YouTube channel, we reached out to our fans and we said, ‘Look, we didn’t schedule this. This wasn’t something we had planned. But everyone seems excited, so we’re just going to roll with it. So here they are, a couple of assets that weren’t scheduled to be out for another couple of weeks, we’re going to release ’em to you today.”
What do you think about the way that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was revealed? Would you have rather waited until a full reveal at E3? Let us know in the comments.
Modern Warfare has an expected release date of November 8 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Source: Joystiq
Terry Lucy
I'm 23, from London, UK. I am the co-host for a technology talk show and an all round nerd. Video games have been a huge part of my life. As soon as I was old enough to pick up a control pad, I was playing games. I split my spare time between pubs and arcades, two of my favourite places on Earth.
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