Activision

Building an audience with Community Management

BRIEF

Activision’s Call of Duty has been the biggest console gaming franchise for ten years in a row. It attracts gamers who are very active and engaged on a global scale and, when they love something or hate something about the game, trust us, they’ll let you know. Yet in Japan, where Call of Duty is huge, there were minimal engagements on their Facebook page. Our brief was to get the audience to engage with us. Without player feedback, it is difficult to tailor content for them.

INSIGHT

What we usually deem appropriate as a form of interaction on social media is different for a country like Japan, where the idea of hierarchy is entrenched in the language they use.

IDEA

We turned our back on traditional Japanese social media or business language standards known as “Keigo” or honorific speech, and adopted a much more open and approachable tone which mimicked the language people use every day. One-to-one engagement from an official branded page is simply not experienced in Japan’s social media landscape. So we disrupted the social space by going against the cultural norm.

What began as a standard growth strategy turned into a huge differentiation for Call of Duty Japan’s Twitter page. Knowing that they were speaking to a person rather than an officially recognised brand, the community began to join in on the banter, ask questions regarding the game, and offer up opinions on the current state of the game.

Having created a space where the audience can engage with the brand appropriately, the social insights gained from the interactions now drive the social content we produce, and player feedback regarding the game has influenced the content of the game itself.

In 6 months only, the community has grown from 0 to 30k followers organically.
The best performing post, for the 15th year anniversary of the franchise, reached 967k organic impressions with an engagement rate of 17%.
A highly engaged community of true fans, full of brand love and great banter.