Halo 5: Guardians #HuntTheTruth Campaign Analysis
One of the most interesting digital advertising campaigns that I have come across in quite a while is #HuntTheTruth, an integrated online advertising campaign introduced in March 2015 to promote the upcoming Xbox One game Halo 5: Guardians. The campaign initially launched with prominently placed television commercials, and recently concluded in June with a multimedia presentation at the E3 video game conference that revealed important gameplay features and plot details for Halo 5: Guardians (which will be released in October).
During this time period, the campaign has been able to utilize a top-rated podcast, online games, and a Tumblr page that aggregated all #HuntTheTruth content. To me, this concept was very effective in growing desire and interest for Halo 5: Guardians among the franchise’s target audience (18–35 years old, males, tech savvy, understand current trends, own an Xbox One, have played a Halo game before) while also effectively addressing a potential barrier facing the video game when it is released later this year.
The #HuntTheTruth campaign initially launched in late March with the debut of “Bullet,” a TV spot that aired primarily on AMC during Better Call Saul and the The Walking Dead. The ad featured a bullet and destroying the iconic helmet of “Master Chief” (the nameless, masked hero of the Halo series) before displaying the Halo logo and the hashtag #HuntTheTruth. Fans who followed the results of that hashtag on Twitter and Facebook were brought to a Tumblr page where they could watch a slower version of the TV Spot. When watched slowly, the following words were written on the bullet as it spun: SON, ABDUCTEE, VICTIM, ORPHAN, RECRUIT, SOLDIER, WARRIOR, ALLY, HERO, SAVIOR, TRAITOR.
Fans were urged to follow the website regularly and listen to episodes of a fictional podcast that claimed to be made by a war journalist set in the Halo universe named Benjamin Giraud. He promised to explore “behind the story of the Master Chief.” The following week, two additional TV spots (created by twofifteenmccann) aired in the same slots that had aired “Bullet.” “All Hail” showed Master Chief being condemned as as a fraud and villain by a second soldier identified as Locke, while “The Cost” reversed the roles in the exact same setting and showed Master Chief revealing Locke as the villain. They both featured the #HuntTheTruth hashtag as well.
The most striking aspect of this campaign launch was the way that the TV spots and web content speak of Master Chief. For years, marketing for the series had been focused on the machismo of this character, drawing in fans with a hero they could live through vicariously because Master Chief lacked any real identifying features of his own other than his helmet and armor. By abandoning this method and suddenly questioning the heroics of this character, and adding more distinguished personality traits to him as well, #HuntTheTruth immediately differentiated itself from Halo’s past by evoking a more complicated emotional response to the character. It’s not hard to imagine that the roots of this concept could have been born out of an insight into potentially waning interest in the franchise among even its most loyal fans. In 14 years, 11 Halo games had been released, so some fatigue in interest was likely inevitable.
The second leg of the #HuntTheTruth campaign began with the fictional podcast, which was released on the campaign’s Tumblr account through Soundcloud as well as on all major podcasting outlets.
The weekly podcast was produced in a similar format to the true crime podcast Serial, which had become a cultural talking point following the conclusion of its first season. The “war journalist” starring in #HuntTheTruth (played by Key and Peele’s Keegan-Michael Key) made his way through a complex history of “John,” the boy who would go on to become Master Chief, through interviews with people who purported to know him during his youth and in the army. As the podcasts progress, a narrative takes shape that suggests Master Chief is a fraud, and the victim of a program that the government has attempted to cover up. By its conclusion, it is suggested that Master Chief has “gone rogue” for a new mission. It becomes readily apparent that the content of this podcast is all backstory for the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians video game.
In addition to being an entertaining piece of online media in its own right, the podcast is very effectively used in this campaign to spread content about Halo 5: Guardians in a whole new online medium. In the past, this backstory could have been summed up on the back of a video game box. By expanding the backstory into its own piece of media, it allowed fans to get excited about the franchise in a new way, while also creating interesting content that entertainment news websites could pick up and report on to spread the word even further.
The Tumblr associated with the podcast was also very effective in creating an interactive experience to keep fans active with the franchise. Photos of “evidence” uncovered in the podcast were released in between episodes, regular listeners were given access to an exclusive new Halo-themed augmented reality online game, and a crowd-sourced puzzle game was also introduced that allowed fans to officially reveal the game’s box cover art. The podcast found some success as a standalone piece of entertainment as well, as #HuntTheTruth quickly became — and remained — the #1 video game podcast on iTunes.
The final aspect of this campaign included yet another media element, a presentation at the prestigious E3 video game convention in June that revealed a number of important announcements about Halo 5: Guardians. Not coincidentally, the finale of the #HuntTheTruth podcast was released two days prior to the presentation, fully establishing a divergence between two characters: Master Chief and Locke.
Building off of the podcast’s finale, the E3 presentation revealed that the plot of Halo 5: Guardians would be split between Master Chief and Locke as they hunt each other down.
In the past, Halo fans had complained whenever they were forced to play as a character other than Master Chief in one of the franchise’s video games. It impressed me how the #HuntTheTruth campaign managed to address this potential barrier that fans could have with Halo 5: Guardians by telling a genuine and effective story to rationalize the decision to use more than one character. By utilizing TV spots, a podcast, an aggregating Tmblr account, online media/games, and a presentation at E3, the campaign drew me into the story in a way video games never had previously.
And I clearly wasn’t alone. According to the official Xbox blog the #HuntTheTruth podcast has garnered more than two million listens across iTunes and Soundcloud, the three TV spots have been viewed 217 million times on television and online, and “Halo 5: Guardians” has been referenced approximately 960,000 on social media platforms since the campaigns launch in March. Generating this much interest among novice fans like myself and a fan base that has already seen 11 Halo titles released, while also addressing a potential barrier head on by creating genuinely interesting content to rationalize it, are what made this one of the most impressive advertising campaigns that I’ve seen in some time.
Sources
http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/ http://www.mycleveragency.com/blog/2015/05/hunt-the-truth-behind-microsoft-studios-halo-5-guardians/ http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/twofifteenmccann-teases-halo-5-guardians/83573 http://www.alistdaily.com/news/chart-topping-hunt-the-truth-podcast-wraps-with-two-part-finale http://news.xbox.com/2015/03/games-halo-5-guardians-bullet-trailer http://news.xbox.com/2015/05/games-hunt-the-truth-podcast-episode-8 http://www.alistdaily.com/news/chart-topping-hunt-the-truth-podcast-wraps-with-two-part-finale http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2015/06/halo-5-locke-campaign-gameplay-and-warzone-multiplayer- mode-reveal/
