A recap of Dante's Inferno's weird, awful (effective?) marketing

AdFreak's chronicle of the Dante's Inferno guerrilla marketing campaign is one hell of a good read. The piece covers ad agency Wieden + Kennedy's almost year-long viral and guerrilla campaign for the game, which allegedly cost $200,000 and "yielded 47 million impressions of coverage." The ad agency had a $20,000-a-month budget according to EA, but AdFreak tells Joystiq that W + K likely spent more (of its own money) in the pursuit of industry awards.

Although the final months of the campaign didn't really pop up on our radar, loyal readers will likely recall a few of the earlier ones: the misguided fake E3 protest, the apology-inducing "Sin to Win" contest and Mass: We Pray. Interestingly, the $200 check we at Joystiq decided to donate apparently caused the ad agency to come up with a third resolution to its "Greed" stunt. It's always fun when we're the ones to keep marketing on its toes. Whether it's bound for heaven or damnation, the Dante's Inferno campaign is certainly an interesting case study in modern marketing.

Reader Comments (21)

If anything, EA won with the trailer. "Ain't No Sunshine" fits so well it's scary.

Yup, that commercial kicks major arse.

No, actually that ad sucked. Horribly. Along with the rest of the entire marketing campaign.

My favorite one out of those was Wrath.

Those guys not only Rick-Rolled Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, but they also Rick-Rolled him into committing the sin of Wrath.

Better yet, he referenced it back in his review of the game.

I thought the marketing was clever. Not very costly for EA but brought a lot of attention to the game. Plus, it went with the games theme and kept things interesting.

I guess anything different is nice next to all the "One man will save the world" type trailers.

Extremely effective, very original, creative.

This kind of 'desperate scramble for attention' marketing approach puts me right off. Market your stuff by demonstrating its quality. Make a solid product within my field of interest and I'll buy it. Make a whole lot of noise that has very little to do with it and I'll more than likely groan a bit and wander off somewhere else for my kicks. If it got their product more attention, more power to 'em, but I found it all pretty obnoxious.

Very creative, very effective. It obviously got everyone talking, which was the point. Even if you found it obnoxious, you were still talking about it.

My favorite moment to come out of this was the response to the fake E3 protest by a member of a Catholic organization which was along the lines of "Maybe you should spend less time on fake protests for marketting and more on not making a bad God of War ripoff".

It should be acknowledged that most of the stunts centered on giving bloggers gifts they could sell at a high price. Buying off the critics is never respectable, even in an industry filled with it.

Once I head about the setting of the game I was sold and fell in love with it upon playing it. Thanks, Visceral.

I think the marketing stunts listed here were idiotic and hurt the game sales.

I bought the game because of the dev diaries, because I wanted to see how far they went with the art.

Then, the first time I died and saw a quote from the original poem - i realized the game was kind of hilariously awesome.

i think if the marketing had been better handled, everyone would want the game for it's novelty, instead of everyone pissing on the game as an abberation thaty rapes literature. It's really kind of an awesomely playable 13-year-old's heavy-metal wet dream, based on one of humanit's old written works. That alone IS AWESOME.

I'm kind of stunned how the marketing turned this awesome funny idea and turned it into a sleazy embarassment.

I loved this game. people should really check it out despite the not so excellent reviews. Now I just cant wait for GOWIII

I like how every marketing stunt after We Pray ended up not being reported on Joystiq or Kotaku.

I suppose as a whole, the marketing wasn't bad, just misguided. They probably should have put more thought into the Lust one, though. And the Limbo one.

Come to think of it, the marketing doesn't really help at all. Aren't advertisements supposed to inform you about a product while simultaneously entertaining you?

i had no idea that the we pray game was part of their marketing until today.

I am actually pretty impressed with the 8 month marketing strategy they had, and i wouldn't be surprised if this isn't studied as materials in unoversity/college courses

What on Earth?

EA did nothing with the marketing except pay an ad agency a mere $20,000 a month for less than a year. Are you really saying the game's production values were less than that?

That was a pretty interesting article. I had not heard about several of those pieces of marketing, such as the Rick-roll box. I watched the entire 16-minute video from Kotaku's Brian Crecente detailing how he dealt with the box and was quite amused. It makes me wonder if any recipients of the box decided to keep it intact and carry it around on their shoulder as a boombox.

Really, though, wouldn't the easiest method of shutting it off have been to stick it under a running faucet?

Actually that "go to hell" thing and yaa trailers were fine.
And game is good too..

Wasn't it on this site there was an article earlier on about a study revealing marketing people were 'not getting it' when it came to marketing games?

Maybe someone should send those guys a link....

Anyone saying that this marketing campaign didn't work is wrong. That's a fact.
As far as the 'not getting it'? LOL and then some.

A recap of Dante's Inferno's weird, awful (effective?) marketing

Reader Comments (21)

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 11:52AM MGTrey said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:34PM xFenixKnightx said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 6:12PM zenaxe said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 11:54AM DevilSei said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 12:12PM CaramelZappa said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 12:20PM Deegan said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 12:33PM edit said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 12:41PM Curtis17 said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 12:42PM StormX said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:17PM duggie said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:31PM QuePasa87 said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:33PM WarrenEBB said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:36PM xFenixKnightx said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 1:45PM Yaanu said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 2:51PM BrianH said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 4:03PM Angel Mass said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 6:48PM killdash9 said

Posted: Mar 1st 2010 6:53PM killdash9 said

Posted: Mar 2nd 2010 12:27AM yugo said

Posted: Mar 3rd 2010 11:27AM Misterlee said

Posted: May 17th 2010 5:14PM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW