Diablo 4’s marketing campaign is somehow even more unhinged than mobile ads
On June 6, the sky turned orange. Smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south and cast a dull orange hue over the United States’ northeastern states. New York City looked otherworldly and post-apocalyptic, its residents sucking in hazardous air. The orange-hued smoke blurred out skyscrapers and towers, leaving only Times Square’s flashing screens eerily lighting up the city streets.
As one billboard put it bluntly, “Welcome to hell, New York.”
It’s an advertisement that is both timely and coincidental. Activision Blizzard’s Diablo 4 was officially released the day prior. Lilith, as tall as a small building, looms over the people of New York, their eyes burning from the smoke. On Twitter, someone jokes: Diablo 4’s marketing team has gone too far.
Diablo marketing team doing the most pic.twitter.com/cSrNAg0t1i
Of course, Activision Blizzard did not set fire to Canada’s forest to produce massive amounts of smoke sent south by the wind. But the apocalyptic weather seemed to highlight the sheer weirdness and audacity of Activision Blizzard’s major, scattershot marketing campaign, which stands out, even as video game marketing stunts have become more and more audacious.
The only thread that seems to tie this campaign together is virality and shock value — the sort of marketing you see more readily in the mobile game sphere. Of course, that’s not to say this kind of marketing is unheard of in console and PC gaming, but it’s ubiquitous in the mobile space: dramatic storylines that have little bearing on the actual gameplay (sometimes with celebrity endorsements), mass market ads that show off gameplay that’s not actually in the game, and marketing calculated to go viral. Diablo 4’s marketing embodies the ethos of mobile game
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