Call of Duty is one of the biggest games in the world. They release a new game in the series every year. In 2023 Activision Blizzard released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

Our brief was to help build hype in the Swedish market and activate the Swedish Call of Duty fans with a campaign that could live in media and in gaming forums.

The objectives was to reach and engage the community whilst also getting articles published about the game in relevant gaming and lifestyle media.

Call of Duty fans have a long standing unofficial tradition of getting ”ill” on the release day of a new Call of Duty game. In Sweden skipping work means losing money. So, for the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III we decided to back the fans and reimburse the money they lost from skipping work.

In Sweden you can call in sick to work for basically any reason, you won’t lose your job. But you will lose a days salary. This is called a "karensdag". The Ghost Your Boss campaign invented a brand new sick day grant where we reimbursed the money you lost out on if you stayed home to play the game.

To be able to apply for the grant you had to prove you were a fan of the game by completing three tailor-made Call of Duty missions unlocking an application page.

Activision Blizzard release a game every year. Release day is a big day for the hardcore fans. Some even have a tradition of calling in "sick" to work to be able to play the game all day. So we decided to help fans uphold that unconventional tradition by inventing a special sick day grant.

To be able to apply for the grant you needed to prove your fandom by completing three tailor-made Call of Duty missions and retrieve the three passwords that you needed to unlock the sick day grant application page. We knew this hurdle would engage gaming streamers and make the campaign go viral within the community. Which it did as streamers streamed their hunt for passwords, amplifying the strategy.

Our aim was also to garner media attention to reach the wider gaming community while also involving specialized Call of Duty content creators to drive interaction and applications.

The ambitions was to create something that would ignite the Swedish Call of Duty community. Harnessing the social behavior of skipping work on release day to play the game made that possible. Combining that with local Swedish employment laws allowed us to make an inside joke of skipping work go public, further strengthening the bond between the community and Activision Blizzard.

When we landed on the strategy of amplifying the message in PR and relying on streamers to stream their hunt for the passwords needed to unlock the application page we enjoyed a very smooth ride and production process.

We crushed the impression KPIs by + 153 %.

We garnered a reach of 17 814 988 people in a market of approximately 10 million people.

We gathered 131 240 likes over all posts

And 1500 + applied for the grant.

The engagement was off the charts as streamers streamed their quest for the passwords needed to unlock the application site for many many hours.

We did not change any behavoiur with this campaign - we encouraged an already existing one!

Brand sentiment increased and the overall message to Activision Blizzard in forums was "You've heard us!".