Call of Duty has long been famous for spectacular single player campaigns, adding great storytelling to first person shooters. But during recent years they've had criticism for the lack of depth in their stories. So the single-player campaign has been a strong focus in the upcoming game.The single player campaign is important in many ways, and it's one of the best ways to attract players to buy the game.

To get players interested in the campaign, the mission was to build the main characters of the new game – Call of Duty Vanguard. A gaming taking place during WW2 focusing on four soldiers from different fronts of the war. One of the main characters go by the name Polina Petrova. A very skilled Russian sniper.

To hype her character and the story. We used Activions free-to-play multiplayer game as a media channel to get people interested in the pay-to-play game.

One of the most interesting characters in the campaign is the skilled Russian sniper Polina Petrova. To introduce her we teased her in Activions free-to-play game – Call of Duty: Warzone. In Warzone you're thrown into a last-player-standing battle with a total of 150 online players, the objective is simple. To kill all other players and be the last one left alive. If you win, you get to enjoy the sweetness of victory by being the only one getting picked up by a helicopter.

So, to let the community get a hint of Polina's character, we let them experience her first hand and by changing the sought-after winning cut scene – and letting her steal their victory.

From out of nowhere, a mysterious sniper started to kill the last player standing.

"Who stole my victory?! and within hours Polina Petrova was a household name in the community.

Being the first ever teaser for the new game, we knew information about the game would gain coverage. The question was how to maximize the PR coverage and present the information about the Polina in an engaging and 'likable' way. Even if that meant stealing people's victory.

Uploading spectacular moments in Call of Duty to social media is common within the community, we knew if we changed the winning cut scene, players would definitely share clips of their experience. The gaming community was filled with reactions when the winning player got robbed of their victory, and we reached both and new players and Warzone's 100+ million player base. Giving additional fuel to the PR-angle.

Implementation:

We added a new winning cut scene to the game making people see their own character get shot at the place of killing the last other remaining player in the game. The cutscene was showed at random to winning players. Some got the standard cut-scene, some got the one where they saw their character get shot by a mysterious sniper.

Timeline:

During the month of August

Placement:

Call of Duty Warzone

Scale:

The cutscene was added randomly to Warzone-matches to all servers across the world.

• Coverage in the biggest gaming outlets (i.e. GameSpot, IGN, Gamesradar, Polygon, NME, Uproxx, Inverse, Venture beat etc.)

• 1000+ uploaded reactions on TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit and Instagram. First posted by @CharlieIntel

• Polina Petrova quickly trended within Call of Duty community

• Exposed and surprised most of the winners in Warzone's 100+ million player base

Positive sentiment in PR:

"This is easily one of the more interesting teasers that the franchise has done compared to its teasing of Black Ops Cold War in Warzone last year."

"Undoubtedly, this new CoD: Vanguard Warzone teaser has injected more excitement in the community and a desire to see the new game officially revealed soon." CharlieIntel

When you realize you'll never see the Polina Victory Royale cutscene yourself because you're trash at the game. @_Tom_Henderson @IGN

"No player's safe until they're off the battlegrounds" Gamespot

"A bloody conclusion to warzone matches" IGN