Call of Duty Personalization Pack: Activision Blizzard and Call of Duty Endowment
The Call of Duty Endowment is a nonprofit organization founded by Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, maker of gaming hits such as Call of Duty, Candy Crush and World of Warcraft. The organization seeks to help veterans find high-quality careers for a fraction of what federal government spends to achieve the same placement.
Building on previous year successes, Activision and one of its studios, Treyarch, wanted to do something more in 2016 to build awareness for the veterans cause.
For the first time in the company’s history, they worked with the Endowment to create a digital item (Personalization Pack) inside the Call of Duty game that players could purchase for $3.99, with all proceeds going to the cause. The goal was to activate Call of Duty’s enormous fan base to make a compelling in-game purchase that would generate revenue for the Endowment while also raising awareness of the cause and engaging new supporters and donors.
Activision also put their full marketing support behind the effort, sharing the pack on their social media channels to their tens of millions of followers. In turn, many gaming influencers and YouTubers independently picked up the news and made videos highlighting the personalization packs and the cause it supports.
The personalization packs exceeded all expectations, stimulating new in-game purchases from users and resulting in the placement of nearly 2800 veterans in high quality jobs through the Endowment.
Not only is this life-changing for these veterans and their families – the average starting salary of $55,000 for the veterans placed means that this effort will generate a net annual economic impact of more than $150 million in veteran salaries.
Beyond the money raised, the personalization pack efforts are also one of the best awareness vehicles for the cause. Posts about the item and the cause shared with the combined social media audiences reached tens of millions of individuals with nearly half of Call of Duty players now aware of the Endowment. The effort was so successful that the partners have already released other digital items benefitting the Endowment with plans for more in the future.
