This is a guest post by Chris Winterhoff, who is an expert in Growth. Currently Chris is a fractional Growth leader and growth advisor at Perceptycs.
Previously he headed Growth at Onto, a UK platform for all-inclusive electric car subscriptions. And was also Head of Marketing at Mashroom, which covers the UK housing industry.
Guest Author: Chris Winterhoff
Warner Bros built a $3million video game to promote a movie ๐คฏ
Today Dune Part 2 is in the cinema and Warner Bros went ham on marketing.
They collaborated with Microsoft to create a free expansion to the most recent “Flight simulator” video game. You get to fly an โornithopterโ (basically a winged helicopter) from the movie. And there are missions and everything.
๐ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฉ ๐จ๐ซ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐๐๐๐ฌ๐ฌ? ๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐ฐ๐๐ฌ ๐ข๐ญ ๐ซ๐๐๐๐ข๐ฏ๐๐?
There are 35,300 search results of โflight simulator duneโ YouTube videos. The top video has more than 700,000 views. People are loving it!
I donโt have the tools to aggregate all the views and give you a view count, but itโs likely in the tens of millions of impressions (assume 20 million views easily). And thatโs just YouTube.
The latest flight simulator game is said to have 10 million players (stat from late 2022), so thereโs the impact of those players receiving a free upgrade too. And playing it for hours!
And the word of mouth side of things on top of that.
๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐๐ก ๐๐ข๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ?
Iโve no idea (who says I’m not honest), but I wouldnโt be surprised if it was in the low single digit millions. Letโs assume $3million given that Microsoft also likely contributed to the development cost.
๐๐จ ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ฌ 30 ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐ฌ ๐๐จ๐ซ $3๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐จ๐ง. ๐๐ก๐๐ญโ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ง๐ฌ๐๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐๐ฑ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐ฏ๐!
It probably is, but some people will spend hours on this expansion and I myself have easily spent 30 minutes watching a few YouTubers attempt the missions. Not because of this post, but because it was genuinely fun watching it.
These are meaningful interactions that the Dune franchise is garnering and itโs probably turning more of those people into fans who will end up watching the movie in the cinema.
Not to forget that Warner Bros can also monetise via their movie parks, merch, video games etc etc.
I personally think they did incredibly well.
