Well, maybe not your mom, but the company is using somebody's mothers in a viral campaign that's on track to get a million YouTube views within its first week of release and has merited inclusion on YouTube's "Trending Videos."
The campaign, from Draftfcb in San Francisco, is made up of interviews with mothers who are shown gory, violent footage in the game and then react in disgust.
"It's gross. I hated it," says one mom. "That is awful!" says another. "Too graphic, too bloody."
According to Isaac Clemens, management supervisor at Draftfcb, the mothers in the videos are real. The women who were chosen were somewhat conservative and not very media savvy, but there were no other stipulations. The moms were told they were part of a focus group for an entertainment marketing project and given no further information. The best takes made it into a 30-second TV spot (see below) that broke last Saturday, but Clemens says the reactions were so good that EA decided to run six long-form videos of select interviews. To further the buzz, EA ran a sponsored tweet, "#yourmomhatesthis," on Sunday.
Alex Do, digital branding director for Landor Associates, says the campaign works because it's easy to imitate (there are already some copycat videos) and it plays into teens' desire to be validated. "When I think about the gamer that's a fan of Dead Space 2, the last thing they would want to be affiliated was something their mom endorsed," says Do. "It speaks directly to the need for a hardcore gamer to feel like they can play games that aren't necessarily family friendly."