The Madness of Modern Warfare 2 Branding

The story here is that if you take the words 'Call of Duty' away from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 fewer American gamers polled by brand recognition tracking firm OTX recognise 'Modern Warfare 2' as a game.

This amazing fact of people's inability to recognise something obvious was explained to Gamasutra by Nick Williams who runs the GamePlan Insights division for OTX.

"...once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed 'Call of Duty' from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent (from 40% of US gamers).

"In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic."

However, all is not lost for the box, point-of-sale and poster designers who now have to contend with the kind of people (sorry Gamers, not just random people) who become confused as to what Modern Warfare 2 could possibly be if the words 'Call of Duty' are removed: "Despite this dramatic drop in awareness, the purchase intent for Modern Warfare 2 remains very strong," says Williams.

So, the final report says: '50% Drop in Brand Perception Going Forward: but it doesn't really matter. Can we have our money now?'

^{Source: Gamasutra}

We're going to point out that the first run of this tale utterly over-looked the drop from 40% to 20% until Forum poster, Nelly, kept us honest. See, we do listen. Cheers Nelly.