Most of you probably remember hearing something about a dead goat being used during the promotion of God of War II and how the internet almost burned to the ground over what shame that act brought to our industry; reportedly it almost caused Sony to implode. Well, on second thought, I’d recommend you look up the words hyperbole and sensationalism.
Well, here we go again… two years later and some company goes and uses dead animal parts to help promote their game. The kicker this time? Find out after the jump…
When Sony’s PR guys thought it would be awesome to use a slaughtered goat carcass as a set piece, they had a very distinct advantage over this current story. They were in complete control of the carcass at all times. Capcom had the wonderful idea of hiding fake body parts throughout London as a part of a contest to give away a trip for two to… Africa. No offense Africa, but you’re… Africa. The game’s about zombies in… Africa. I’m pretty sure I’d just as soon stay away from zombie-town if it were left up to me.
Back to the topic at hand, the fake limbs apparently looked a little too fake so the guys at Capcom came up with just the right touch to take care of their problem. What’s the touch? Add chicken livers to the fake body parts. Oh, and randomly leave them throughout the city… rotting… stinking… drawing flies and… well, who the hell knows what was drawn to the fake body parts because they didn’t even recover them all! My money’s on a pack of feral cats or Gila monsters… maybe bandicoots, I’ve never trusted bandicoots?
What we’ve seen here is that two years is about how long marketing geniuses think needs to pass before it’s acceptable to re-enter the “using dead animals to promote our products” phase of marketing. We can’t have still images of fictional soldiers in our cities, but a putrid mix of mannequins and livestock parts? That’s a-okay! Come to think of it, nobody even seems to be upset that they used chicken livers, just that some of the parts weren’t retrieved. Are we saying it’s okay to slaughter chickens and use their organs for entertainment purposes, but the same isn’t true for a goat?
What do you think we’ll see in 2011? I think Ubisoft will sprinkle baby toes throughout time square to help promote their new Imagine! series game Imagine! Child Landscapers. You can never be too safe when it comes to children and lawnmowers.
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I think the ad campaign reflects the quality of the game: rotten.
Well I think it’s nice to see interesting marketing campaigns like this one. Simulated human body parts though… that seems a little too disturbing. I don’t understand the big deal with animal parts though… they’re just animals. I eat cows and chickens and stuff. Any farmer would probably laugh at this story.
While I don’t agree with the idea of using a dead goat as a center piece it’s not like the brought out a live one and slaughtered it for people’s amusement and from Sony’s claims they took it back to the slaughter house after using it so it still got to be food. It’s not like they made it unusable so that it died for nothing. It still gets to be dinner for someone. As for the manequin limbs covered in chicken liver, I’m even more indifferent. I’m willing to bet that the chicken(s) whose liver was used would have been dead even if it weren’t part of an ad campaign, and as someone who throws away the chicken liver whenever I make one I don’t really consider it to be wasting food.
I think that if there are enough people included in something, someone will find something to complain about. If you tell a joke to your friends chances are you know your audience and everyone will find it funny, but if you tell that same joke to a million people the odds that someone is offended skyrocket. Chances are they knew going into it that they would offend some people but decided that the majority of their target market would either get the joke or at the least not be offended by it. Sure you make PETA and some other acronym based organizations mad, but do you really think they’d have bought the game anyway (let alone have a gaming console)? So the advertising people went ahead with it because, from their perspective, who cares if you piss of someone who would never buy your product anyway? You don’t waste the money trying to appeal to the market that’s not there and you don’t risk alienating your existing market.
This story gets explained on the latest episode of Podcastle. I think it’s hilarious, because apparently once you’ve got the severed limbs you have to stand relatively close to parliament screaming and waving the limbs about to get noticed by the marketing people. Or arrested… haha