Game Commercials with Celebrity endorsement - WoW: (Mr. T as a Night Elf 'Mohawk'?)

[tucsoncoyote]

okay now you know something is up when celebrities become World of Warcraft Characters.

Cases in Point?

Mr. T as a Night Elf (Mohawk)
or maybe
William (Captain Kirk) Shatner as a Shaman.
or
Verne ('Mini Me') Troyer as a Mage!

But it even goes off the wall with more crazy celebrity characters.

How about

Jean-Claude Van Damme as an Ogre Mage?

or maybe

Willy Toledo as a Paladin.

But I'm just wondering .. how many more celebrities will they use to push this product? I mean this is just 5 or 6 major celeibrites.. but will the folks from World of Warcraft do more than just these few?

Also is this the first time celebrities from Movie and TV have promoted Video games..I Vaguely recall some other celebrities doing the same.

But do Game Companies really need to use celebrities to promote their video games? And if so, why?

Your thoughts?

[Tanooki]

eh. anything to market the game out to those few who don't already play WoW, i guess. i don't suppose blizzard or anybody else needs celebrity to support their product, but it doesn't hurt as a marketing strategy

i guess i fail to see what you're grasping at, tc... again

[tucsoncoyote]

eh. anything to market the game out to those few who don't already play WoW, i guess. i don't suppose blizzard or anybody else needs celebrity to support their product, but it doesn't hurt as a marketing strategy

i guess i fail to see what you're grasping at, tc... again

The Point I'm stating is "Why use Celebrities for Promoting games?" I mean you don't have celebrities promoting games like Need for Speed, or any of the other games like The Sims 2 or even NASCAR '08, you don't even see Celebrities promoting things like Grand Theft Auto or some other games. And what about the Sports personalities promoting football (Hint hint John Madden), baseball, and even basketball and hockey. (Granted for a while Golf greats like Jack Nickalaus and Arnold Palmer did promote golf games as did Tiger Woods.

Yet why use celebrities at all to help push the product? I mean shouldn't a game be based on merit alone rather than having some celebrity push it onto the gamers like "Oh wow, if you buy this game (World of Warcraft), you might be able to rub elbows with me in a game and not even know it!"

Frankly you may dismiss it as such, but I say, why have celebrities push the game at all.. I'm betting that of those shown I bet none have actually played the game. None of them..

So why use them to promote a game they themselves may never have played?

Now that I've gotten that out in the open.. Let's see what is said. After all I'm betting no one who ever plays World of Warcraft actually runs into celebrities.. (After all Celebrities usually want to keep a low profile.. rather than being spotted by someone on a WoW server..)

[Undrave]

The thing is that these guys aren't normal celebrity (well I don't know about this Wily Toledo fella though). They're GEEKDOM celebrities, they are the stars of wonky shows and wonkier movies, source of comedies and internet memes, these guys really touch the target demographic.

Like Chuck Norris making that Mountain Dew commercial.

It just seems odd because its new.

That Van Damme add is just HILARIOUS! Any company that produce that sort of comedic nugget deserves a cookie.

This is pretty hilarious too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OMQiFS4DQ

it's like WoW is a celebrity of its own.

FOUR WHEELS OF FURY!!!

[Mynd Hed]

Celebrities hawking wares that they know nothing about? Well, THIS has certainly never happened before!

Oh, wait. This HAS happened, in, you know, EVERY INDUSTRY EVER SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. The only surprise is that it took this long for it to really set in with video games.

[Tanooki]

The Point I'm stating is "Why use Celebrities for Promoting games?" I mean you don't have celebrities promoting games like Need for Speed, or any of the other games like The Sims 2 or even NASCAR '08, you don't even see Celebrities promoting things like Grand Theft Auto or some other games. And what about the Sports personalities promoting football (Hint hint John Madden), baseball, and even basketball and hockey. (Granted for a while Golf greats like Jack Nickalaus and Arnold Palmer did promote golf games as did Tiger Woods.

Yet why use celebrities at all to help push the product? I mean shouldn't a game be based on merit alone rather than having some celebrity push it onto the gamers like "Oh wow, if you buy this game (World of Warcraft), you might be able to rub elbows with me in a game and not even know it!"

Frankly you may dismiss it as such, but I say, why have celebrities push the game at all.. I'm betting that of those shown I bet none have actually played the game. None of them..

So why use them to promote a game they themselves may never have played?

Now that I've gotten that out in the open.. Let's see what is said. After all I'm betting no one who ever plays World of Warcraft actually runs into celebrities.. (After all Celebrities usually want to keep a low profile.. rather than being spotted by someone on a WoW server..)

apparently you've never taken a marketing class. my guess is that blizzard felt their new user base was leveling off so they needed an extra kick in the pants to get people interested again. i think the marketing strategy is absolute genious. i pretty much gave up on WoW, but seeing mr. t and shatner involved with it almost makes me want to start up again. if chuck norris does a WoW commercial, i'm in automatically, though i won't play on his PvP server. he'd be unstoppable!

in all seriousness though, coyote, i appreciate the topic creation, but this isn't exactly buzz worthy. celebrity endorsements are as old as time, and like mynd hed said, it's a shock video games took so long to get there *cough*except for tv show, movie, and music tie-ins that happen all the time*cough*

[Eddy]

This isn't the first time video games have used celebrity endorsement. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! anyone?

[Classic Speedy]

Wasn't there a mid '90s commercial for Troy Aikman NFL Football where the announcer said "They stole Aikman's brain!"?

[tb4000]

Video game marketing is done two ways....appealing to abstract humor lovers or appealing to the edgy, trendy, hardcore types. These commercials are the former.

[Zeonic Freak]

Wow, Vam Damme doing Warcraft? Man, dub the commercial over here, i miss that guy. Speaking of which, i saw him on Time Cop last night on TV.

I do like the Toyota Tacoma vid:

"Theres no trucks in Warcraft".

Well, i think there should be, but make them Fords and Chevy's though...

[Undrave]

Here is the dialogue Van Damme says in the ad, words in italic are already in English in the text:

"My name is Jean-Claude Van Damme and I am a mage.

Hand to hand for me now... it's over.

Now I cast powerful spells.

If you bother me too much, I'll turn you into a sheep.

A sheep!

Because we're all a little sheep, you know.

I am Jean-Claude Van Damme and I am a mage.

And you? What's your game?"

[HellCat]

I think it's a fun little campaign. Not groundbreaking (as others have noted, these are geek celebs who are kinda forced to take any job going) but it's worth a chuckle. Certainly beats yet more game adverts trying to be movie trailers.

[Yash]

This isn't the first time video games have used celebrity endorsement. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! anyone?

Don't forget Shaq Fu.

Actually... forget Shaq Fu.