THE SHADOWS
WITHIN —
Like any other die-hard gamer, Call of Duty fans don’t just want promo codes, they want canon and early access. To prime the launch of Advanced Warfare, Mountain Dew and Doritos turned packs into keys. We collaborated directly with Activision to create exclusive backstories and cinematic vignettes for the main characters—lore the publisher hadn’t released—so our audience could unlock never-before-seen narrative drops. The idea reframed snack brands as lore gatekeepers, seeding hype for the coming Zombies arc and igniting theorycrafting across the community.
Special-pack codes funneled into a story-driven site with staged reveals—prologues, dossiers, cinematic vignettes—each drop expanding the universe and breadcrumbing toward launch. Time-gated tiers, regional waves, and community milestones kept the chase moving. The community pounced, maxing the site and completing the set within a week, while theorycrafting spiked across feeds and forums, rolling momentum straight into the CoD: Zombies conversation. Dew and Doritos became the access layer. Give fans story and entry keys, and they do the rest.
