"In launching broad-based entertainment properties, you don't have a choice"

Some may argue Grand Theft Auto 6 does not require a marketing campaign, but Take-Two Interactive president Strauss Zelnick emphasised that established brands need to maintain awareness.

"In launching broad-based entertainment properties, you don't have a choice," Zelnick told GamesBeat. "You always have to go out and create enthusiasm."

"Awareness is one thing; enthusiasm is another thing. We have to show people what they're going to get because, in linear entertainment, you sit there; it's presented to you. You don't have to interact with it. You don't have to install it. You don't have to have any expertise. You may like it, you may not like it, but it is a lean-back experience."

He continued: "You're amplifying word of mouth because what you can't do is pay anyone to say something that's terrible is good. Even if they're the most craven creator on earth, the minute they do that, they lose their own audience, right? So, no one's going to do that."

"My point is you can't game the system. We cannot convince people that something that's bad is good. What we can do is say to people, 'Look, it’s out there. You're being exposed to it. It’s important. You ought to try it."

Zelnick compared GTA 6's marketing campaign to that of another globally recognized franchise, Barbie.

"All of us saw the Barbie movie, and they marketed the living daylights out of that picture even though the IP is very well known. Secondly, it was out there for a while. We all got the joke of what it was going to be. They did a phenomenal marketing campaign. It was really everywhere, and, by the way, it worked. You could have taken the same position with them."

Zelnick previously told GamesIndustry.biz that Take-Two and Rockstar are using a "very significant broad based marketing campaign that reflects where audiences and attention is today."

So far, this has included a soundtrack album, a Dazed cover story, and an exclusive 27-minute preview on Netflix, which attracted 31.1 million views in four days.

"What Rockstar did was incredible, but there was an element of tutorial baked in there," Zelnick noted. "It just was a different kind of proposition."

"If you look at Rockstar’s marketing previously for GTA titles, there are actual tutorials. This was just a different way of giving the same information, which I thought was really impressive. Rockstar figured out how to do that to entertain us for 27 minutes while also explaining to us how you're going to play the game."

Zelnick said the overall goal is to follow a cycle where you "take awareness and turn it into excitement, and take the lack of awareness and turn it into awareness."

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