How Ubisoft and a marketing firm used YouTube to lure guitar learners to Rocksmith
The original Rocksmith guitar video game sold 1.5 million copies when it debuted in 2011. But for its sequel, Rocksmith 2014, French video game publisher Ubisoft wanted to reach a much larger audience of people who want to learn to play the guitar.
It turned to Nomadic, a digital creative agency that helped with the marketing of Ubisoft’s phenomenally successful Just Dance game series. The work they did together is a textbook case on how to broaden the audience for what could be a narrow-interest entertainment product. The campaign came about by looking at the market in a different way. If the marketers succeed, they’ll convert the market from fans who played Guitar Hero-style games with faux guitars to fans of Rocksmith, which works with real guitars.