saiko saru

Recently, Ubisoft decided to release a promotion for the first ever gameplay trailer for the upcoming Assassin's Creed III. You can read the Neoseeker article on it here.

Essentially, they are looking for 1,776,000 social shares between three methods:

• Recruit friend - via a 'share' on FB
• Tweet #AC3
• Post on your timeline - via FB

Let's take a look at why this was not a well thought out idea to begin with.
The number is the largest factor in why this publicity stunt failed, secondly because the 'prize' at the end of it all really just isn't worth the amount of time and effort for some people.

The game takes place in 1776 so number is relevant to the game in that respect but to put it close to 2mil is a bit ridiculous. Here are some statistical data (which you can even find yourself) to prove why.

Let's assume that every single person who participates does all three, this means that the total amount of people required to do this is 592,000

• AC Likes (FB) - 3.1mil
  • Likes on their wall post about the event - 12,309
• AC III Revelations Likes (FB) - 332,321
• Twitter Followers - 90,474

Out of 3.1mil people only 12.3k liked the wall post regarding the event. of those 3.1mil, only 300k liked the Revelations page.

It's not a trending topic on Twitter in any of the following: Worldwide, US, UK, Canada.

The event has been written about by all major gaming news outlets and after about 24hrs (if not longer) we're only at 40% (8 out of the 20 'marks' on the progression are checked off).

Now, obviously not everyone has both Twitter and Facebook. Some people may not even have either. You also have to figure that not everyone will do all three. Then there's the fact that some people might not even like the fact that they're advertising for the game and wont participate.

So, What does this mean?

• 1.7mil is a pretty high expectation for just a gameplay trailer.
• We might see Ubisoft get bad press for the event.
• The trailer might eventually be just released because they can't hit the target.
• They might inflate the number themselves (no way to find out if it's legit) to reach the goal.

Update: 1hr 50min after I posted this, they are now at (10/20 50%). There's no way that many people social shared enough to get that much in less than two hours.

I'm not sure if the same PR dept that came up with this promotion is the same one that handles their FB page but I found this to be pretty unprofessional. I'm a tad shocked at this, to be honest. Yea, the guy was being a little troll-ish but as a company you shouldn't make a witty retort back.