Ads We Like: Ubisoft and Funworks go to college with quirky film promoting ‘Watch Dogs’
Can you learn how to become a video gamer in college? The latest film from Ubisoft and agency Funworks uses a college course setting for its promotion of the new game ‘Watch Dogs: Legion’ and doesn’t really answer the question, but it does entertain in the process.
Beth Dover promoting Watch Dogs: Legion
Funworks enlisted comedic actors Jon Glaser (Girls, Parks and Recreation) and Beth Dover (Orange is the New Black) to announce the launch of the video game.
The game itself is innovative in the gaming space because all of the almost nine million characters are playable. To highlight this fact, Ubisoft employed an different marketing approach – instead of game footage, they went with creative storytelling.
The story unpacks all of Watch Dogs Legion’s newest features, including the nine million playable characters. At the start of the five-minute film, Glaser’s professor character charges into the lecture hall and hilariously prepares his class for the tech’s enormity by tossing out diapers for all of them to wear, because, as he states, “when I tell you about this game, you are going to shit your pants.”
The class then goes through an awkward exchange about how the game works, with dialogue between the class suck-up (a spot-on Dover), along with the class know-it-all and class stoner-doofus. The exchanges, which get steamy between Glaser and Dover, are amusingly cringe-worthy. As the class stoner describes his gaming tale of stealing a double-decker bus, getting wedged into an alley and accidentally blowing up the bus and killing his character, the humor builds to a crescendo.
This ‘back-to-school’ video is just the first installment of a larger campaign, as additional videos are in the works.
