In yet another inventive marketing stunt by UK videogames PR teams, a car filled with over one hundred copies of a brand new videogame was left in busy central London areas yesterday. Passers-by were encouraged to 'smash and grab', in order to celebrate the launch of Red Faction: Guerrilla on the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, and get their hands on one of the first copies of the game for free.

During the day, footage captured hundreds of passers-by picking up the sledgehammer left chained next to the vehicle in Covent Garden, London, and smashing their way to success and grabbing a copy of Red Faction: Guerrilla, a new destruction-based game released by THQ on Friday 5th June.

Simon Watts, PR Manager, UK & Europe for THQ, said: "Because Red Faction: Guerrilla features the world's most realistic destruction engine, we thought that it would make for an interesting experiment to find out how many people, going about their everyday business, would stop in a busy city street to work out some stress by smashing their way into a car to earn a copy of the brand new game."

Electronic Theatre heartily agrees, and has made no secret of our enthusiasm for interesting marketing techniques in the past, with F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, My Pet Dolphin 2 and Resident Evil 5 all having benefiting from interesting launch events in the past. Electronic Theatre will keep you updated with any such creative events taking place in the future.

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Comments

katslessor

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wow, how funny, this gu actually looks like he has just come form an office down the road as well, unless, its just one of their guys putting on a show. But still... very interesting marketing, if not a little against the accepted culture of "thou shallt smash car windows in to get what you want from inside..."

Thursday 11 June 2009, 17:53

GreatBaldur

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That's exactly what I thought! "Yeah, you can smash this car and nick a game, but you can't do it to the one just down the street..."! Still, it is pretty clever considering the game.

Thursday 11 June 2009, 18:00

katslessor

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I agree it is a pretty clever ploy, and you never know they can probably use the car for the car scrapage scheme, after they've finished, and get £2000 off a new car!
I'm so glad that we don't live in a complete "throw away culture"!

Thursday 11 June 2009, 18:08

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