This advertisement is for the Call of Duty videogame, a military first person shooter videogame designed and created by ActiVision. The function of this product is a videogame with lifelike military/US Navy SEALS scenarios. The videogame can be played as a solo game, or over the Internet with voice communication through microphones with friends. I first came across this commercial less than a week ago when I was watching television, because the videogame was released in the past 10 days.

Despite the fact that most would assume that a shooter-style, military videogame would appeal to mostly teenage boys to men in their 30s and 40s, that is quite simply not the case. This commercial is incredibly unique in the way that it has people from across all demographics portrayed using military weapons; as if they were acting out aspects of the game itself. The demographic audience is men and women of all ages over 17, because the rating of the game is Mature which means no one under 17 can purchase it. The purpose of this commercial was to show that, “There is a soldier in all of us”. This statement is proven by showing people of all different backgrounds, celebrities, athletes, fireman, hospital workers, etc participating in the game. However, the psychographic segmentation is not as inclusive, as the target psychographic segment that this advertisement is going after are people that enjoy videogames, and do not have moral values that prevent them from playing violent videogames. All in all, this psychographic segmentation target audience needs to be able to separate real violence with virtual violence.

There are several competitive videogames that Call of Duty is working against. For example, some similar videogames are Halo Reach, Medal of Honor, and Grand Theft Auto. All of these videogames are competition for Call of Duty because all have received numerous awards and praise from the gaming community. The main strength of Call of Duty: Black Ops is the reputation that the Call of Duty series has. Call of Duty has come out with numerous award-winning games, such as Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, and numerous others. However, one of the main weaknesses of this brand is that it does not possess as large of a cult following as a videogames such as Halo, or Madden.

This advertisement does a great job of conveying the strength of the brand with this commercial. The commercial shows people from all reaches of the social ladder playing this videogame. Furthermore, they even recruited famous people to be in the ad, including Jimmy Kimmel and Kobe Bryant. The fact that these two celebrities use the brand helps to convey its strength. The target audience responds well to this commercial because the advertisement has great action shots, as well as celebrity appearances and is also quite comical. I loved this commercial because I am a fan of the product and the brand, and I thought it was hilarious that Jimmy Kimmel and Kobe Bryant play this game as well.