Left 4 Dead 2 Marketing Part One: Valve's Doug Lombardi

Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the most immediate sequels ever released by Valve and is also looking to be one of the biggest hits of the year. The multiplayer, co-op oriented shooter recently released with one of the largest promotional campaigns ever for a Valve title, with tens of millions of dollars being spent on ads in TV, billboards and magazines. We caught up with Valve’s VP of Marketing Doug Lombardi for an interview about marketing Left 4 Dead 2.

IndustryGamers: How has the way you've promoted Left 4 Dead 2 changed since the first reveal trailer at E3 this year?

Doug Lombardi: It hasn't really. Our plan all along was to unveil more and more of the game at public festivals where folks have a chance to play the game for themselves and then invest fairly heavily in pre-order promotions as well as in television, outdoor, and online advertising.

IG: How does the $25 million budget allow you to do things that you couldn't do last year with the first Left 4 Dead?

DL: The biggest increase to the budget comes in the spending in Europe. Last year, Valve spent more on consumer advertising than ever before and we saw great results in Left 4 Dead becoming the #1 selling new game IP on two platforms in North America. This year, we simply added more outdoor markets and increased the television spend a little in North America. But in Europe we took the product to TV in countries where we've never used TV, and added more cities to the outdoor campaign.

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IG: How did you come to use the song Electric Worry by Clutch in some of the ads?

DL: The choice of music on any TV spot is tricky -- you want something that fits the product, isn't overused, or an immediate turn off to any particular segment of the audience. With those considerations in mind, we simply went through a process of running trials with dozens and dozens of songs until we found one that tested well with a wide group of people. Clutch was great to work with and we're using that song worldwide on television is over a dozen countries.