Verdansk was never just a map in Call of Duty Warzone. It was home for millions of players. After five years away, its return in Black Ops 6 Season 03 marked a defining moment for the franchise.
Our objective was to make that return feel historic by putting the moment in the hands of the fans. On social, we set out to unite players around their shared nostalgia and renewed excitement, driving significant earned conversation and high engagement across platforms.
Call of Duty gave every fan the opportunity to own this moment by letting them carve their names into Call of Duty History. Literally.
We built a 12ft tall 9ft wide steel plate, in the shape of an in-game armor plate for fans to not only submit their gamer tag for a chance to be featured on the plate, but also to potentially watch their name be etched into the plate during a 12 hour livestream.
We received tens of thousands of gamertag submissions and could only fit ~3.5k on the plate. To ensure that all who engaged with the campaign felt included, we offered 2XP to all those who submitted, regardless if their name was added to the plate.
The key challenge was not simply quality controlling individual names. It was building and managing a seamless end to end system that could handle submissions at scale and translate them accurately onto a physical armor plate.
This required manually reviewing and approving every name, actively moderating live chat, coordinating across teams, and ensuring each approved entry moved cleanly from submission to production. Given the volume of participation, the process was more complex and time intensive than anticipated. To maintain accuracy, brand safety, and speed, we implemented multiple review checkpoints between agency and client teams, creating a tightly controlled workflow that upheld quality without slowing momentum.
We closed the activation with a full scale hero video that captured the entire journey, from live fan submissions to the physical creation of the armor plate, showcasing the scale and emotion behind the activation.
To extend the experience, we launched a dedicated page on Call of Duty’s website featuring a high resolution version of the final plate. Using an interactive zoom "sniper scope", fans could dive in, explore the details, and find their own gamer tag among the nearly 3,000 names immortalized on the plate.
We brought in 250k livestream viewers, gave out 2.5k rewards to fans and overall generated 2.1M impressions. The engagement level far exceeded the number of space available on our larger than life plate.
