GMC
A launch film and in-game vehicle integration that turned HUMMER EV capability into a playable test drive inside Call of Duty. Instead of explaining the all-electric supertruck through conventional car-ad language, the work put it into Warzone, where speed, stealth, terrain, and team utility were the point.
Role •
Associate Creative Director
Year •
2022
18M-person
Virtual test drive
First EV
In Call of Duty
One Show
Gaming Merit
D Show
Black + Silver
The Problem
GMC needed to launch the HUMMER EV as an all-electric supertruck without making it feel like a conventional EV message or a conventional truck ad.
The vehicle’s story was built around capability: speed, torque, terrain, utility, and presence. But those claims risked feeling abstract if they were only described in film language.
The harder challenge was context. A vehicle like HUMMER EV needed to be experienced in a world where performance mattered immediately. Call of Duty created that context: a large-scale, high-intensity environment where players understood the value of moving fast, crossing terrain, carrying a squad, and using a vehicle as part of the mission.
The Idea
Put capability where performance mattered.
Instead of asking people to imagine what HUMMER EV could do, the campaign placed the vehicle inside Call of Duty as a drivable part of the experience.
That reframed the integration. The vehicle was not just a product placement. It became a performance object inside the world: near-quiet, fast-accelerating, terrain-capable, and useful to a squad.
The launch film gave the integration cinematic scale. The in-game vehicle gave players a way to experience the capability directly.
The Execution
The campaign connected film, game integration, partner alignment, and product capability into one launch system: cinematic enough for the brand, functional enough for the game, and controlled enough for a major entertainment partnership.
System in use
The work moved from cinematic launch storytelling into playable proof: the vehicle’s real-world capability became useful inside Call of Duty’s terrain, team movement, and mission logic.
Launch Film
The launch film introduced HUMMER EV as a mission-ready vehicle inside the Call of Duty world, giving the partnership a cinematic entry point.
Constraints Navigated
The integration had to satisfy GMC, Activision, vehicle-claim discipline, entertainment-world expectations, cinematic launch standards, and the functional logic of gameplay.
What It Demonstrates Now
This case shows how brand integration works when the product has to behave, not just appear.
The strongest move was translating HUMMER EV from a premium electric truck into a playable capability system. The audience did not have to be told that the vehicle was fast, capable, and useful under pressure. They could use it inside the world where those qualities mattered.
The work demonstrates how product attributes, entertainment context, partner requirements, and user behavior can be aligned into one coherent experience.
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