Although Saturday night’s Guitar Hero World Tour launch may have appeared like a large-scale spectacle to guests—the expansive event took over two sound studios at the Lot and featured an hour-long Smashing Pumpkins concert—it wasn’t the party that hosts Activision and Best Buy had originally envisioned prior to the country’s economic downward spiral.
“We had to cut a lot of different things out,” said Donna Graves, C.E.O. of NCompass International, who began planning the event about three months ago with Activision’s senior manager of retail marketing, Sean Dexheimer, and Best Buy’s senior manager of event marketing, Evonne Groves. “We looked at every single line item and asked, ‘Is this what we need to spend to do this particular thing, or can we do it a different way? How can we creatively do everything and not have to cancel this because of the situation with the economy?’”
The answer came in recreating themed concert stages from the game that, as Graves put it, “wouldn’t break the bank.” Instead of remaking the state-fair setting that appears in the game by bringing in a Ferris wheel and high strikers as they had initially planned, the team settled for less production-heavy picks, like the frat-house stage, which required simple decor touches like kegs and shabby sofa beds that served as seating.
Event producers also scrapped more over-the-top production elements like a life-size recreation of the colored note highway featured in the game, which they had planned to build along the street leading to the parking lot.
“Most corporations know it’s still important to keep marketing, but they’re looking for ways to do it more efficiently now,” Graves said. In a market where consumers are increasingly reluctant to spend money, one of Activision and Best Buys's shrewdest moves may have been to acknowledge those consumers by timing the V.I.P. launch event to coincide with the midnight sale of Guitar Hero World Tour. The red carpet for the launch party was set up outside the retail store, so ordinary consumers could watch as talent arrived. Guests could also test the game’s new full kit (featuring drums, bass, and vocals, in addition to the guitar-only option of past Guitar Hero iterations), and pick up popcorn as they waited for midnight to approach.
