From custom Amazon Loot Lockers and a Twitch-controlled CCTV experience to a gamified Brand Store, Amazon Ads powers Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s Korean alleyway activation across London and Los Angeles
Activision has teamed up with Amazon Ads and Omnicom Media to support the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 through a first-of-its-kind, full-funnel activation spanning experiential, streaming, digital media, and commerce. The campaign is anchored by an immersive Korean alleyway experience, running in London and Los Angeles (October 15-23) – with Amazon Ads delivering key campaign elements that deepen fan engagement and extend the experience across digital and physical touchpoints.
Brand Innovation Lab, the creative team within Amazon Ads, including its Twitch Brand Partnership Studio, led the development of Amazon’s contributions to the campaign – marking the most ambitious integrated gaming launch from Amazon Ads to date. The campaign sets a new blueprint for how entertainment brands can leverage Amazon Ads capabilities to create cultural moments at scale.
The Korean Alleyway Experience
Inspired by scenes from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Activision worked with Omnicom Media to recreate a Korean alleyway as an immersive real-world experience at London’s Electric Garden on Shoreditch High Street and on LA’s Sunset Boulevard. The activation transforms attendees into operatives inside the game world, with every detail designed to immerse visitors in the story ahead of its launch on October 23.
Working alongside Omnicom Media, Amazon Ads developed several bespoke elements within the experience to deepen engagement and connect the physical activation to Amazon’s digital offerings:
- Amazon Loot Lockers: Visitors are given a mission card at the start of the alley and must embark on a code-breaking mission, solving puzzles that ultimately unlock custom-designed and wrapped Amazon Loot Lockers positioned at the end of the experience. The code-breaking mission and Loot Locker experience will be available from October 15-18.
- Amazon Fresh prize bags: Inside the Loot Lockers visitors can claim their reward: limited-edition Call of Duty prizes housed inside Fresh bags – combining two physical Amazon touchpoints in one moment.
- Gamified Brand Store: QR codes on the Loot Lockers link to a fully interactive Amazon Brand Store, where fans can continue the experience digitally, unlocking further rewards and purchasing the game. The Brand Store also extends the alleyway mission to fans who can’t attend in person, recreating the alley online and ensuring the campaign has global reach beyond the two host cities.
- Fresh Bags at Home: Separately, Fresh bags will also be delivered to Amazon Fresh customers’ homes in London and LA. QR codes on the bags link to the same gamified Brand Store experience, allowing fans to step into the world of the game from the comfort of their home.
“Call of Duty has always been at its best when it extends beyond the game and into culture,” said Tyler Bahl, Chief Marketing Officer at Activision. “With the Korean Alleyways in both London and LA, we’re giving fans the opportunity to step inside the world of Modern Warfare 4 through an immersive experience inspired by the sights, sounds and atmosphere that helped shape the game. Together with Amazon, we’ve been able to extend that experience beyond the physical space and connect with fans in new and engaging ways ahead of launch.”
Twitch-Powered Amplification
Twitch plays a central role in the campaign’s amplification strategy with a first-ever CCTV Alley Live experience that gives viewers remote access to the activation before the public has access.
In London, Call of Duty creators from the UK, Germany, and France go live on October 14 to narrate the CCTV Alley experience, during which the broadcast is interrupted by a “signal hijack” – glitches, Korean alley visuals, and a coded transmission that leads viewers to the official Call of Duty Twitch channel. There, a live CCTV feed of the alleyway is already active, and viewers take control, using chat commands to switch between camera angles, scan for hidden intel, and collectively unlock rewards both digitally and physically at the event.
On October 15, those same creators attend the alleyway experience in person for a one-hour livestream direct from the alley, completing the mission they helped unlock the night before and creating an authentic two-chapter content arc for their communities.
In Los Angeles, Twitch Chat can control the CCTV cameras live on October 19.
Twitch will also release a global Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 exclusive emote, available for three months, further embedding the campaign within the Twitch community.
Full-Funnel Scale
Beyond the experiential activation, Amazon Ads is delivering a full-funnel media campaign for Activision spanning Twitch, Prime Video, Live Sport, Display, online video, and Brand Store. Through a sponsorship of Prime Video’s Action genre slate and programmatic media across premium third-party streaming and entertainment inventory, Activision is reaching highly engaged audiences at scale across some of the biggest titles in entertainment.
“Call of Duty is one of the most iconic franchises in entertainment, and this campaign required an approach that matched that scale and ambition,” said Kate McCagg, Global Head of Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab. “By combining immersive real-world experiences with Twitch-powered interactivity and a full-funnel media strategy, we’ve created something that puts fans at the centre of the story.”
“The Korean Alleyway Experience shows what happens when we combine ambitious creative thinking with specialist expertise across our network,” said Thomas Rapley, Project Lead, Omnicom Media. “Together with Activision and Amazon Ads, Omnicom Media have helped turn an extraordinary vision into an immersive experience, connecting physical production, innovative partnerships and digital participation to bring fans closer to the world of Call of Duty.”
The Korean Alleys will open at London’s Electric Garden, 201-207 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6LG and Los Angeles’s 8950 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069 from 15-18 October as part of Activision’s global campaign, leading into the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on 23 October. The full interactive experience – including the code-breaking mission and Amazon Loot Lockers – runs from October 15-18, with the alleyway remaining open to visitors through October 23.
Fans who can’t attend in person can experience the digital alleyway mission at the UK Brand Store here and the US Brand Store here.