Pacco da Su • Supporting a Call of Duty Launch with Local Italian Flavor

Activision is one of the world’s largest video game publishers, boasting an iconic lineup of beloved titles and franchises. Among these is the Call of Duty series, which spans games, merchandise and even its own esports league. But despite being a paragon of the competitive first-person shooting genre, the series today faces a highly saturated market and a shift in favor toward exclusively online live-service games.

To drive interest in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III—the latest entry in a reboot of one of the most beloved titles in the series—Activision sought a way to regain the spotlight with its Italian audience. We solved this challenge through a culturally focused social campaign strategy and original content that humanized the game’s cast and built interest in its narrative by playing off of the uniquely Italian “pacco da giù” custom.

Italians have a phrase, “pacco da giù,” meaning “package from below.” Its meaning derives from a point of mass migration from the south to the north, when southern families would send their emigrating children packages of goods and delicacies from home. In the age of social media, the phrase took on a new meaning as university students shared their own packages they received from home to their followers.

Meanwhile in Call of Duty, players receive supply crates delivered by air, or a “pacco da su”—the exact opposite of the popular Italian custom-turned-meme. From this insight, we put a local spin on the game’s world by portraying the characters’ mothers as they prepare care packages for their kids readying for battle, to be sent from above via parachute. We further built relevance with our audience by enlisting Giorgione, a popular (and humorously foul-mouthed) chef, to help the mothers prepare their packages.

While the campaign was designed to portray the series in a surprising and unexpected way, it still needed to make sense to the series. At the start of the film production process, we studied the look and feel of the game to ensure the resulting film would feel authentic, even if a little silly. Photography and set design worked together so that the world felt immediately recognizable to the audience, immersing them within the narrative. But the big star of the campaign was the box itself, meant to serve as the pacco da su, which we built from scratch with care.

We successfully raised awareness of the game in the week ahead of its launch, inspiring organic media that immediately gained traction. Influencers, fans, and Giorgione himself reshared the content, further driving reach and engagement among Call of Duty’s dedicated fans and beyond. In addition to simply raising awareness, the original content struck a personal connection between audiences and the game’s cast, stoking interest in the single-player narrative in addition to its online gameplay.