COD Black Ops 6’s Propaganda-Styled Marketing Is Generating “Mystery And Intrigue”

Last week saw Activision’s reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 through a new trailer, igniting “The Truth Lies” campaign. This will be the first main entry in the Black Ops portion of the first-person-shooter franchise since 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and propaganda-themed marketing has been popping up in New York to engage the masses.

The 40-second teaser titled, “wake up (rushmore)”, featured live-action footage of a party scaling a rock face that turned out to be a defacement of Mount Rushmore, covering the presidents’ eyes with “The Truth Lies” blindfolds. It’s a bold start to Microsoft and Activision’s promotion of the game, but it’s garnered the attention of fans and bystanders alike.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Claims “The Truth Is The First Casualty Of War”

“War Never Changes” is a tagline belonging to a very different property from Bethesda, highlighting the nihilistic tone of the Fallout franchise. But in sharing a similar theme with the Call of Duty series, Black Ops 6 is leaning heavily on war propaganda-styled promotional material to turn heads.

Social media users have wasted no time sharing the various promotional posters getting slapped on the concrete jungle to spread the word of Black Ops 6’s arrival. Vibrant posters carrying “The Truth Lies” tagline and the defaced Mount Rushmore have been spotted sporting the provocative style previously seen in material relating to George Orwell’s 1984 and the Obey clothing brand.

A van was also spotted outside the Manhattan courthouse earlier in the week spray-painted with “In Lies We Trust” identified with the Black Ops 6 logo. Additionally, newspaper stands in New York City, selling the New York Post, featured articles covering the fictional Mount Rushmore event.

This kind of marketing presence not only impresses the Call of Duty community but also attracts the uninitiated’s interest in the game’s statement. Some gamers even went as far as to say Microsoft should have been pushing the same marketing effort behind Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, which many thought fell by the wayside regarding promotion.

Fans applauded developer Treyarch and Activision for the unexpected campaign, pinpointing its ability to “involve everybody into figuring things out”. The “cryptic teasers that tie into the political conspiracy aspects of the [Call of Duty] series” were also commended, and more fans admitted this approach to game promotion had their “full interest”.

Playing into the theme of this marketing stunt, one fan thought it would have been on-brand for Activision to feed “a load of false information about the game to demonstrate how quickly/easily misinformation spreads”, but the publisher’s already succeeded in establishing a viral sensation.

Check out the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 teaser trailer below:

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