DDB Paris Dare Players to Take On the Cartel

To round up their promotion of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands game, developer Ubisoft and DDB Paris have joined forces again to create an immersive experience, Cartel/Com.

The Cartel/Com activation began with a brown envelope, which arrived late on Wednesday afternoon at shots HQ. Upon opening the package, we were greeted with a beaten-up ‘burner phone’ and a brief outline of our mission: to help the CIA bring down the Santa Blanca drug cartel over the next 48 hours. Thrust into the heart of Bolivia, we were required to search through pictures on the handset, read and reply to text messages and listen out for clues from pre-recorded phone calls.

The overarching launch campaign, which was overseen by DDB’s ECD Alexander Kalchev, was created to not just serve as an introduction to the game, but also to put people at the heart of the story and the moral dilemma faced by those forced into drug production and trafficking.

Inspired by the game in which gamers assume the role of 'Ghosts' – the fictional elite special operations unit of the United States Army tasked with taking down the cartel – it was a wild and tense experience.

The 360 campaign follows director John McTernan’s previously-released cinematic films, Red Dot and Ruthless; A World With No Heroes, an immersive website complete with a 3D map of the game’s location; and a raft of exclusive missions and video content and information on the cartel, cocaine trafficking and other statistics.