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Activision expands UK PR operation

Internal team structure to complement activities with external PR companies

Activision's UK PR team has now completed its restructure, following the integration last year of the Vivendi Games business, with the addition of an external PR company to complement the internal team.

"Following the introduction of the new internal UK and Ireland PR team (Lucy Fairbrass, Johanna Hakala and Jonnie Bryant), it became apparent that the extensive nature of Activision's 2009 product portfolio would require comprehensive PR support which would reach far beyond the 2008 PR objectives," Kate Ward, head of UK PR, told GamesIndustry.biz.

"With this in mind I have been working to broaden the internal team and move to a one agency external PR solution, with Frank PR, for the Activision and LucasArts portfolio, while maintaining our relationship with Barrington Harvey on the Red Octane side of the business."

Ward, who herself moved over to Activision recently from a similar role at Microsoft, explained the changes were necessary to cope with the size of the company's franchises.

"The Activision business and all of the products associated with it are incredibly diverse and demand a great deal of focus from all areas of the business, due to the size of the brands which we work with and the successful legacies of our franchises," she said.

"By expanding the PR function and consolidating our external support for the business we hope that this will provide a far more streamlined and consistent approach to our PR activities and enable our agency to approach creative ideas with a view across multiple titles."

And marketing director David Tyler added: "In the UK, the organisational integration was completed last Autumn. The UK teams did a really good job in planning the integration to ensure that it went smoothly, whilst still maintaining a strong focus on all of the titles being launched during the last quarter of the year.

"The successes from that timeframe speak for themselves, with titles like Call of Duty: World at War, Guitar Hero: World Tour, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and our reinvention of the Bond video game franchise in Quantum of Solace all dominating the charts in November and December."

Activision's stock closed yesterday down 2.2 per cent at USD 9.38, roughly on a par with its level in the early part of December last year, following turbulent market conditions.