During the leak of information on Modern Warfare 3, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said he faced his “first real crisis on the job.” He had been with the company since leaving Deutsch less than a year prior.
“It wasn’t on our timetable; we didn’t instigate it,” said Hirshberg. “But it’s out there, and we can’t pull it back in. We weren’t ready for this, but we had to deal with it.”
In the half day meeting that followed, he said, “Our job today is to complete this sentence: ‘If this leak had never happened, we would have never been able to do ______ .’ And if we could complete that sentence, then we could go to bed tonight having turned a crisis into an opportunity.”
So using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube they immediately raised interest in the game and took the spark of interest and “poured gasoline on it.” Pushing things up four weeks ended up working out for the company pretty well.
Source: AdAge
