Valve has long been doing things thier own way, and will do so again with Portal 2. Along with outdoor ads seen on public transportation, they made up their own TV spot following a well received Valentine s Day-themed video for the game.
No one knows the product better than the folks who made it, said Valve s marketing VP Doug Lombardi. We’ve had many creative kick-off meetings with agencies over the years, and you d be shocked by the treatments that have come back. Copycat treatments. Cliché treatments. Treatments that reveal the agency wasn’t listening in the initial meeting.
With the Portal 2 ad, we playtested it and were able to make changes during production, adds Lombardi. With an agency, those types of tests are too often left to a post-mortem at which point, the value of those realizations is pretty close to worthless.
Source: MCV
