Zelnick: GTA VI will be pushed with an aggressive marketing campaign

Everyone knowing Grand Theft Auto is not enough. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, said in a fireside chat at GamesBeat Insider that GTA VI needs aggressive marketing despite the franchise’s global fame, pointing to Barbie as an example of a recognizable brand that still had a huge campaign behind it.

“You always have to go out and create enthusiasm,” he explained. To him those are two different things: “Awareness is one thing; enthusiasm is another. And we have to show people what they’re going to get.” He compared the challenge to film and TV, where the viewer sits back and consumes without installing anything or learning controls: “It is a lean-back experience.” A game, by contrast, asks you to install, interact, and build some skill, and that has to be sold differently.

On content creators, Zelnick was blunt: they amplify word of mouth, but you cannot pay anyone to say something bad is good, because they would lose their own audience. You can invite a creator to play exclusively for a couple of days and reward that promotion, but the system cannot be gamed: “We cannot convince people something that’s bad is good. What we can do is say to people, ‘Look, it’s out there. You’re being exposed to it. It’s important. You ought to try it.’”

The CEO closed with the company’s mission, repeated at every internal meeting: to make “the best entertainment on earth”, starting with “the biggest and best hits”. The GTA VI campaign, with the Extended Look on Netflix and the official album, is that idea in practice.