Call of Duty built its Korean street inside a Shoreditch High Street billboard, with set builders, neon sign makers and a twin alley on Sunset Boulevard

Activision’s Call of Duty alley on Shoreditch High Street was built inside the billboards that ring a former car park at Electric Garden, 201-207 Shoreditch High Street, by a crew of set designers, model makers, scaffolders and neon sign makers working for Activision and Omnicom Media.

The site was a car park two weeks before the alley opened on 15 October, The Drum reported. Omnicom Media led the campaign, including the design and production of the outdoor and live elements, with Thomas Rapley as its project lead. A twin alley stood at 8950 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

“The team has built a city in a billboard,” Tyler Bahl, Activision’s chief marketing officer, told The Drum. The set copies the back alley from the opening level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which is released on 23 October.

Why Shoreditch High Street

The car park had room for a full build, and because it is usually surrounded by advertising hoardings, Omnicom could buy those sites as well, The Drum said. The hoardings became the outer wall of the set. The plot faces Boxpark, a short walk from Shoreditch High Street Overground station.

Set designers, model makers, scaffolders, painters and decorators built the street. Stylists and prop buyers sourced Korean groceries, comics and kitchenware. Neon sign makers lit each shopfront. Pyrotechnic and sound crews staged a nightly attack with flames, smoke and helicopter noise, and the street was reset for the next day.

The convenience store at the entrance is modelled on a real shop in Seoul, down to the packaging on the shelves. When Bahl sent a photo of the finished set to his teams, they could not tell whether it was Seoul or London, The Drum reported.

Details for fans

The spa sign reads “going dark”, a phrase from the series. A sticker for the Clean House Launderette on a meter box carries a line from the game: “We get dirty, so the world stays clean.” Screens run 12 minutes of custom footage, including an advert for McTavish Soap, named after the character known as Soap. Some comics in the shop window are real Korean titles, and others were rewritten to feature Call of Duty characters.

“There are Easter eggs hidden throughout the experience,” Bahl said. “Most people wouldn’t know, but the fans that come in will really care.”

The Sunset Boulevard twin

The Los Angeles build used shipping containers welded with steel, with facades raised by union set designers who usually build film sets, The Sporting Tribune reported. More than 100 people worked on it after three to four months of planning. Its version added Kogi Korean BBQ, a karaoke lounge, a PC bang leaderboard and missing-cat posters with the sound of a cat.

“No detail was overlooked,” said Rose Milgrom Kohn, vice president of IMPACT X in Omnicom Media’s outdoor division. “It immerses you immediately into an alleyway in South Korea and lets you explore the same way that the soldiers are exploring.”

Kecia Christiansen, Activision’s senior director of experiential marketing, told the paper: “We really wanted to be true to our game.”

Only London used real fire in the nightly blackout, because permitting issues prevented it in the US, The Drum said.

Amazon Ads’ Brand Innovation Lab and the Twitch Brand Partnership Studio added prize lockers and Twitch-controlled CCTV cameras to both sites. Activision listed the alleys as open from 15 to 18 October. The Drum reported that the London alley would stay open until launch day.

Made in Shoreditch covered the opening of the Call of Duty Korean alley on 18 October. Its Shoreditch High Street guide covers the rest of the street.