Androids’ dream of stealth marketing

Global – A trailer for forthcoming sci-fi film Alien: Covenant positions AMD as the future of artificial intelligence.

• Taking a Faction Marketing approach, the film poses as an advert for Weyland-Yutani, a core component of the Alien franchise’s narrative
• AMD involvement went beyond the standard approach to product placement, instead using the trailer as a way of exploring the future potential of its technologies

The trailer masquerades as an advert for fictional company Weyland-Yutani, producer of the androids that populate the film. Like the Faction Marketing campaign created to publicise its precursor, Prometheus, it encourages consumers to purchase one of its latest modes of anthropomorphic droids.

One of the most interesting aspects of the work is the way in which it focuses on the insertion of a microchip by leading processer manufacturer AMD. This is seen being inserted into the back of the android’s head before he ‘wakes up’. For the brand, the fictional narrative was a means of exploring the possible applications of the artificial intelligence technologies it is now developing.

‘When we heard about Covenant and then when we heard a little more about Walter, we very quickly drew parallels with the things AMD was already enabling and driving,’ AMD director of OEM marketing Raymond Dumbeck told Creativity Online.