Game of War's 2015 'Who I Am' Super Bowl commercial starred Kate Upton and drove the free mobile game up 95 places in US iOS rankings, per AppFigures.
ARCHIVEGame of War Brings Kate Upton to the Super Bowl in 2015
Game of War's "Who I Am" is a 2015 Super Bowl commercial starring supermodel Kate Upton that positioned the free mobile game as the world's first truly global real-time strategy MMO, inviting players across the United States and beyond to connect, cooperate, and compete within a single worldwide community.
Machine Zone, Inc. launched "Who I Am" in February 2015, deploying Kate Upton as the campaign's central figure — a role its creative team later described as the world's first Spokesgoddess. The film medium campaign concentrated its impact into a single high-visibility media asset, using the Super Bowl's unrivalled live audience to establish Game of War's identity as both a social and competitive gaming experience. In the United States, where mobile gaming was accelerating rapidly during this period, the timing was deliberate: a mass-market spectacle demanded a mass-market platform.
The campaign's narrative centred on identity and empowerment, with the title "Who I Am" signalling that the game was a vehicle for self-expression within a vibrant global alliance system. Players were invited to form alliances, ignite rivalries, and define themselves through real-time strategy MMO gameplay. The creative paired Upton's celebrity presence with the game's fantasy-war visual language, communicating accessibility and competitive depth simultaneously. Integrated promotion across Twitter and Facebook, anchored by the hashtag #GameofWar, extended the campaign beyond the broadcast moment and encouraged social interaction at scale. According to supplied campaign-archive information, the spot accumulated over 19 million video views, though no independent source has verified this figure. The Clapboard Score for "Who I Am" is 67 out of 100, reflecting strong cultural visibility offset by limited independently verified performance data.
ARCHIVEMachine Zone entered its most aggressive marketing phase in a mobile gaming market undergoing substantial expansion. According to Newzoo, the global mobile-games market reached approximately 30 billion dollars in 2015, while App Annie and IDC placed the figure closer to 34.8 billion dollars for that same year. North America specifically generated approximately 6.5 billion dollars in mobile-game revenue in 2015, a rise of roughly 15 percent year-over-year, per App Annie and IDC data — establishing the United States as one of the two largest single-territory mobile gaming markets in the world alongside China.
Within that competitive landscape, Game of War faced a formidable direct rival in Supercell's Clash of Clans, which had established dominant brand recognition in the real-time strategy MMO category across the US market. According to AppFigures, following the Super Bowl broadcast Game of War temporarily surpassed Clash of Clans in the US iOS free-app rankings, moving up 95 places — a measurable, if short-lived, competitive displacement. A second Super Bowl advertiser in the gaming category, Ucool, fared considerably worse with its own spot during the same broadcast, as reported by GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi on February 12, 2015, reinforcing that execution quality and talent selection materially affected audience response even within the same advertising environment.
The broader strategic rationale for a Super Bowl buy was grounded in the nature of the free mobile game's monetisation model: user acquisition at volume is the primary growth lever, making the reach of the Super Bowl in the United States — one of the highest-rated annual broadcasts in American television — a defensible, if expensive, channel choice. Machine Zone had reportedly committed approximately 40 million dollars to its broader 2015 marketing and media effort, according to available reporting, underscoring the company's willingness to outspend rivals for top-of-funnel awareness at national scale.
Group creative director Eric Cosper led the creative development of "Who I Am," working alongside associate creative director and copywriter Jacque Vavroch, associate creative director and art director Brittany Rivera, and agency producer Eric Fox. Cosper later described the campaign's central invention in direct terms, stating: "In 2015 I created the world's first Spokesgoddess. And she crushed it". The formulation of Kate Upton not merely as a celebrity endorser but as an in-world character — a figure who inhabits the game's fantasy-war universe rather than commenting on it from outside — gave the creative a degree of narrative coherence unusual for a mobile gaming advertisement of its era.
The execution combined high-production fantasy visuals with Upton's established cultural profile, deploying the spectacle logic that GamesBeat identified as core to Super Bowl advertising effectiveness: spectacle, sex appeal, and celebrity recognition operating in combination. In the United States, where Super Bowl commercial slots attract as much viewer attention as the game itself, the creative was engineered for a specific viewing context — one in which 30 seconds of screen time must function as complete brand communication without the benefit of prior audience familiarity or extended narrative. The single-asset strategy concentrated recall by refusing to dilute the campaign across multiple creative executions, a structural choice that maximised the coherence of the brand impression.
Social amplification was built into the campaign architecture from the outset. The hashtag #GameofWar activated Twitter and Facebook promotion around the broadcast, converting a passive viewing event into a participatory brand moment. Kate Upton's advertising relationship with Game of War had begun in 2014, according to available reporting, meaning the Super Bowl spot operated as a culminating statement of an already-established brand identity rather than a cold introduction — a continuity that reinforced rather than disrupted audience recognition.
No comprehensive, independently verified performance data for Game of War's "Who I Am" campaign is publicly available in terms of sales lift, incremental revenue, or customer-acquisition cost. Campaign-archive information supplied with the creative records a figure of 19,640,109 video views and 32 comments, though no independent source has confirmed this view count.
The most substantive third-party metric comes from AppFigures, which reported that Game of War rose 95 places in the US iOS free-app rankings immediately following the Super Bowl broadcast, temporarily surpassing Clash of Clans. That movement represents a concrete, if transient, signal of acquisition impact in the United States — the campaign's primary market. As reported by GamesBeat, audience response to the Kate Upton spot compared favourably to Ucool's Super Bowl advertisement in the same broadcast window, suggesting that relative creative quality within the gaming category influenced viewer engagement.
Structurally, "Who I Am" demonstrates how a free mobile game with a volume-dependent monetisation model can deploy a single premium media event to compress the awareness-to-download funnel. The combination of an established celebrity presence — one with prior Game of War brand equity built through the 2014 campaign — alongside the Super Bowl's concentrated US reach created conditions for short-term chart movement that more diffuse media spending would not replicate. The campaign earned no verified wins across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards for Effectiveness, according to available awards records. Its legacy is primarily commercial and cultural rather than industry-recognition-based, a distinction that the 67 out of 100 Clapboard Score reflects accurately.
"Who I Am" is a 2015 Super Bowl commercial produced for Game of War by Machine Zone, Inc., starring Kate Upton. The campaign positioned the free mobile game as the world's first truly global real-time strategy MMO, using the Super Bowl platform in the United States to drive mass awareness and user acquisition at scale.
Game of War rose 95 places in US iOS free-app rankings after the Super Bowl broadcast, according to AppFigures. The game temporarily surpassed Clash of Clans during that period. No independently verified data on sustained ranking changes, revenue lift, or long-term user-acquisition impact has been publicly released by Machine Zone.
Eric Cosper served as group creative director on the campaign. Jacque Vavroch was associate creative director and copywriter, Brittany Rivera was associate creative director and art director, and Eric Fox served as agency producer. Cosper described Upton's role as the world's first Spokesgoddess in his own account of the project.
Machine Zone reportedly committed approximately 40 million dollars to its broader 2015 marketing and media effort surrounding the "Who I Am" campaign. This figure reflects the wider budget rather than the Super Bowl media buy alone. No itemised breakdown of media spend versus production cost has been independently verified from public sources.
GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi reported on February 12, 2015 that viewers responded considerably better to the Game of War Kate Upton spot than to Ucool's Super Bowl advertisement in the same broadcast. GamesBeat attributed the stronger response to the combination of spectacle, celebrity recognition, and the sex appeal built into the real-time strategy MMO's creative execution.
No verified wins for Game of War's "Who I Am" campaign have been recorded across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards for Effectiveness, according to available awards records. The campaign's significance is primarily commercial and cultural, reflected in its Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100.
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