2010 marks the inaugural Campaign of the Year Award given out by VideoGamer.com to the advertiser with the most accomplished and successful campaign.

Campaigns are judged by a number of criteria including reach, impact, creative implementation, timing and overall strategy.

The 2010 award goes to MEC UK for their excellent work on the Call of Duty Black Ops campaign.

MEC and Activision Blizzard were under a lot of pressure to follow up on the overwhelming success of 2009's Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The planning team approached the challenge with a simple mantra "Go big or go home" and they followed through on this – by the time the game launched you could not avoid Call of Duty messaging.

On VideoGamer.com specifically a pre-order/awareness burst of activity ran a month before the game's release. The timing of the burst was impeccable - a direct competitor was releasing a comparable product that very week, their launch impact was compromised and sales reflected that. Meanwhile Call of Duty Black Ops was unmissable on VideoGamer.com with the burst consisting of homepage and channel takeovers on all relevant platforms. The creative itself was eye catching and the synchronised units seamlessly blended together with the skin and an embedded window to view an explosive trailer.

One month later the launch campaign went live using a slightly modified version of the earlier creative showcasing clips from the new launch trailer. Takeovers blanketed the entire website with not only Xbox and Playstation covered but Wii, DS and PC channels also employed to make sure every enthusiast gamer knew that they could buy the multiplatform title that week. The website forum was also targeted and podcast sponsorship messages ran for two weeks to excite the hardcore and regular users of VideoGamer.com.

Call of Duty Black Ops launched on Tuesday 9th November and sold two million units during its first five days on sale making it the biggest ever launch of any game in the UK. The two million units generated a staggering £89.9 million – more than the entire UK entertainment software market generated over the previous two weeks combined.