It’s safe to say Monster Energy is having a good November.
If you’ve played through at least some of Death Stranding by now you’ll already know the score, but to keep Norman Reedus’ Sam Bridges character hauling at maximum capacity as he delivers his pizzas, bombs and lost toys to the scattered remains of American society in the game’s bleak-but-tech-heavy reality, you’ll need to have him chug countless cans of Monster Energy. It’s the most glaring product placement in the game, and despite the pure horror of it all, we talked to quite a few people over the weekend who were complimenting their Death Stranding gameplay with a couple of Monster Energy cans in real life.
Turns out, it must have been a lot more than those few people who decided to lean into the Monster campaign sewn into Hideo Kojima’s package delivery epic. On Friday, as the game was exclusively released via PS4, Monster stock soared to $58.16 compared to $56.64 the day before. In fact, according to Yahoo’s financial charts, it was Monster Energy’s highest closing in well over a month!
Monster Sales previous and After DS Release. Coincidence? I think not. from r/DeathStranding
We can deride it until the cows come home, but sometimes even blatant and objectively terrible advertising just works.
“The way Sam drinks it in the private room (chugging it down, feet kicking up), makes me wanna buy one,” commented one person on Reddit, while another admitted “I prefer sugar free Rockstar, but gave the original Monster a go to celebrate release day.”
We are …quite doomed.
Wireframe #26 is out now
