WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that China has threatened to impose sanctions on North Korea if it conducts further nuclear tests.

“We know that China is in communications with the regime in Pyongyang,” Tillerson said on Fox News Channel. “They confirmed to us that they had requested the regime conduct no further nuclear test.”

Tillerson said China also told the U.S. that it had informed North Korea “that if they did conduct further nuclear tests, China would be taking sanctions actions on their own.”

Earlier Thursday, the senior U.S. Navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific said the crisis with North Korea is at the worst point he’s ever seen, but he declined to compare the situation to the Cuban missile crisis decades ago.

“It’s real,” Adm. Harry Harris Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific Command, said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Harris said he has no doubt that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un intends to fulfill his pursuit of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States. The admiral acknowledged there’s uncertainty within U.S. intelligence agencies over how far along North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are. But Harris said it’s not a matter of if but when.

“There is no doubt in my mind,” Harris said.

China’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment on Tillerson’s remarks on new sanctions, but a spokesman Thursday said Beijing remained committed to implementing sanctions imposed under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“And the reason that China implements relevant resolutions is to fulfill our due international obligation rather than being pressured by any outside parties,” Geng Shuang said at a daily briefing.

China has consistently called for an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, but says it opposes unilateral sanctions imposed without a U.N. mandate. China in January suspended coal imports from the North for the rest of the year, but it did so following the passage of a Security Council resolution capping Pyongyang’s coal exports.

Other economic activity with North Korea remains robust.

Still, Beijing has been increasing pressure on North Korea, and would be willing to impose punitive measures unilaterally in the event of another nuclear test, said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at Renmin University’s School of International Studies in Beijing.

“So Tillerson’s comments are correct — but be careful, China does so for China’s national interest, not as a result of U.S. pressure,” Cheng said.

The Trump administration has declared that all options, including a targeted military strike, are on the table to block North Korea from carrying out threats against the United States and its allies in the region. But a pre-emptive attack isn’t likely, U.S. officials have said, and the administration is pursuing a strategy of putting pressure on Pyongyang with assistance from China, North Korea’s main trading partner and the country’s economic lifeline.

With international support, the Trump administration said Thursday it wants to exert a “burst” of economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea that yields results within months to push the communist government to change course from developing nuclear weapons.

Susan Thornton, the acting top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, said there’s debate about whether Pyongyang is willing to give up its weapons programs. She said the U.S. wants “to test that hypothesis to the maximum extent we can” for a peaceful resolution.

But signaling that military action remains possible, Thornton told an event hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — the Washington think tank has advocated tougher U.S. policies on Iran and North Korea — that the administration treats North Korea as its primary security challenge and is serious that “all options are on the table.”

“We are not seeking regime change and our preference is to resolve this problem peacefully,” Thornton said, “but we are not leaving anything off the table.”

Tillerson took a similar stand in the Fox News interview Thursday, saying: “We do not seek regime change in North Korea. … What we are seeking is the same thing China has said they seek — a full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

In a separate interview with National Public Radio, Tillerson said the U.S. remains open to holding direct negotiations with North Korea.

“But North Korea has to decide they’re ready to talk to us about the about the right agenda, and the right agenda is not simply stopping where they are for a few more months or a few more years and then resuming things,” he said, according to excerpts of an interview that will air Friday morning. “That’s been the agenda for the last 20 years.”

Multi-nation negotiations with North Korea on its nuclear program stalled in 2008. The Obama administration attempted to resurrect them in 2012, but a deal to provide food aid in exchange for a nuclear freeze soon collapsed.

The House GOP leadership announced late Thursday that it would vote next week on new sanctions against North Korea that would target its shipping industry and those who employ North Korean slave labor abroad.

“The time for waiting on North Korea to get its act together is over. Congress has led the effort to institute tough and far-reaching sanctions against Pyongyang,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In a show of military might, the U.S. has sent a massive amount of American weaponry to the region. A group of American warships led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is in striking range of North Korea “if the president were to call on it,” Harris told the committee. A U.S. missile defense system called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense is being installed in South Korea.

Harris said he has adequate forces to “fight tonight” against North Korea if that were to become necessary.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in New York and Matthew Brown in Beijing contributed to this report.

___

Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rplardner

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

President Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that the United States would not be pulling out of the North American Free Trade Agreement “at this time,” opening the door to future negotiations on the same day that Trump was considering signaling a strong intent to withdraw as a potential way of bringing the parties together at the deal-
making table.

Trump spoke with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late Wednesday afternoon after reports circulated during the day that the president was contemplating withdrawing from NAFTA.

“President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable the renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries,” the White House said in a statement late Wednesday.

News that Trump was weighing withdrawing from NAFTA drew sharp criticism from several Republican leaders, including Sen. Jeff Flake (R) and Sen. John McCain (R). McCain tweeted that Trump “shouldn’t abandon this vital trade agreement.”

Earlier, three people familiar with the matter said Trump is seriously considering signing a document within days that would signal his intent to withdraw the United States from the agreement within six months.

If signed, the letter would begin a formal process that could see the United States exit the 23-year-old trade pact with Canada and Mexico, ratcheting up tensions among neighboring nations.

Signing the document does not require Trump to withdraw from NAFTA after six months, but it is a required step if he plans to eventually do so. The White House is expected to soon take a separate step by signing a letter to Congress that would notify lawmakers of the administration’s intention to renegotiate NAFTA. By taking both steps, the White House would give itself more flexibility to choose a different outcome in several months.

Any move by Trump on NAFTA would not come as a surprise. The president made criticism of NAFTA one of the main topics of his campaign last year, calling the pact “a disaster for our country” and saying it “had to be totally gotten rid of.”

But the NAFTA issue did seem to lose some urgency after the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency as his administration focused on other topics.

“Some people were hopeful that just like he revised his views on NATO, he’d revise his views on this,” said Hoyt Bleakley, associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan. “But clearly he hasn’t.”

In recent days Trump also has taken a harder line with Canada, blasting a recent change in the dairy pricing policy there that mostly dealt with a cheese-making product called ultrafiltered milk. In Wisconsin last week, Trump called Canada’s dairy pricing scheme “another typical one-sided deal against the U.S.” Canada disputed that.

And the Commerce Department said Monday that it would begin charging a tariff on the import of softwood lumber from Canada into the United States, alleging Canada was improperly subsidizing its domestic timber firms.

But there was no panic over the fate of NAFTA in the Calgary offices of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, whose members sell and buy plenty of beef cattle across the border.

“This is his typical way of doing things — saying completely unreasonable things as a negotiating posture,” said John Masswohl, the trade group’s director of government and international relations.

Masswohl said he watched how Trump handled issues at the Carrier plant in Indiana and with Ford’s plans to build car models in Mexico. He sees similar rhetoric in Trump’s approach to NAFTA.

“I’ve got to believe this is a negotiating position,” Masswohl said, because the trade pact might need tweaking, but it has been good for both countries.

Separately, the Trump administration Wednesday made another move on trade that seemed aimed at China, launching an investigation into the effect of aluminum imports on U.S. national security interests.

A similar probe, known as a Section 232 investigation, was announced for foreign-made steel last week.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Wednesday that Trump would be signing a directive today urging the inquiry.

Ross said aluminum was a national security interest because the metal in its high-purity form is used in military planes such as the F-35 and F-18, plus armor plating for military vehicles and combat vessels. Just one U.S. smelter makes high-purity aluminum, producing enough for peacetime military needs but not enough if the country enters into conflicts, he said.

“It’s very dangerous from a defense point of view to have only one supplier of an absolutely critical element,” Ross said.

Only two U.S. smelters are fully operational today, with eight others having curtailed operations or closed since 2015. Imported aluminum accounted for 55 percent of the U.S. market last year, the largest market share ever and a steep increase over recent years, Ross said.

The largest importers of aluminum into the United States are China followed by Russia, United Arab Emirates and Canada, Ross said.

Aluminum imports from China, in particular, have been a focus of the U.S. government for months. Late last year, a bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators asked for a national security review of Chinese aluminum giant Zhongwang International Group Ltd.’s proposed $2.3 billion purchase of U.S. aluminum products maker Aleris, alleging the deal would damage the U.S. defense industry.

In January, days before leaving office, President Barack Obama launched a World Trade Organization complaint about Chinese aluminum subsidies that, the United States claimed, gave Chinese companies an unfair advantage.

And last month, U.S. producers of aluminum foil — including the kind used to wrap kitchen leftovers — filed an anti-dumping complaint against China, claiming the United States was being flooded with unfair, cheap imports. Foil prices have declined significantly in recent years “due to widespread and significant underselling of U.S. producers’ prices,” according to the complaint.

A couple of weeks later, Trump’s Commerce Department announced that it was investigating those and other unfair trade claims.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration told lawmakers Wednesday it will apply economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, as an extraordinary White House briefing served to tamp down talk of military action against an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous U.S. adversary.

President Donald Trump welcomed Republican and Democratic senators before his secretary of state, defense secretary, top general and national intelligence director conducted a classified briefing. The same team also met with House members in the Capitol to outline the North’s escalating nuclear capabilities and U.S. response options to what they called an “urgent national security threat.”

After weeks of unusually blunt military threats, the joint statement by the agency chiefs said Trump’s approach “aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners.” It made no specific mention of military options, though it said the U.S. would defend itself and friends.

The unprecedented meeting in a building adjacent to the White House reflected the increased American alarm over North Korea’s progress in developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. A flurry of military activity, by North Korea and the U.S. and its partners on and around the divided Korean Peninsula, has added to the world’s sense of alert.

While tensions have increased since Trump took office, they’ve escalated dramatically in recent weeks as American and other intelligence agencies suggested the North was readying for a possible nuclear test. Although such an explosion hasn’t yet occurred, Trump has sent high-powered U.S. military vessels and an aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while the North conducted large-scale, live-fire artillery drills, witnessed by national leader Kim Jong Un, earlier this week.

On Wednesday, South Korea started installing key parts of a contentious U.S. missile defense system that also has sparked Chinese and Russian concerns.

America’s Pacific forces commander, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational within days. He said any North Korean missile fired at U.S. forces would be destroyed.

“If it flies, it will die,” Harris said.

The Trump administration has said all options, including a military strike, are on the table. But the administration’s statement after briefing senators — all 100 members were invited — outlined a similar approach to the Obama administration’s focus on pressuring Pyongyang to return to long-stalled denuclearization talks. Trump’s top national security advisers said they were “open to negotiations” with the North, though they gave no indication of when or under what circumstances.

The strategy hinges greatly on the cooperation of China, North Korea’s main trading partner.

“China is the key to this,” said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who got a preview of Trump’s message at a dinner with the president this week.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California agreed. “I think the best approach for the administration is to bring the maximum pressure to bear diplomatically on China, as well as North Korea, but otherwise to walk softly and carry a big stick,” he told reporters after attending the Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday.

Among the options are returning North Korea to the U.S. state sponsor of terrorism blacklist, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week was under consideration. His spokesman, Mark Toner, said Wednesday that another tactic is getting nations around the world to close down North Korean embassies and consulates, or suspending them from international organizations.

But sanctions will be the greatest tool at the Trump administration’s disposal. Tillerson is chairing a U.N. Security Council meeting Friday designed to get nations to enforce existing penalties on North Korea and weigh new ones.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Harris said he expects North Korea to soon be able to develop a long-range missile capable of striking the United States, as Kim has promised. “One of these days soon, he will succeed,” Harris said.

North Korea’s U.N. mission said Wednesday the nation would react to “a total war” with Washington by using nuclear weapons. It vowed victory in a “death-defying struggle against the U.S. imperialists.”

Trump, like presidents before him, faces difficult options. Sanctions haven’t forced Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear efforts, but a targeted U.S. attack to take out its weapons program risks a wider war along a heavily militarized border near where tens of millions of South Koreans live. The threat would extend to nearby Japan, another country North Korea regularly threatens.

China has urged restraint by both Pyongyang and Washington. In Berlin Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said North Korea must suspend its nuclear activities, but “on the other side, the large-scale military maneuvers in Korean waters should be halted.” That was a reference to U.S. and South Korean war games.

China opposes the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, being installed in South Korea, rejecting American assurances that it will only target North Korean missiles. Russia also sees the system’s powerful radars as a security threat.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said THAAD would upset the region’s “strategic balance.” China will take “necessary measures to defend our own interests,” he promised.

___

Associated Press writers Foster Klug, Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-Hyung in Seoul; Chris Bodeen in Beijing; Richard Lardner, Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

President Trump’s call for a dramatic overhaul of the tax code sets in motion his most ambitious legislative initiative to date, testing whether he can cut the deal of his life on an issue that has long bedeviled Washington.

On Wednesday, Trump issued a one-page outline for changes to the tax code, pinpointing numerous changes he would make that would affect almost every American.

He wants to replace the seven income tax brackets with three new ones, cut the corporate tax rate by more than 50 percent, abolish the alternative-minimum tax and estate tax, and create new incentives to simplify filing returns.

But the White House stopped short of answering key questions that could decide the plan’s fate. For example, Trump administration officials didn’t address how much the plan would reduce federal revenue or grow the debt. They also didn’t specify what income levels would trigger inclusion in each of the three new tax brackets.

The goal, White House officials said, was to cut taxes so much and so fast that it led to immediate economic growth, creating more jobs and producing trillions of dollars in new revenue and wealth over the next decade.

Despite its brevity — it was less than 200 words and contained just seven numbers — the document marked the most pointed blueprint Trump has presented Congress on any matter.

“This is about economic growth, job creation, America first, and that’s what [Trump] cares about,” White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said. “Our tax plan is a big leg of that stool. It’s a big leg. And in many respects, he thinks it’s the most important leg.”

The plan now must navigate a legislative and political gantlet on Capitol Hill that has killed numerous other efforts to rework the tax code.

Business groups were already squaring off. The National Association of Realtors called the proposal a “non-starter,” alleging that it would remove tax incentives for people to buy homes because of changes it would make to certain tax deductions.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by contrast, issued a statement saying the plan would “help drive job creation, investment, and economic growth.”

Ronald Reagan was the last president to shepherd a major tax overhaul through Washington, but he did it by working with Democrats to cut a deal. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that he would like to negotiate details of the plan with Democrats but would cut them out of talks if necessary and seek only support from Republicans, perhaps by pursuing a strategy known as “reconciliation.” Using that process, a tax overhaul could escape a 60-vote requirement in the Senate, but it also would have a 10-year expiration date.

Trump’s proposal now poses key tests for both parties. Republicans, who for years chided President Barack Obama about any plan to raise the deficit, must decide whether to back a plan that many budget experts calculate will add to record levels of government debt. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the plan would probably lead to a loss in government revenue by roughly $5.5 trillion over 10 years.

But so far, key Republicans have praised the core of Trump’s plan and signaled a willingness to negotiate with him on key details.

Speaking Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Trump’s framework “a critical step forward in this effort.”

“We’ve been briefed on what they are going to do, and it is basically along exactly the same lines we want to go,” Ryan said. “So we see this as progress being made, showing that we are moving and getting on the same page. We see this as a good thing.”

Democrats, meanwhile, must decide whether to negotiate with an unpopular president who is threatening to pull away tax revenue that pays for many of their cherished social programs.

“This is an unprincipled tax plan that will result in cuts for the [wealthiest Americans], conflicts for the president, crippling debt for America and crumbs for the working people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

[Trump’s tax proposal: How his plan could affect you]

Trump’s proposal includes significant changes to both of the major elements of the tax code, the individual side and the business side.

For individuals, it would eliminate the seven existing income tax brackets and replace them with three brackets, containing new rates of 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, based on a person’s income. White House officials haven’t specified which income levels would hit the higher tax brackets, as they see this being part of ongoing discussions with Capitol Hill.

The proposal would also roughly double the standard deduction that Americans can use to reduce their taxable income. The deduction for married couples would rise from $12,600 to $24,000. This would incentivize people not to itemize their tax returns and instead use the larger standard deduction, simplifying the process and potentially saving taxpayers thousands of dollars each year. It may also change how people value certain tax breaks: For example, fewer people might buy homes with the help of the mortgage interest deduction if they don’t itemize their taxes.

The White House plan would eliminate the alternative-minimum tax and the estate tax, provisions that raise billions of dollars each year and mainly raise the taxes paid by wealthier Americans.

To offset the loss of revenue from lower tax rates and other changes, Cohn and Mnuchin said they were proposing to eliminate virtually all tax deductions that Americans claim, provisions that they argued primarily benefited wealthier Americans. Cohn said they would preserve tax breaks for mortgage interest, retirement savings and charitable giving. But almost all others would be jettisoned.

This includes the tax deduction people can claim for the state and local taxes they pay each calendar year, a provision that saves taxpayers more than $1 trillion every 10 years. These taxes can be particularly high in states with higher income taxes, such as California and New York, so the change could be acutely felt there.

“It’s not the federal government’s job to be subsidizing the states,” Mnuchin told reporters at the briefing with Cohn.

For businesses, Trump’s proposal would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. It would also allow millions of small businesses, structured in such a way that they are affected by the individual tax rate, to use the 15 percent rate as well. These businesses, known as “pass-throughs” or “S corporations,” are often small, family-owned firms.

[Trump’s tax proposal: What it means for the rich and for the world]

But they can also be large law firms and lobbying shops, with highly paid top executives. Mnuchin said special protections would ensure that the wealthiest of these earners don’t take advantage of the 15 percent rate, although he didn’t say how the White House would do this.

The White House is also proposing a one-time tax “holiday” to encourage companies to bring several trillions of dollars held in other countries back into the United States. They didn’t specify what that tax rate would be, saying it’s part of negotiations on Capitol Hill, but they said they believed providing this incentive would bring money back for investment and hiring.

“We expect that trillions of dollars will come back on shore and will be reinvested here in the United States, for capital goods and job creation,” Mnuchin said.

This process is called “repatriation,” and it’s controversial. Critics allege that the money is brought back and then paid out in dividends to shareholders instead of being used for hiring and investing.

A key part of Trump’s tax plan during the campaign was to levy a tax or tariff against companies that move overseas and then try to sell their products back to U.S. consumers. Cohn and Mnuchin said they were still looking at alternatives on how to structure this idea, and it was not an element of the plan rolled out Wednesday. They said they found a proposal embraced by House Republican leaders to be unworkable, but they plan to work with key lawmakers to see if adjustments can be made, Mnuchin said.

That GOP plan, led by Ryan and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), would have offset broad reduction in rates with a change in the way imports and exports are taxed, a proposal known as a “border adjustment tax.”

But House Republicans have sought to lower the corporate tax rate only to 20 percent. Lowering it even further, as Trump has proposed, would lead to such a loss in revenue that the proposal could become difficult to pass through Congress, many lawmakers contend.

If Democrats won’t support the White House’s plan, Mnuchin said they could use the reconciliation process to pass the changes through the Senate with a simple majority vote, though this would be very difficult given how sharply they are planning to cut taxes. Mnuchin also said their goal was to permanently change the tax code, but they would consider a shorter-term change if necessary to win political support.

“This is what’s important to get the American economy going,” Mnuchin said. “So I hope [Democrats] don’t stand in the way. And I hope we see many Democrats who cross the aisle and support this. Having said that, if they don’t, we are prepared to look at the reconciliation process.”

One of the biggest tests for Trump’s plan will be fending off critics who allege that his plan would grow the deficit and add trillions of dollars in debt. White House advisers allege that cutting tax rates and eliminating certain deductions will lead to so much economic growth that trillions of dollars in new revenue will be generated. Congress’s nonpartisan budgetary referees at the Joint Committee on Taxation won’t work off that same assumption.

Because of the rules of the Senate, legislation that would result in more borrowing over the long term would be vulnerable to a Democratic filibuster, requiring 60 senators to advance the legislation.

Republicans hold 52 seats in the chamber, and without 60 votes, Trump and his fellow Republicans would only be able to pass more narrowly tailored cuts. Those cuts would eventually expire unless Congress takes action, setting up another fight over taxes.

Video game franchise “Call of Duty” is a moneymaker that has brought in at least $15 billion in revenue for its parent company Activision Blizzard since 2003. It is also a marketing machine that has featured celebrities like Kevin Spacey and Michael B. Jordan, and won awards at Cannes Lions.

Keeping the campaign fresh each year is no easy task. Todd Harvey, svp of global consumer marketing for Activision, said the basis of the company’s strategy is to always pay attention to what CoD fans want.

“We are probably communicating with fans every day, and our marketing campaign gets broader and broader,” said Harvey. “For each campaign, we are very focused on the narrative of the game and what is new every year.”

Under the leadership of CEO Eric Hirshberg, a former Deutsch executive, CoD is known to tease out exclusive content in an upcoming title by baking puzzles into trending digital platforms. The tactic varies every year. New installments typically come to market each November, with teasers starting six months out.

But for this year’s CoD title “WWII,” Activision is placing more focus on billboards rather than popular digital platforms. This is because the first three CoD titles were set in WWII, and news had already leaked that the new game would be set in the same time period. Billboards also make fans feel more physically connected and involved on the ground with the CoD community, Harvey said.

“In the past, we were more teaser-based, but this year, we don’t want to inject unnecessary teaser-like marketing ploys into our campaign,” he said. “We are not teasing out something that our fans have already been waiting for with strong anticipation.”

While Harvey declined to give out many details about the “WWII” campaign in order to preserve the surprise element, this is what the marketing framework roughly looks like: On Wednesday, Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield, the founders and co-studio heads of Sledgehammer Games who developed “WWII,” and Hirshberg will reveal the new game and trailer in a live stream on CallofDuty.com, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On the same day, five billboards will go up in New York City, Los Angeles, London and Paris. There are unique codes hidden on the billboards for fans to find. The gamers can then piece the codes together and unlock them on a website. When the codes are cracked, gamers can unlock exclusive content related to “WWII” that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

“There are two different coding languages that we believe the CoD community will identify on their own. That’s part of the challenge and fun,” said Harvey. “Similarly, we won’t be making any formal announcements that the code games are baked into the social and outdoor efforts.”

Of course, it is not the first time that Activision has gamified digital channels. The company spent around $36 million promoting the 2016 CoD title “Infinite Warfare” across digital, print, broadcast and out of home, representing approximately 35 percent of the company’s overall marketing spend, according to Kantar Media. In last year’s campaign, Activision developed a Facebook Messenger chatbot — a buzzy platform at the time — for Lt. Nick Reyes, a character from the new game. Fans could chat with the character and get assistance finding the codes to unlock the “Infinite Warfare” reveal trailer. More than 6 million messages were exchanged between fans and the Lt. Reyes Messenger chatbot during the first 24 hours.

And leading up to the 2015 CoD title “Black Ops 3” release, Activision embedded Snapcodes into various locations in the “Black Ops 2” game. By scanning the codes, players would arrive directly at the CoD Snapchat account, where the first cryptic clues about “Black Ops 3” were waiting to be decoded. This campaign brought Activision’s social agency Edelman a Bronze Entertainment Lion at the Cannes Lions last year.

Harvey believes the trailer is the most important part for each CoD campaign. “I feel lots of personal pressure to make sure that the trailer lives up to everyone’s expectation,” he said. “Smart people can put other [marketing] tactics together.” (Last year’s reveal trailer disappointed some CoD fans.)

Harvey’s team works with 72andSunny on creative, gnet on trailer production, AKQA on digital, Edelman on social as well as OMD (North America) and NEC (outside North America) on media buying. Activision also hires PR agencies PMK•BNC and Step 3 in North America, along with Red PR in Europe.

Activision will debut “WWII” in early November of this year. “Infinite Warfare” generated a total digital revenue of around $204 million last year, compared to $587 million from “Black Ops 3” in 2015, according to research firm SuperData.