Travis Plane, director of marketing at SCE, said the majority of the campaign would be released at the upcoming F1 in Melbourne with a package deal organised with the Ten network that extends to station promos and sampling of the game through interactive units.
TV ramps up from March 10 moving through to outdoor, in-store and radio.
Creative is a combination of work sourced from its European office and local work. Whybin TBWA is working on above-the-line and Creative Sales Marketing on below-the-line with media by Starcom.
The TVC aims to put the driver in the seat of several different vehicles to show the breadth of the game. It starts on a racetrack where a driver takes over a number of his competitors. On reaching the pit, the car explodes and reassembles, transforming into a number of different cars before switching to footage from the game to continue the race.
"The whole theme is to try to bring to life the pleasure of driving cars, some of which you might not normally be able to drive," said Plane.
"There are cars all the way back to the T-Model Ford to a Nike Concept car."
Retailing for A$99 (US$78), the software is expected to drive console sales of PS2, during what is traditionally a quiet period. To date, there have been 1.4 million PS2s sold in Australia, which Plane thinks is about the halfway mark for total sales locally.
So far there have been more than 34 million copies of the GT franchise sold globally.
In preparation for the launch, 10 members of SCE's executive and marketing team road tested some cars featured in the game, including the Ford F6 Typhoon, Holden SS Commodore and the Mini Cooper S, to understand just how much effort has gone into making the game as real as possible.