If you’ve driven around the Twin Cities recently or watched football games on TV this past weekend, you may have looked twice at a strangely familiar commercial.

“Black Ops Guaranteed at Home,” read billboards and silent television commercials showing a man with his arms outstretched in a pose familiar to almost anyone who lives in Minnesota.

But the man holding out his arms isn’t Kris Lindahl, the local real estate agent known for his famous “Guaranteed Cash Offer on Your Home” billboards that have proliferated by the hundreds around the Twin Cities in recent years.

Rather, he is a bearded man, in a suit and with long hair, known as “The Replacer”, a sort of mascot of the video game franchise Call of Duty Black Ops, which released its sixth opus last Friday. The character, first introduced in 2013, enters people’s lives to “replace” them so they can forget their responsibilities and play video games.

Interestingly enough, the Substitute is played by Swedish actor Peter Stormare, who appeared in the Coen Brothers’ 1996 Minnesota-centric film “Fargo” as the stoic psychopath Gaear Grimsrud. For anyone who might not remember, he’s the guy who gets caught feeding Steve Buscemi’s character into a wood chipper.

Activision contacted Lindahl

As part of its international marketing campaign, Microsoft-owned video game developer Activision contacted Lindahl more than a week ago about using its brand to promote gaming in the Twin Cities. Lindahl said he was happy to come on board.

“I thought it was brilliant branding and marketing on their part,” he said, explaining that Activision was looking for “icons” that they could replace in their marketing campaign. In addition to local figures like Lindahl, internationally renowned figures like singer The Weekend have been “replaced”.

“It created huge exposure for our brand,” Lindahl said, noting its real estate business has already seen a boost thanks to social media following the distribution of more online advertisements. He said he had heard of the strategy described as a “takeover of a local icon.”

National brands have already used similar strategies. In 2016, Taco Bell aired an ad with Minneapolis TV pitchman and comedian Fancy Ray McCloneyknown for his energetic and flamboyant performances in spots aimed at local businesses. It was as part of a national campaign recruiting zany local TV personalities, City Pages reported at the time.

Local recovery

Lindahl isn’t the only local icon to be “replaced” by the new Call of Duty game. An announcement released a few weeks ago shows The Replacer filling in for Timberwolves shooting guard Anthony Edwards for an on-court interview.

Lindahl said the idea to use its ads in game marketing came from someone at Activision in Minnesota. The game developer has offices in Eden Prairie, which houses the company’s quality assurance division, and Minnesota employees worked on Call of Duty Black Ops 6according to a report from an industry publication.

Billboards featuring Lindahl’s advertising style began popping up around the Twin Cities last Friday, the game’s release date, and have been growing ever since.

The Replacer heard that Kris Lindahl was one of the hardest-working real estate entrepreneurs in America, so when he offered him a chance to take some time off and play #BlackOps6Kris accepted with open arms pic.twitter.com/ahKqwbEyox

– Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) October 28, 2024

Besides the billboards, there are social media posts and a 30-second silent television commercial, in which the Substitute’s arms slowly begin to stretch out to either side of the screen. The spot, which is a parody of Lindahl’s local Superbowl ad from earlier this year, aired on the NFL’s Sunday broadcasts and on CBS’ 60 Minutes.

Lindahl wouldn’t say if he was a gamer, but he did say he had something in the works with Activision on the video game live streaming platform Twitch.

“We have taken several steps that make this path greater,” he said.