Eschewing the usual approach to marketing games and, perhaps heeding recent research boomers are the new black, Nintendo has introduced and is marketing a game called Brain Age and is positioning it as a means to exercise the mind and keep one sharp. Writing in MarketingProfs, Karl Long says, "Nintendo is essentially turning market perception on its head, positioning the video game as positive 'mental exercise,' as opposed to the common perception of it being a pointless, mind-numbing activity."
Carat Fusion's John Szczur tells us, "One of the most challenging holes on the PGA Tour, the 17th hole at the Wachovia Championship held at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, NC. Carat Fusion developed this flash game to promote Wachovia's sponsorship of the annual tournament as well as create a viral marketing buzz for the Wachovia brand." We tried it and aceived par. Not bad, if we say so ourselves. Give a whirl.
In its continuing effort to make B to B high tech advertising less boring, Hanft Raboy & Partners has created another very un-high tech advertising-like promotion for its client Fortify Software. They've created a game called IT Defender during which the player (the guy in charge of network security) has to Pac-man his way around the office long enough to make it until 5PM before the boss catches him and drags him into a time-wasting meeting that causes various security breaches to occur. As one whose done a ton of high tech advertising, we can easily say, this rises above most.
Against the legal powers that be, Gawker gaming site Kotaku is reporting Burger King will offer its customers BK-branded Xbox games. It's a promotion that offers one of three games (action, fighter, racing) with the purchase of a Value Meal. The creepy King will be featured in all the games. Kotaku writes, "The action game is apparently similar to Halo, while the fighter combines Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat."
Greenfield Online, the company that did preliminary research for the creation of the games, is none too pleased and has sent a nasty legal letter to Gawker headquarters asking Kotaku to remove the story. They aren't going to. I mean it's all rather pointless anyway. Once the information's out. it's out. It's not like you can erase it so move on Greenfield and deal with it.
Cable channel G4 is trying to breathe new life into the original Star trek series by creating an entertainment mash-up to use the buzz word of the day. Working with LA agency 72andSunny, G4 came up with a play-while-you-watch game called The Spock Market that allows viewers to buy, sell and trade shares of characters, aliens, gadgets and ships. Stock values change based on events in the episodes. Now that's a pretty cool way to get today's Internet geeks in tune with yester-year's Star Trek geeks. There's some funny stop-motion commercial that promote the whole thing which you can view here and here.
We suppose putting up a site called Morningwood and covering it with bikini-clad women makes it perfectly OK to make a site that takes over three minutes to load. Yes, three fucking minutes just to...oh wait....you mean we get to squirt water on the girl, get her t shirt just wet enough so that it falls off? Well that's what we thought until we waited the three plus minutes only to be presented with "You Pervert!" It's an April Fools joke and a very late on at that. So if all you want to do is listen to a single from Morningwood's upcoming album, by all means, play the game. If not, you can skip this one. There's no happy ending to this game. But....we do give them kudos for keeping idiots like us drooling long enough to listen to their song. So after all that crap, we might just have to go out and buy their friggin' album. We don't know whether to thank or hate Adverblog for pointing us to this one.
OK, that's it for all you teen-loving 30/40-something men. With the launch of a new stalker awareness campaign, News Corp. hopes to make MySpace teens completely aware of your shenanigans and boot you back to women your own age. Created by the Ad Council in 2005, the campaign will blanket Fox properties MySpace, Fox network, FX, National Geographic and Fuel TV. With the ever-imaginative tagline, "Don't believe the type," the ads point people to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's center website which then links to a page specific to the campaign. On that page are links to the PSAa, a game that aims to teach kids about the sketchiness on online profiles and an area with information for parents.
There's a lot of different ways to promote a TV show but bloody fighting Samurai cats isn't one we think we've seen before. COG1 has created Samurai Kittens to promote IFC's anime show Samuri 7. Give it a whirl but not if you are the type that gets all weepy when a kitty is faced with certain death by decapitation or severed limb.
Taking the whole ads-in-a-game theme to the next seemingly logical step, publishers of the game Project Entropia are making it possible for players to create their own ads within the game. Because of the game's focus on a virtual economy, the bying and selling of billboards seems to be a natural addition. Current player-created ads are promoting events and actions players have created in the game. Project Entropia is also part of Massive Inc.'s gaming ad network and will serve real ads purchased withing the network.
LA-based interactive shop Zugara has always come up with some pretty decent online environments as it were and lately has been quite busy continuing in that direction. Recently, they've done some work for Reebok and the NFL. Their RBK NFL Draft site features insight and thoughts from NFL Pro Athletes on the draft itself, anticipation of being called to the podium and how their life changed once they were drafted. For Playstation, Zugara created the Syphon Filter site which allows people to take part in Playstation's Dark Mirror storyline by investigating the mysterious KenSymth corporation. After taking part in a mission, they'll be led to spoofish sites where further information can be found and investigated to unlock further missions and content on the site.
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