Tomi was interviewed recently by MobiAd
Key themes were
[1] What does advertising look like on the mobile platform
[2] The need for Engagement Marketing vs. interruptive communications
[3] Co-created commercial communications
Tomi expands on this later theme...
However, my best example today, is the Japanese snack foods brand Tohato, and their engagement marketing concept. Yes, it was another advergame.
But
what a game. Think of the addicted hard-core gamers on massively
multiplayer fantasy wargames like World of Warcraft, Lineage 2 and
Everquest, with literally millions of active gamers online. The
multiplayer gaming activity is very compelling especially to young male
adults - the kind of customer that the spicy snacks brand Tohato wanted
to appeal to. So they launched the World’s Worst War campaign, as a mobile multiplayer online advergame.
Tohato launched two new extremely hot spiced snacks brands in Japan, Habanero and Satan Jorquia. Each package had a 2D barcode, and customers were invited to fight in the war by joining in the army for one or the other brand. And gamers who could recruit more gamers would be promoted in the army, so the game had a strong viral element.
The game ran for several months over 31 battlefields, and soon over 100,000 gamers were interacting daily in the game. The brand even provided a daily news service to report on the war - who had been promoted, who had died bravely etc. The game generated such passionate involvement that gamers would collect at social networking sites like Mixi and Facebook to plan their strategies for the upcoming battle.
Appreciate the heads up on Tohato, Tomi - nice! I've blogged about EA and their latest attempt to engage consumers through the "Jesus Shot" - an excellent case study in reactive marketing and just goes to show what marketers can do when marcomms doesn't get in the way!
http://www.mobileyouth.org/post/law-3-build-dialogue-using-the-right-channels-mobileyouthorgs-7-laws-of-youth-marketing/
Posted by: Graham Brown | October 28, 2008 at 01:22 PM