Promo - February 2009 - (Page 11)

The Players “We had a lot of data we could capture to show how engaged initial users were and how viral the campaign was,” says Eric Eller, Millennial’s marketing senior vice president. While not giving specific metrics, he says that all the results were “very, very strong.” Movie games like the “Eagle Eye Mobile Challenge” have to be simpler than their Web counterparts; the handset environment—a smaller screen, a keypad rather than a keyboard, the habit of consuming mobile in snack-size bites over time—means trading off some engagement for ease of use. “The concept we originally proposed had 10 steps, but when we finally went to market it was more like four,” Eller says. “We simplified it so that the majority of users could make it to the end and receive that last message about the opening date.” That problem may have a solution: the iPhone and its smart counterparts, whose larger screen, better video resolution and downloadable storage promise to open new possibilities for marketing movies on the handset. Last fall, PointRoll delivered the first rich media iPhone ad, to sell “Burn After Reading.” Rich media allows users to expand an ad, view video or download items such as coupons, all without clicking away from the Web site they were on originally. That makes the ad more alluring for mobile users, who are often time-pressed and reluctant to click away from their destination site. “The movie had a cast of multiple stars, and the thrust of the ad was to allow you to watch video for each one,” PointRoll’s Lawrence says. “The iPhone psychographic was definitely a target for that movie.” Because the iPhone is built with GPS inside, users could go on to look up nearby theater listings. The iPhone’s downloadable applications can also provide ad inventory for marketers. That was the approach taken last December by agency The Hyperfactory in its mobile campaign around “Notorious,” the Fox Searchlight biopic of rapper Biggie Smalls. In its first mobile campaign for a movie, Hyperfactory placed Last year’s “Eagle Eye” campaign used voice and text in a viral campaign linked to the movie’s thriller premise. ONLY ON THE WEB PROMOMAGAZINE.COM • Clips from mobile trailers • Movie game demos • Related articles Go to promomagazine.com/mobilemarketing for more on marketing on mobile phones including: pre-roll video ads for the picture within the iPhone’s vSnax app. Users who used the free app to watch short clips from media partners such as VH1, Spike TV and CBS.com saw 15-second video ads for “Notorious” in front of most content skewed to a young or urban audience. The Hyperfactory also ran mobile banners within the free Pandora music application on iPhone. “Users have to sign up for Pandora and input their age into a profile,” says Nicole Amodeo, vice president of media for The Hyperfactory. “We were able to target the ad to users ages 18 to 34, as well as to those who were listening to the rap and hip-hop genres. So we could use mobile to extend their view of the video trailer.” Digital agency Avatar Labs created a free game download for the iPhone to promote the recent Disney animated film “Bolt.” Using the motion sensor in the handset, users can steer Rhino, the hamster sidekick, through several levels of a 3-D city environment. Users can also save their scores and click to view either the TV ad or the movie’s theatrical trailer. “It’s the thermonuclear device of mobile movie marketing,” Rex Cook, executive creative director at Avatar, says of the iPhone. By mid-January, the game had 1.1 million downloads from the iPhone App Store. At press time, Avatar was uploading another movie promotion to the App Store to market an upcoming release in the “Friday the 13th” franchise: one that turns users’ iPhones into virtual machetes that play gory sound effects and users’ own recorded screams when they “stab” with the handsets. “It’s really simple, but really fun,” P Cook says. l 11 http://www.PROMOMAGAZINE.COM http://www.promomagazine.com/mobilemarketing http://www.CBS.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Promo - February 2009

Promo - February 2009 Contents Editor's Note A Bitter Pill Moving the Pictures Exclusively Yours Smart Mart Web Watching Tell Your Friends Commentary Second String Q&A: Shop Right Cover Story: Game On! Game On! Resource Center The Agency Center Testing... Testing... Index of Advertisers

Promo - February 2009

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