Promo - February 2009 - (Page 29)

Video Games By Brian Quinton Photo by Pete Lacker The big purple reptile stomps through town, demolishing buildings as tall as he is, sending plumes of water and flames into the air, tossing delivery vans in his teeth and crushing them with his mighty jaws. All in a search for his favorite Doritos snack chips. “Dash of Destruction” is a branded video game hatched from a joint 2007 promotion from Doritos and Microsoft’s Xbox Live platform. Contestants were challenged to dream up and program their own games featuring Doritos. The public played demos of the top five games at Doritos’ Web site (www.SnackStrongproductions. com) and voted for their favorite. The winning contestant, chosen in November 2007, got to work for months with a professional gamedevelopment agency to see his winning concept released as a download on the Xbox Live Arcade game network. That came to pass last December when contest winner Mike Borland and Doritos found themselves with the mostaccessed game on the Xbox Live Arcade for the second half of the month—just under 1 million downloads. “Our consumers are passionate about many things, and gaming’s one of them,” says Rudy Wilson, brand manager for Frito-Lay’s Doritos products. “We asked ourselves, what is the most intense, bold thing we can do to invite fans to partake in our brand. And we came up with an option they never thought possible: Develop your own game.” The “Unlock Xbox” campaign may have launched 18 months ago, but the arrival of the “Dash of Destruction” product could not have been better timed; 2008 was the year the video game moved into the family room and onto the entertainment center. Gaming consoles like Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Wii are recruiting new audiences and opening possibilities for marketers who want to engage those players. “Think of all the things you’re doing when you’re watching TV—talking on the phone, doing homework, working on your laptop—or you’ve got a DVR and you’re skipping commercials,” says J.J. Richards, head of Massive, Microsoft’s in-game-advertising subsidiary. “None of those options are available when you’re playing a game. You’re fully engaged with a lean-in experience, hands on the controller, facing forward. That’s why brand recall from appearing in games can be through the roof.” price point than the others, moved 726,000 units at Christmas, and 3.7 million overall last year in the U.S. In the past, console game play had been the province of young teenage males, while adults tended to favor PC-based casual games. But the console-gamer audience is shifting in ways that make it perhaps more interesting to marketers. At a gaming summit last August, Nintendo of America President Cammie Dunaway stated that 79% of Wii game buyers are male. But of the non-buyers who play the game in households, 45% are female and 38% are older than 25. As next-gen consoles proliferate, marketers may find benefits in that they’re all capable of connecting to the Internet, either through a broadband cable or a home Wi-Fi router. Wii and PlayStation 3 owners can access Internet channels provided by PLAY DOUGH The money spent on video-game hardware and software last holiday suggests those audiences may continue to grow despite the current economic downturn—and possibly because of it. Year-end data from market researchers NPD Group shows that Nintendo sold almost 10.2 million Wii game consoles, the first time any video-game system has broken the 10 million annual sales threshold in the United States. Some 2.2 million of those sales happened in December. Other consoles also did well last year, although less spectacularly. Microsoft sold 4.7 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States, 1.4 million of those in December. Meanwhile, Sony’s PlayStation 3, with a higher Red Bull gives Sony PlayStation Home a taste of its real-life air racing experience. Next up in Home: the virtual Flugtag contest. the manufacturers; Xbox 360 users can pay to subscribe to the Xbox Live online media service. Statistics suggest that some 65% of Xbox 360 units are Internet-enabled, along with 70% Continued on page 30 Promo / WWW.PROMOMAGAZINE.COM / February 2009 29 http://www.SnackStrongproductions.com http://www.SnackStrongproductions.com http://www.promomagazine.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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