Pepsi is piggybacking the movie, “Star Wars 3D”. They are utilizing the movie’s characters, Yoda and Darth Maul, for the promotion of their beverage brand.
So far the result from this event is successful. And it will be more meaningful to the young target who are tech savvy or so. Even “Kungfu Panda 2” used “in-game promotion” of Zynga’s CityVille last year(2011). And previously, Kart Rider, a very famous arcade game in Korea often puts hosted compaigns into the game. Sometimes it would be a game item and be a background of the game. It is important that these trials worked most of the time and were cost-effective.
Recently SNS and mobile games became more important and they gave more opportunities to connect the merchant(or manufacturer) to a user efficiently. Most of all, retention time in those services is increasing. It means that those channels may become the effective media to promote a commercial brand or to carry a movie trailer.
Kart Rider’s promotion with Coca cola and McDonald
But it needs to consider basic factors as follows:
– Characteristics of media and a target customer
(If you target on a teenager, social games can be efficient. But if you target teenager girls, the approach needs to be more careful.)
– Easy to use or participate in
(If it needs for a user to do more or feel uncomfortable, it can be not effective to deliver its message.)
– Effect Analysis
(It is not helpful to promote through many ways at the same time without having a feedback system of each method.)