Tag: Mobile game

Taiwan – English luxury lifestyle brand Barbour has partnered with digital experience agency CONTEN.T to create its first-ever mobile game, aiming to engage Gen Z consumers as part of the brand’s 130th-anniversary celebrations.

With expertise in mobile-first strategies, CONTEN.T will help Barbour deepen its connection with younger audiences by delivering immersive and interactive experiences. This collaboration represents a pivotal move in Barbour’s efforts to engage the next generation of consumers.

Barbour’s new mobile game adopts a “match-and-win” format, where players must pair two matching stickers to earn points. Each sticker represents elements of the brand’s iconic heritage, offering users an interactive way to engage with Barbour’s century-old legacy.

Examples of stickers featured in Barbour’s game include a Cocker Spaniel, symbolizing their dogwear collection, and the Herd Groyne lighthouse, referencing the iconic red landmark in South Shields, where the brand was founded.

To boost engagement and excitement, the game will also feature a leaderboard that taps into players’ competitive spirit. The top three scorers are incentivized with a chance to win Barbour’s best-selling waxed jacket, encouraging repeat play and adding a rewarding challenge to the experience.

Barbour’s partnership with CONTEN.T sets the stage for the brand’s revitalization, aligning with its long-term strategy to engage digital natives through immersive experiences. In a world where traditional ads no longer resonate with tech-savvy consumers, this move allows Barbour to connect with a generation that craves interactive and meaningful digital content

The game was rolled out across five key regions in Asia: China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Japan –  Video game company PONOS has launched a thrilling spy-themed campaign to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the English edition of its hit tower defence mobile game, ‘The Battle Cats,’ inviting players to uncover a mysterious double agent and save the celebration.

Titled ‘Mission Impawsible,’ the campaign’s storyline thrusts players into action as a double agent sabotages capsule machines built for the 10th anniversary festivities, forcing the postponement of the highly anticipated Best of the Best festival. As the hunt for the Spy Cat begins, every cat is a suspect. Players are invited to join the investigation, defend the Cat Base, and expose the double agent in this thrilling game of cat and mouse to bring justice once and for all. 

Seiichiro Sano, managing director of PONOS, said, “Who doesn’t love a good spy thriller? From James Bond to Mr. and Mrs. Smith to The Bourne Identity, espionage stories capture our imagination. Typically, campaigns are built outside of the game, but once again PONOS and R/GA’s global team collaborated to integrate the voting system directly within the game, engaging core players.” 

Ari Halper, global head of creative excellence at R/GA, added, “There is a great irony in the gaming world: while games are meant to entertain us, their promotions and celebrations typically fall back on the same retail tactics and sales clichés. But why not extend the entertainment into the promotions and celebrations themselves?” 

The ‘Mission Impawsible’ campaign, featuring social media, paid media, and influencer content, will roll out across English-speaking regions throughout September and October. Players can make their final suspect accusation between October 7th and 14th. 

Since its original release for the Japanese market in 2012 and the English version in 2014, The Battle Cats has become a widely acclaimed tower defence strategy game, amassing over 92 million downloads and continuing to grow.

Australia – Independent creative agency Paper Moose has launched its 8-bit style mobile game, highlighting the value of entertainment and humour in purpose-led brand advertising and marketing.

Titled, ‘The Wild West of Purpose’, the game features an image of a foot used as an imagery of carbon footprints. This is controlled by the user, navigating through the wild west setting with the goal of avoiding the obstacles in the game.

The game is also targeted at reducing carbon footprints and staying clear of greenwashing and emissions. 

Nick Hunter, Paper Moose’s co-founder and CEO, said that while brand purpose is a serious business, the agency does not believe that seriousness is the best way to reach its audiences.

He added, “We believe most people have had enough of worthy advertising and yearn to be entertained. We work to make purpose-led brands more accessible rather than holier-than-thou. After all, the last few years have been serious enough.”

Paper Moose has also previously entered partnerships with ethical wealth management company Australian Ethical and fintech company Brighte.

Bangalore, India – Global sportswear and underwear brand Jockey in India has stepped into the gamification marketing territory by launching a newsfeed smartapp game that aims to promote its versatile range of bras.

Made in collaboration with creative tech studio AliveNow, the app aims to create a space that consumers can proactively engage with and learn from the brand online. The app makes for a creative platform for the brand to meet its audience and to subtly create awareness about its different categories of bras – while demonstrating exactly what outfit each bra can perfectly be paired with.

For Karthik Yathindra, AVP for marketing and product management at Jockey India, said app game launch focuses on their JOCKEY Woman Knows Me campaign which focuses on increasing awareness about the versatile range of bras that the brand offers, as well as the campaign’s central thought #BrasAsVersatileAsIAm.

“We wanted to bring this [campaign] alive to consumers in an engaging and memorable way. In addition to many creative engagement pieces on social and digital platforms, we are leveraging gamification that is popular with our target group and helps them engage with the brand seamlessly,” Yathindra said.

The app also incentivizes players such as being on the top of the leaderboard, to stand a chance to be featured on the brand’s social media handles, driving repeat plays and higher brand recall.

“The game is fun and visually stimulating – both great factors when the brand’s objective is to create stickiness and increase awareness about its inner-wear line. Consumers can interact with all the bras from the range as they learn about the perfect outfit pairings – all while having a ton of fun,” Rushali Rastogi, senior account manager at AliveNow, commented.

Mumbai, India – Team Vitality, French esports organization, has revealed its first-ever all-Indian ‘Call of Duty Mobile’ (CoDM) roster, as a part of its venture into mobile esports and expansion in India.

Team Vitality’s CoDM team is comprised of well-established esports players, namely Arav ‘MonK’ Narang – the team captain, Armaan ‘Moonscope’ Dharni, Priyank ‘DEATH’ Birajdar, and Akshan ‘Argon’ Madhani, as well as Samartha Ganesh ‘JOKOs’ Ghadge, and Samruddha ‘SAMS’ Ghadge. The team will be coached by veteran CoD player Harnoor ‘Toxy’ Mutneja, and will be managed by content creator Melson ‘mello’ Miranda.

Furthermore, the organization is also planning a ‘PAN-India Talent Hunt’ to find and train new talents across multiple rosters in the country.

Nicolas Maurer, the CEO of Team Vitality, commented that their aim in India is to start an esports team that would have its own unique identity while imbibing core Team Vitality values, saying that they are happy with the roster as they have the right skills, as well as the potential to be the number one team, and that the team members are eager to create their mark in a brand-new category. 

“The ‘Call of Duty Mobile’ team is the first step towards the expansion of our presence beyond Europe, and in line with our vision of conquering the esports world,” added Maurer.

Meanwhile, Amit Jain, the principal of the Rewired.gg, the venture fund that has invested €34M into Team Vitality, shared that they are delighted to have a team that consists of esports talent from diverse parts of the country.

“There’s still a huge untapped base of talent who we feel deserve the chance to showcase their skills and represent Team Vitality. So while I’m personally extremely excited for the team who I’m confident will take on the world and make India proud, we will continue to explore opportunities to find aspirational talent to help create life-changing opportunities for them,” said Jain.

Team Vitality’s new roster will be participating in regional and international CoDM tournaments in the coming months. CoDM fans can follow Team Vitality India’s Instagram for more updates regarding the new team.

Singapore – Mobile ad platform AdColony has announced that it has struck a sponsorship deal with the popular mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang through a partnership with Mana, a Singapore-based gaming and esports brand consultancy firm.

The partnership entails AdColony to offer brands in Southeast Asia a streamlined approach to sponsorship and advertising in esports alongside their investment in gaming. In addition, brands who wish to amplify its presence with mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League (MPL) esports can turn to AdColony as a one-stop shop, powered by its comprehensive expertise and offering in in-app advertising.

Furthermore, AdColony’s integrated advertising technology platform allows targeting and retargeting of consumers between esports and gaming properties, meaning brands can reach audiences at multiple different points of the marketing funnel, across different ad types and formats, even bringing e-commerce into play.

For Tom Simpson, SVP at AdColony APAC, their recent sponsorship deal will allow them to be “hyper-focused on connecting brands with consumers across gaming and esports”, noting that “this partnership is an important pillar for 2021.”

“Mobile Legends is one of the key games to unlock the esports market in Southeast Asia. This partnership with Moonton enables us to help brands interact more easily with the growing passionate and engaged mobile esports audience alongside their ongoing investments in broader gaming-focused advertising and communications,” Simpson said.

Such sponsorship deals speak to a larger demand brought by the esports industry nowadays. It is estimated that by 2023, it is expected that the number of frequent viewers of esports worldwide will hit almost 300 million, a vast increase from the 173 million in 2018. In addition, a report by consultancy firm McKinsey addresses the monetary growth in the esports industry as it has gone from $950 million in industry revenue in 2019 to an expected $1.1 billion after 2020.

AdColony notes that mobile tech and handset manufacturers, male grooming, soft drinks, and snacks are the most common and active brands in esports at the moment, and price wars have been prevalent in markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia for premium esports rights, as brands are willing to pay a premium to lock out their competitors for extended periods.

“AdColony aims to simplify this process of esports rights and sponsorships price discovery and sponsorship for brands,” Simpson said, noting that many of these esports sponsorship opportunities get locked out due to competition.

Esports tournaments are still in demand, and have migrated online due to the offset of last year’s pandemic. According to Moonton, the game developer behind Mobile Legends, viewership levels in 2020 have set a record level in Indonesia, peaking at over 2.8 million concurrent viewers with over 67 million hours watched in total. The Philippines MPL also reportedly had a peaked viewership of over 757,000 concurrent viewers and over 21 million total hours watched.

“This partnership with Moonton comes hot on the heels of the news that AdColony and Mana, the Singapore-based gaming and esports brand consultancy firm that connects brands with the gaming and esports industries, has teamed up to help brands simplify the way they can get involved in the global gaming and esports ecosystem”, commented Jamie Lewin from Mana. 

In November 2020, AdColony also signed an exclusive partnership with global in-game advertising platform, Anzu, to offer Anzu’s market-leading blended in-game advertising solutions across both display and video to brands and agencies in Asia Pacific.

Singapore – As part of the board’s ongoing SingapoRediscovers tourism campaign, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is partnering with American augmented reality (AR) technology company Niantic to promote and support local businesses through the game Pokémon Go.

Pokémon Go, which is known as an AR-based game, will allow players through this strategic partnership to discover tourism establishments and lifestyle offerings. Throughout the game, players can capture Pokémons and visit newly-placed virtual PokéStops and Gyms, amounting to 300 of them, across tourist spots in the nation.

Once players visit these PokéStops and Gyms on Pokémon Go, in-app STB ad campaigns will appear and take users to a microsite, describing all offerings and promotions of STB through various partner tourism establishments. Furthermore, the game encourages walking around and discovering other local business establishments and nearby precincts. 

“We are excited by this collaboration with Niantic, which allows us to connect with the passionate community of Pokémon GO players in a fun and innovative way. As they pursue their favorite Pokémon across Singapore, we hope players will explore our precincts, discover hidden gems, and support local business – while staying safe and observing the necessary precautions,” Lim Shoo Ling, STB’s brand director stated.

Gary Chang, APAC business development lead at Niantic commented that “Our strength is to influence people to walk physically from location to location, and we are hoping to utilize this to encourage people to explore different parts of Singapore in-depth and boost domestic travel needs.”

There are future plans in this partnership to host Pokémon GO special Raid Battles in some partner areas to further boost local business tourism in the country.

Hong Kong – The newest pizza from Pizza Hut in Hong Kong incorporates another fast food favorite: KFC’s chicken popcorn. Called the Chicken Popcorn Pizza, the new limited-edition item has launched today, which features Pizza Hut’s iconic crispy crust alongside classic gravy, and a generous serving of cheese, sweetcorn, and mushrooms.

To celebrate the partnership, the two brands have released another exciting engagement for its customers – a mobile game called the ‘Pizza Hut x KFC Kitchen,’ conceptualized together with Ogilvy Hong Kong. Emphasizing the partnership between the two brands, the game connects two phones and challenges two players to craft a ‘Pizza Hut x KFC Chicken Popcorn Pizza’ against the clock together, playing as the ‘Pizzatainer’ and ‘Colonel Sanders.’

Teamwork is the name of the game as players have to knead the dough, fry the chicken popcorn, and bake the pizza too. Completed tasks within the given time win players Pizza Hut and KFC coupons.

Wendy Leung, marketing director at Pizza Hut Hong Kong said, “The Pizza Hut x KFC Chicken Popcorn pizza brings the best of both worlds together. This mobile game based on teamwork is a great way to engage with our fans and consumers while also increasing awareness of our brand and food innovation credentials.”

Meanwhile, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy John Koay said the collaboration between the two brands is a dream come true. 

“That’s why we were excited to create the Pizza Hut x KFC Kitchen, a fun two-player game for fans to create this epic pizza with a friend and unlock tasty rewards too.”