Developers creating apps for social media sites are emerging as a profitable force

"This has interesting ramifications for social media sites going forwards. It is foreseen that the current status quo of having few big networks is unsustainable, and that social networks will start to splinter into communities of interest (travel, music, food, etc.). As this happens, there's a matured opportunity for advertisers to partner developers on specific apps targeting niche audiences. Companies which have already proved their credentials will become big players. Advertisers, start taking note of up-and-coming developers - these guys could be your business partners sooner than you think!"
Developers move beyond second fiddle status and begin to rival social media sites themselves in revenue terms

Developers creating apps for social media sites are emerging as a profitable force in their own right, collecting revenues that look set to eclipse Facebook’s income from advertising.

Happily, a fascinating article from AdAge.com - link to the full text below - finds that the world’s biggest social network is benefiting from their success: the site is expected to earn $500m in 2009 revenue from such apps.
Social gaming company Zynga, for instance, is the top developer on Facebook. The lion’s share of its revenue comes from the sale of chips for its Texas HoldEm Poker (pictured, right, along with other titles published by the company). Weapons in Mafia Wars (pictured, above) are also a money-spinner for the company. Zynga is expected to take over $100 million in 2009.

According to AdAge, there are at least a half dozen other companies in the $10 million to $50 million range, as well as a clutch of smaller players.

Terminator Salvation :::Twitter as movie marketing platform

BRAND: Terminator Salvation 

BRAND OWNER: Sony Pictures 

CATEGORY: Entertainment 

REGION :Global 

DATE :Apr 2009 - May 2009

To promote Sony Pictures latest release, Terminator Salvation, the brand is taking over Twitter with an international game that can be played 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The premise is that Twitter users can help in the fight against Skynet and the Terminators.
Twitter members must follow Terminator Salvation on Twitter @resistance2018 and also log in on 2018blog.com. They then have to watch for tweets from @resistance2018 and respond to ‘Resistance Assignments’ quickly via @replies with hash tags to @resistance 2018 or through the blog.

Assignments include word mixes – a jumble of letters that need to be unscrambled; trivia – simple questions about the movie; and partial transmission – where some letters are missing from a word and you must fill it out.

Answers must be submitted to @resistance2018 using hash tags representing each of the types of task, so #RA:WM for word mix, #RA:PT for partial transmission and #RA:TR for trivia. Responses to assignments must be sent within 2 hours. Any response received after this are not counted.
Each correct answer gives the player points to advance on the leader-board and achieve higher ranks in the Resistance Army.

Pearle:::Steamy room

BRAND OWNER:Pearle 

CATEGORY:Pharmaceuticals/ Healthcare 

REGION:Belgium 

DATE:May 2009 - Dec 2008 

Contact lenses are often seen as the more aesthetically pleasing alternative to glasses, but they are not always seen as being more practical. 

Optician brand Pearle was keen to emphasise the benefits of wearing contact lenses to those who are attached to their spectacles and encourage trial of their daily and monthly lenses.

Pearle created a web-based game at thesteamyroom.be which illustrated the merits of wearing contact lenses. But rather than looking at the comfort of wearing contacts, Pearle took a more humorous angle. Players get to select whether they want to check out semi-clad men or semi-clad women and then enter the respective changing room with a first-person viewpoint through a pair of rimmed glasses. As soon as you enter the room and start to see tantalising glimpses of flesh, the glasses begin to fog up and they require frantic polishing with the mouse curser to clear the view. The message reads: “there are moments when it’s better to wear contacts”. The site has a viral element encouraging users to share the game and also offers free trials of the contact lenses.

Obama :::Rock the vote in-game

BRAND OWNER:Obama
CATEGORY:Government/Public Sector
REGION:USA
DATE:Oct 2008 - Nov 2008

For Barack Obama to win the 2008 election, he needed to secure a majority of young voters in key battleground states. The Rock the Vote campaign sought to engage and incite young Americans under 30 to register and vote.
In-game advertising has become an effective way for brands to reach coveted young audiences. Among the hard to reach 18-34 male audience, console and PC gaming is strongly preferred as their favorite leisure activity.
While playing videogames, engagement is extremely high and multitasking is almost non-existent compared to watching TV or surfing the internet.
Brand Obama partnered with Microsoft in-game advertising specialist Massive to reach the Xbox Live community.
Rock the Vote was able to successfully call this social community to action through relevant political issues that they care about. Gamers could get voter registration forms sent to their email, vote in an online presidential poll, download themes and gamer pics to show their allegiance for favored candidates.
Obama ran his “Rock the Vote” campaign in 11 Xbox 360 titles across 10 battleground states using geo targeting, time date targeting and content targeting. Gamers who were online in those states saw key messages in realistic settings while playing the video game titles running the campaign. ‘Early Voting has begun’ and ‘Vote Early’ were on billboards, stadiums and outdoor locations.
Additionally, the Xbox LIVE community was polled on their candidate of choice. Nearly 100,000 participants cast their votes, with Obama trending 12 percentage points ahead, providing a unique insight into young voters minds and served as one of the largest unofficial polls in the nation.
The campaign was a first for a political party and succeeded in targeting a hard to reach audience that spends more time gaming than on other media. Some 80,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox LIVE and Xbox.com and 100,000 Xbox LIVE member were polled voting preference and often acted as the bellwether of national polls.

Sprite:::Slam dunk contest

BRAND OWNER:The Coca Cola Company
CATEGORY :Drinks (non-alcoholic)
REGION :USA
DATE :Oct 2007


Sprite has enjoyed a long standing partnership with The National Basketball Association (NBA), which appeals to the primary target audience of African American teens.
In the past, the partnership has revolved around TV sponsorship and integration, but Sprite wanted to reinvigorate the sponsorship and drive sales.
African-American teens continue to be passionate about the NBA, and aspire to be part of the glitzy, showboating lifestyle they see lived out by NBA stars. Sprite decided to reorient its NBA partnership from TV to new digital platforms - video games, online video, and mobile. As the long standing partner of the Slam NBA Dunk Contest TV broadcast, Sprite worked with the NBA to put consumers in control of the event.
First of all they were given power to vote for the winner of the contest, either online or via text. The call-to-vote was pushed on TV and online. People were invited to discuss the event on the NBA page of Facebook. On the night of the event, consumers were reminded of the text-to-vote opportunity via Sprite crawls, TNT announcers, on-screen graphics, billboards and custom TV creative.
Toward the end of the broadcast there was a 5-minute voting window. The results were then announced live on-air at the end of the broadcast.
To continue the action all year long, Sprite infiltrated NBA licensed video games (NBA 2K8, NBA Live 08 and NBA Street), creating an exclusive new game feature, the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, where the virtual players competed in the famous Sprite NBA event.
During the contest, consumers sent in 856,200 text votes and 101,000 online votes – smashing the original goal of 25,000 votes. The 2008 Slam Dunk was the most watched in the event’s 23-year history with 5.2 million viewers (+7% vs the previous year).:

Killzone 2: World Wide War

Sony Computer Entertainment recently released Killzone 2 on Playstation 3, and has been using quite an original way to promote this First Person Shooter videogame. Considering that Killzone scenario are more or less about repelling total invasion by enemies (Helghast forces), Sony brought this scheme online, with a dedicated webgame.

You can register on the killzonewebgame page, install a Killzone toolbar on your browser and be ready to fight ! While you are browsing the internet, you may get under attack at any time, if you decide to engage the fight, Helghast forces appear in your window. Basically, you then need to get rid of them.
Enemies seem to have more chances to appear while you are surfing on large audience sites such as Youtube or Facebook.

You can choose to play solo, or you can create or join a squad. The experience is then even more intense. If a member of your team is under attack and you accept to join the fight, you will be transported straight to his battle.That is cleverly done, as the multiplayer component is a key part of Killzone2.

Another impressive point is the way the application is interacting with your web page. During the fight, blood spatters or bullets impacts are well integrated on the page design, and if you shoot at red objects (let say Youtube logo for instance), some will blow up.

This campaign is relevant, innovative, and certainly talks to gamers. I especially appreciate the way it breaks the lines, and manages to create its own territory of expression. Plus the use of advanced technologies is a mean for its purpose, not an aim.

Note that Killzone 2 has been developed by Guerilla Games and already got top review scores by specialized publications, and Agency Republic made the webgame

Capri Sun:::the digital strategies of,

Capri Sun: refreshing a refreshment brand
"It's what you can do with an idea that's different," Lazarus said. Yet another original idea centered around much the same challenge of breathing new life into a tired product. Capri Sun is a beverage with very different packaging - not a bottle, not a jar, but a 200 ml. foil/plastic pouch. The tropical-themed refreshment was popular in the '80s, Lazarus explained, but "had not done much since then."
It's original consumers had long since moved onto coffee, and there was a target audience of six-to-11-year-old children who were being underserved - a "buzzworthy and respectable group," Lazarus called them.
To start kids talking - and, more specifically, spreading the word about Capri Sun - Ogilvy created a series of 30-second spots with identical set-ups but different ends. "They were sort of irreverent commercials that showed what happened when children didn't respect the pouch. They had an element of suspense. And they invited parody.


http://www.kraftbrands.com/caprisun/ "Six-to-11-year-old boys love playing games," Lazarus reported. And, because Web 2.0 is as familiar to this demographic as tap water, they fulfilled their viral promise with a series of imitative spots:
The agency, in kind, returned the fire with video games and a "Rayman Raving Rabbids" Wii game planned for launch in time for the Christmas 2008 season.
Lazarus' bottom line to the campaign was the same she used to describe the Obama effort: "If you think it, you can do it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SesasYdKVI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YRigdFPeLg

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