New York Times
Pity the hoary television ad, billboard and trailer. As studio marketers try harder to use technology to advertise movies, ambitious Web games that interlock with social networking sites are an increasing focus. With “Day X Exists”, a webisodic video game to promote the new Angelina Jolie film, Sony hopes to mimic the viral success of Facebook games like Mafia Wars, which is played by tens of millions of people. The goal is to reverse the consumer-advertiser relationship. Traditional marketing pushes a message over and over. If people instead pull bits of information into their lives through a game, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership. Don’t confuse these efforts with retail games based on movies (Iron Man 2 for the Nintendo). Marketing-driven games are free and expected to fade away after a movie’s release. The ubiquity of GPS-enabled smartphones has also presented an opportunity for games to raise ticket sales. Marketers call the tactic location-based gaming. Say an iPhone game designed to promote a movie comes with an added element, an exclusive level that you can use only inside a theater. “The challenge is to make these kinds of efforts feel organic,” said Oren Aviv, Disney’s former president for production and marketing. “It has to be an experience in and of itself that is powerful enough that people will forget that they are being marketed to.” The full article is available at the above link.