My pals over at Net Imperative had a story last week about Vodafone commissioning Digital Chocolate to develop games to showcase the more advanced capabilities of 3G.
The games are Beach Mini-Golf 3D, Ferrari Experience 3D and Extreme Air Snowboarding 3D, all based on Java.
It’s great that Vodafone have got here with their thinking, but it’s arguable that such showcase should have been planned prior to their launch. With any new technology, it’s essential that the first adopters (called variously innovators, sneezers, mavens or alpha users, depending which guru you follow) have something to show to their friends. This is how adoption moves on to a wider audience.
But if you don’t give the innovators something to show off to their friends with, they can’t do their job properly, which is recruiting new users for you.
I don’t think that this initiative goes far enough though. I’d recommend doing something that goes right to the heart of the brand and its communication. Why not commission a game that puts the handset through its paces as part of the marketing campaign? So you create a game playable on the handsets. Players can interact with the game with cutting edge graphics, but also with other players and game characters in a combination of video, email and SMS. This would really give them a 3G tour and workout.
Think Nokia game on steroids.
Winners can be rewarded with prizes, which in turn becomes an incentive to get 3G in the first place – “Win a Million with Vodafone Live! with 3G”.
That would be joined-up marketing.
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