Old School Game

Not all digital marketing happens in cyberspace. It can start on a physical disc and get attached as a premium to some other product. Pick the right product and multimedia content, the thinking goes, and you get a straight shot to the right target audience.

ETagz holds a patent for “digital hang tags” on CD-ROM or DVD. Last May the company produced an in-store promotion that linked a purchase of Rocawear jeans to a consumer survey and a free eTagz pre-release copy of Rihanna’s single “Umbrella.”

Then last month eTagz played middleman in a promotion that relied on cold drinks, not hot tunes. The company put special customized versions of Sierra Online’s “Freestyle Street Basketball” computer game on a disc inserted onto the lids of 44-ounce drinks from the ampm convenience-store chain.

Owned by British Petroleum and located in California, Washington, Oregon and Arizona, the 911 ampm stores were expected to distribute more than a million copies of “Freestyle” by the end the month.

The convenience store chain will display the promotional lids prominently at the registers and large cardboard cutouts of the game’s hip-hop characters inside the store. The giveaway is part of a larger two-month promotion by ampm centered on the National Collegiate Athletic Association “March Madness” college basketball playoffs.

That co-branded campaign revolves around two consecutive virtual “FreeStyle” basketball tournaments, separated by skill levels into a Rookie League in March and a Pro League in April.

Users can pick up the game on the ampm drink lids or download it for free at http://freestyle.sierraonline.com, register for a FreeStyle membership and then compete in ampm-branded Web-based three-on-three team play for prizes.

Besides ampm, other brand sponsors will give out prizes during the tournament: A year of music downloads from eMusic.com, a 12-month subscription to the PlayPhone ringtone and mobile game service and a year’s supply of PowerBars. The last week of each month is ampm’s turn to hand out prizes, and winners in that week will get all three awards.

By attaching to the large-size drinks, the “FreeStyle” game promotes ampm’s most profitable store item outside of tobacco products, says eTagz president Ed Bruno.

And the campaign is designed to build sales among 18- to 24-year-old males, one of the prime demographic targets both for ampm’s large beverages and Sierra Online’s “FreeStyle” game.

“Ampm is trying to upsell customers at the fountain stand, and they’ve decided they can do that by offering this really cool content on cup lids,” Bruno says. “And there are a lot of vendor brands inside that ampm mini-mart that can be brought in as co-marketing sponsors. Advertising can then be sold on that disk to upsell their goods at a future date.”

The Sierra Online/ampm campaign includes on its disc a printable coupon for a free drink and online codes that let players unlock free FreeStyle in-game points.

What does Sierra Online get out of the campaign? Finding players for a video game whose economic paradigm is atypical of such entertainment software.

The company, a division of Vivendi Games, designed “FreeStyle Street Basketball” as a multiplayer game in which members can challenge one another. To build a critical mass of players, the game is a free online download. Rather than charging for the software, Sierra Online makes its revenue off micropayments that let players enhance their abilities and tweak their avatars’ looks.

“‘FreeStyle Street Basketball’s’ business model is unique,” says Sierra Online spokesman Will von Bernuth. “As a result, we look for distribution opportunities that capitalize on this model. Distribution through ampm stores is a great way to put the full game directly into consumers’ hands at only the cost of a drink.”

Besides distribution, the campaign also simplifies the install process — almost always easier from a CD-ROM than online.

Von Bernuth points out that this isn’t the first time Sierra Online has partnered with eTagz to link other games in its repertoire to highly targeted consumer products. Last November it attached copies of the “Switchball” Xbox 360 game to a new line of “Gamer” shoes from Heelys.

For more articles on interactive marketing go to www.promomagazine.com/retail