"Surviving High School" The Mobile Game and its Marketing Potential

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=126445

In Ad Age today there was an article that discusses "Surviving High School", a new mobile-gaming that allows users to choose playing jocks, nerds and other iconic high school stereotypes through a script that is expanded with weekly episodic content. The game has already been downloaded more than a million times, with an additional 6.5 million episodic downloads. Users download new content each week, and then get deeper and deeper into the game. The games popularity has already inspired Facebook Groups and other discussion forums. Currently, the game is not supported by advertising... but could it be soon! imagine the potential.

Right now, according to the most recent Nielsen Mobile data study , 90% of mobile phone owners felt ad placements on their devices were unacceptable. But along the same lines, the article states that gamers may not mind and even welcome ads as long as it does not interrupt the gaming experience. Gamers would also be concerned that the advertising matches the brand of the game. There are so many possibilities when it comes to High School brand!

A first attempt at marketing was successful: Vivendi created a MySpace page for the game, and anyone who added it to their top eight friends were eligible in a sweepstakes to win a Motorola Razr phone, as well as have their likeness digitally reproduced and introduced into the next episodic content as a character. The game had 10,000 friends in just a couple of days. This shows the network effect and the power of mass use. This sweepstakes would have never been possible with out the "word of mouth"/everyone is on so I must be too effect.

One of the major problems with mobile marketing is that there are so many different models. Each ad needs to be formatted to fit the Verizon phones, Sprint, t-mobile, iPhone... and so on. Is the cost worth the benefit of advertising?

The other issue with advertising in the game is that currently users pay to play. Makers of the game are wary about subjecting users to advertising. This goes back to the issue of how much are people willing to take- advertising is not effective if people are annoyed by it.

However the success of the "Surviving High School" game and the number of downloads has peaked marketers interest. "'Surviving High School' won't open the floodgates of advertisers on mobile gaming," Mr. Mytides said, "but it's a step in the right direction, in the same way that Second Life wasn't the best thing for in-game advertising, but still opened their eyes to the possibilities."

Could we start receiving pop up ads on our phones? With multi-functional phones like the iPhone this could be a strong possibility.