(chinese soldiers gaming, from here)
Gaming and game mechanics are increasingly a part of the marketing toolkit. At the same time, game marketers are looking to the real world to promote their virtual products.
GT Academy from Nissan is the best-known example. Because gamers have (some of) the skills of their real-world counterparts it's a small step to testing out their gaming skills for real. So Nissan's GT racing team has built a long-term co-marketing programme with Playstation to find great drivers from among the players of Gran Turismo.
Earler this year, T-Mobile filmed another in their series of 'surprising stuff happening in the real world' ads. This time it was a live staging of Angry Birds, at scale.
This doesn't quite do it for me as they didn't go the whole hog (!) and build a large catapault to fire their birds from. Instead they used a large screen and spoofed the best bit of the game.
Driving is one thing; first-person shooters are another entirely. Nonetheless, Turtle Beach, a maker of audio gaming gear, has apparently recruited a gamer who enjoys taking out the enemy virtually, and is giving him the opportunity to discover a real-life warzone. So Phil the gamer from New Zealand is being sent to Iraq:
I've got a sneaking feeling there might be a bit of a publicity backlash if Phil actually, you know, shot someone while he was there. The agency responsible seems to agree:
As to whether Phil visits the frontlines, all Droga5 partner Mike O’Sullivan would say was that there were some logistical mishaps in the upcoming series which made for interesting watching.
This is a nicely provocative bit of work and I expect there to be some media frothing at the mouth about it, all no doubt intended to amplify the campaign and bring the Turtle Beach name some broader reach (I had no clue who they were before I saw this story).
To sum up, the mechanic of taking virtual game action and replaying it in the real world is such a simple, effective one that I don't think it'll go away any time soon. You have to be real though - the GT players really drive performance cars, and Phil the gamer really went to Iraq. Any sort of trickery like the Angry Birds example makes the communications impact much, much lower.
Comments