Chado-Design.com

This January, to market their new game MLB 2K10, video game developer 2K Sports put up a $1 million prize for the first person to pitch a perfect game under specific conditions. The new game features all new pitching mechanics for improved gameplay and to advertise the improvements over last year’s MLB 2K9 they put up the money for the contest. They figured this new strategy would build hype for the game’s release, persuade more players to buy the game for full price on the day it is released, and invest more time playing the game. They originally estimated that it would take weeks for players to achieve the supposedly difficult feat but a mere 24 hours after the game was released they had a winner. After going through the rigorous confirmation tests to certify a legitimate perfect game, the winner was just recently announced.

Wade McGilberry, a 24 year-old Alabama resident won the cool million in just 90 minutes of playing the game on his Xbox360. McGilberry, playing as Atlanta Braves pitcher Kenshin Kawakami pulled through with a 27-up, 27-down contest relatively quickly. Although the contest succeeded in generating buzz and received positive response from fans, 2K Sports had to pay the $1 million lump sum out of pocket. Insurance companies couldn’t come up with the odds of throwing a perfect game so 2K Sports couldn’t take out insurance on the contest.

As the video game market continues to significantly increase, developers are constantly looking for unique and exciting ways to hype their new games. While some tactics have been quite successful (and others fail miserably) it will be interesting to see if contests become a new trend to increase release day customers.

Now that social media networks like Facebook have become a commonplace occurrence in our society and literally “everyone and their mother” has a profile, its no wonder that most major brands now utilize it to maintain an online presence and communicate their brand messages. Although there are hundreds of brands using Facebook, only a few have been able to utilize it to its fullest potential. IKEA is one of those brands.

Their campaign to promote the opening of its newest store in Mälmo has been wildly successful. It has been described as brilliant, smart yet simple, genius, and innovative. With a very small budget, Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors managed to start a Facebook campaign that was able to grow organically and transcend international boundaries on its own. By creating a basic profile for the store manager of the new store they uploaded images of IKEA showrooms from the new store to his photo albums over the course of two weeks. Those who became “friends” with Gustavsson were encouraged to tag themselves in the photos over products in the showroom images for a chance of winning that particular object. As word spread across Facebook and more people tagged the photo, the showroom images where subsequently shared on all their profiles, links, and newsfeeds with millions of people in Sweden, throughout Europe, and across the planet. Instead of simply placing a banner ad on various websites hoping for a connection, IKEA got people to personally promote IKEA on the biggest social networking platform around. Word of mouth advertising is considered the most effective and sharing on Facebook is the equivalent of word of mouth these days.