Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

There have been several stories on the incredible use of virtual media by the Obama campaign. All their campaign events have been streamed live on his site, they use Twitter to keep people informed about them, they launched their own iPhone application - and they're not done yet. The Obama campaign is now advertising in a very popular video game for the Xbox 360.

The game, called "Burnout: Paradise", features an open world which you drive, race, trick, and crash your way through in any way you see fit (you can get details about the game here). It features billboards (a lot of which you can crash through) that companies are able to buy advertising on, just like real billboards (In fact, I believe Dodge has already done it for this game). This in itself represents an incredible way of reaching an audience of millions of (generally) younger people.

Here is a screenshot taken by an Xbox 360 gamer of the billboard which the Obama campaign has paid for. At first, most people didn't believe it; they thought it was somebody's clever Photoshop job. But then Electronic Arts (the makers of the game) confirmed that the Obama campaign has indeed paid for advertising within the game. Brilliant.

In-game advertising is not a new concept, but for a political campaign to be savvy enough to realize this opportunity exists and take advantage of it is really impressive. I really believe as video games continue to move to take advantage of the power of social networking, this is the type of advertising we will see a LOT more of. And therein lies a tremendous opportunity for Organic.

The challenges for this type of advertising will be game-specific - how can advertising be blended in without having it stick out like a sore thumb? Gamers are very, very passionate about their hobby, and while they will instinctively reject a really obvious marketing ploy, they will also applaud those that are done in a clever yet non-intrusive manner. Sounds like a heck of a fun project to me!

As in-game advertising opportunities continue to grow (and they will!), I think we will see a lot of VERY cool opportunities to show off our Exceptional Experience abilities.

You can read about this story right here.

Daryl Brewer