Viral marketing

1 million plays in just 2 months for Butlins Happy Days game

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Objective:

In 2011, Butlins are celebrating 75 years of family holidays. As part of their marketing activities around this special anniversary, they wanted to create a family friendly online game set in a virtual version of their resorts which would appeal to the whole family and show off the resorts’ facilities.

Activity:

In response to this brief we created ‘Happy Days’, a SIMs style game in which you must take the holiday makers who visit your resort and place them in the activities or venues they are thinking about. Players can choose from the three Butlins resorts and layouts in-game are based on the actual layouts of the real resorts.

If players keep enough people in the park happy, they are rewarded with an iconic Redcoat, synonymous with the Butlins brand.

A prize draw element was included so that Butlins could request email addresses and build their contact database of potential holidaymakers.

Click to view:

Happy Days game

Results:

Within 2 months of launch, this game has already had over 1 million plays across the globe with no additional advertising budget. As well as being widely taken up by online gaming sites and blogs, the game has also seen continuous chatter on social networks driving audiences to the game, particularly on Twitter.

Head of Communications, Jae Hopkins said “Now TAMBA is the kind of company I like working with! Real humans with loads of techy knowledge, bags of ideas and creativity, and the ability and desire to get things done well and on time. They produced a great game for Butlins which hit the top of the European viral games charts (and number 2 in the world) inside a month, and had an average engagement time of over 3 minutes. The team were professional, helpful, creative and pro-active in resolving issues. Thanks guys!”

Website traffic increased 82% within first few days of launching CMI game

Objective:

The Chartered Institute of Management (CMI) is the the only chartered professional body dedicated to raising the standards of management and leadership. They awarded TAMBA the contract to produce an online campaign that would raise awareness about their services amongst younger people, particularly undergraduates and early careers managers – an audience that they had previously found more challenging to engage with.

Activity:

With our extensive experience in online gaming, we felt this was an excellent channel to use to hit the target demographic of young people in first management roles and those still in full time university education.

We developed a unique strategy game entitled Battle of the Boardroom in which players compete against an AI opponent. The objective is to wipe out the opponent’s employees in each city. To do this the player must take over as many buildings as possible in a level, including the opponent’s HQ, which will stop their teams regenerating.

A prize draw element was included in order for the CMI to request email addresses and build their database to whom they could share future marketing with.

Click to view:

Battle for the Boardroom game

Results:

Within 5 days of launch, the viral spread had extended across the globe and the game already had in excess of a quarter of a million plays, with the average player spending over 8 minutes playing the game.

Marketing Manager, Adam Thompson said of the game “Having been considering ways to engage with a younger demographic the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) approached TAMBA to create a viral game targeted at a younger demographic to that of its membership profile at that time, specifically students, undergraduates studying business courses and first line managers and consultants. TAMBA’s proposal was to create a strategy game that required players to use more skill and intelligence to progress through the game as opposed to luck which struck a chord with us as not only did it this approach fit the profile of our target market but it reduced the risk of alienating our existing members.

With the aim of launching the game by the end of May to ensure we reached students in their place of study before returning home for the summer TAMBA quickly and methodically set about the task of creating a game which was delivered on time, on budget and within it’s first week far exceeded the number of plays we estimated having gone truly viral. Not only did the CMI brand immediately get seen by tens of thousands of prospective members, traffic to the website increased by 82% when compared like for like with the week before launch. We fully expect the viral game to be one of the most successful brand awareness campaigns the CMI has launched to date.”

19% of those that played TAMBA’s Sue Ryder viral game clicked through to donate

Objective:
Sue Ryder Care is a UK charity providing health and social care services in local communities. ‘Ride for Ryder’ is an annual campaign that encourages people to perform their commute in an unconventional mode of transport in return for charitable donations. In 2010, TAMBA was approached to create a unique viral game to support the campaign. Sue Ryder Care was looking for something that would not only raise awareness with players about Ride for Ryder, but also that would create donation opportunities. View more >

Kylie promotes Aphrodite album with Viral and Mobile Activity

Objective:

Kylie Minogue is one of the world’s most recognised music stars. For the release of latest album, Aphrodite, it was decided to use viral and mobile activity to bring fans into Aphrodite’s world. View more >