Angry Birds offers best return for marketers
Cannes: Brands will get more “bang for their buck” by advertising in games like Angry Birds than traditional media like TV, Angry Birds developer Peter Vesterbacka said at the Cannes Lions Festival yesterday.
“A lot of people don’t play games – but they play Angry Birds, so we are widening the market,” Vesterbacka, co-developer of the cult gaming phenomenon at Finnish parent company Rovio, told an audience.
“Brands can get a lot more bang for their buck with us than any TV show. We want to deliver amazing results for brands and not just stick a logo somewhere in a game.”
He claimed that there was a disproportionate media spend on gaming compared with TV as media: “It’s totally unfair – it won’t work in the future, and we want agencies to fix it,” he said.
Vesterbacka revealed that Rovio anticipated that the game would have a billion fans in the next two years, compared with the 250 million downloads recorded up until June this year.
He said future developments included multiple player capability, and the bird characters in new scenarios akin to Super Mario characters moving into extensions such as Mario Kart.
Vesterbacka hinted that users may soon be able to design and submit ideas for a new level of the game, like what the brand did for a six-year-old user named Ethan who drew his own idea of a level which the company then made.
Launching in China is also on Rovio’s agenda. “We are planning a big push into China. We are in the country’s 3 most copied brands, and next year, we want to be the most copied,” he joked.
He also suggested the launch of an Angry Birds currency system similar to Facebook credits with the remark: “Hold onto your stars (earned at each level completed), because they will be valuable at some point.”
