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Pokemon Go Marketing

Catch ‘Em All (and Grab Some New Customers)

While Canadian Pokemon fans are eagerly awaiting the release of Pokemon Go, the delayed rollout to Canada gives businesses more time to plan marketing strategies for when the Pokeballs come out.

Simply put, this game takes the idea behind the classic card-and-video game and brings it to the real world. Players use their phone’s GPS and camera to walk around and “catch” Pokemon. You can then go to PokeSpots to gain experience points and train Pokemon, or go to a gym where you can challenge other players to combat. Both Pokespots and gyms are real places, often spots of significance.

Marketing to Pokemon Go audience

This is what the game looks like when using the app on your phone.

The new GPS-enabled mobile game has rocketed to the top of the App Store and has been installed over 5 million times on Android devices. In the US, it has been installed on more than 5% of all Android devices in the entire country. In just a meagre few days, it has more installs than dating app Tinder. There are more daily active users on Go than on Twitter.

In short, this game is blowing up and is poised to take Canada by storm upon release (expected soon).

So, how can your business take advantage and tap this massive customer base?

Here’s a couple of tips to get up-and-running right away and stay ahead of the curve when it launches north of the border.

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Unsplash photo

Leveling the Field on Social

I attended a session on social media strategy last week where the presenter emphasized the point that “social media levels the playing field,” in the sense that a tiny start-up or a grassroots not-for-profit are on the same level as major consumer giants like Nike or Apple.

This…might be a stretch. Nike and Apple have teams of graphic designers pushing out special visuals, they have community managers talking to different audiences online, celebrities being paid to share their content and they’ve got the money to boost posts and run highly targeted ad campaigns. Compared to your one-person shop and limited budget.

But perhaps, there is some truth to it. It is true that for organic content, you are using the same medium and once you’ve built an audience and earned Page Likes, you are delivering your message in much the same way every other brand in the world is. Even if Facebook limits organic reach to about 3%-5%, here are three quick ways to help reduce the gap between your organization and the bigger players.

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MLB Serves Up Custom Highlights on reddit

Major League Baseball gave some love to the reddit community Tuesday, uploading special highlight videos using comments posted on the site.

The league has been active on the site since the beginning of last season, when it created an official account and began posting feature stories to the baseball subreddit. In the year since, their team has been active posing questions to fans, sharing original content and digging into team-specific subreddits to post comments and reactions as games are happening.

Today’s release, three videos focused around some of the biggest plays from the month of May, moved MLB into new territory as far as fan engagement goes. On each highlight clip, they superimposed user reactopms to provide custom colour commentary.

On Bartolo Colon’s first career homerun, one pop-up reads: “This is one of the greatest moments in the history of baseball.” Another says: “WE ARE ALL WITNESSES.”

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Humour comedy club

Successfully Using Humour to Generate Political Engagement

The marriage of comedy and politics dates back to MAD magazine covers, thoughts of Kevin Nealon and Norm Macdonald taking shots on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, or maybe it was Roger Abbott’s Jean Chretien impressions and the whole Air Farce troupe. More recently, Rick Mercer and Jon Stewart come to mind.

But the digital age has brought about more opportunities to push out biting comedy clips than ever before, and increasingly groups are using that tactic to involve young people. It’s not as simple as just putting up goofy clips to earn a laugh, though. Using comedy for political engagement is a tough balance.

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Using listicles

How You Can Use Listicles, Too

The BuzzFeeds and Vices of the world have cemented listicles as a viable method to share information quick and far. This election, listicles have been bouncing around the web as a new style of political reporting. So why do they work so well?

SHORT AND SUCCINCT

Listicles can be lengthy, but good ones have short points. This makes it easy for the reader to scan a story and quickly comprehend the major arguments.

MULTIMEDIA

Most listicles feature a photo or video after each and every point, making them engaging and easy to follow. The most successful listicles typically deploy comedy in those photos and videos to add a lighter edge to politics – typically a “serious” subject area.

EASY TO SHARE

Listicles are designed to be shared, so they’re packed full of language that’s meant to resonate with the reader. Unlike objective hard news stories, listicles can be built to entice agreement or anger, and then prompt the reader to share within their own networks for confirmation.