FIFA World cup 2014 kicks off in less than a week and I am pretty sure that you’ve prepared for it well in advance. The calenders would have been marked for your favorite team’s matches and probably, you would have finalized the big screen where you will watch the finals on. Whichever team you support, the World Cup always offer biggest opportunity for products to catch eyeballs and as the entire world gears up for the mega event, the big question is: Are your games prepared for the FIFA WC14?
Big sporting events have the potential to offer amazing opportunities for brands and products and the World Cup is undoubtedly the single greatest marketing platform in the world. It attracts a global audience of dedicated fans who are not only glued to their viewing screens for weeks during the matches, but experience the whole extravaganza outside the matches as well. Four billion fans are expected to tune in on television and a multitude of digital and social media channels to follow all the activity related to the World Cup. Conservative estimates have revealed that the FIFA World Cup will be equivalent to having the Super Bowl every day for over a month.
Big brands like Nike highly leverage this mega opportunity for boosting their profits. To put things into perspective, Nike has reported that its profits increased by $20m in the run up to the FIFA world cup alone and it will go further up during the actual event. Its not at all surprising that one of the most expensive ad campaigns of big brands are the ones during big time events like the World Cup.
And its not that only the offline market goes haywire with an event like this but a similar adaptation happens in the digital world too. EA, for instance, rolled out its FIFA 14 world cup update on its one of the most popular mobile games. App developers around the world try to leverage this event by updating their apps accordingly.
Apple App store takes this digital campaigning to a whole new level by making a room for FIFA called Football Fever which houses all the apps on the store related to football this season.
How can you prepare your game for FIFA WC14? Does it mean that the game should have green pitches and footballs all around? One might argue that EA had it simple with FIFA 14 since they didn’t have to change that much. Agreed. But does it take a lot of changes to your product to be a part of the World Cup fever? Well, not exactly. Check out how brands are coming up with slightest and most innovative modifications in their product or its packaging to tell their consumers that they are as passionate about football as their consumers.
McDonalds have come up with McBrasil and McSpain burgers having ingredients from the nationality they represent with the bun representing football. Whereas Coke and Pepsi have just modified the skin of their packaging to get amidst the action.
If big brands can target consumers through WC themes, why cant games. Is it possible to create a similar effect with your game? The answer is yes. Have a look at the following changes you can do to make your game a part of the extravaganza.
- Football skins: Use football skins at the focus areas of your game. Just as McDonalds used it for their bun, you can use it in the background, on the menu or on the main character itself.
- National colors of key teams: Use different colors of national football teams on different characters of your game. The color scheme of the game can contain the major 2-3 colors of the national teams. For eg, Yellow and Green for Brasil’s team, Red for Spain and Sky Blue for Argentina. Still better, you can serve country wise theme to localized audience through your game. For serving nationalized themes based on location, you can use GreedyGame’s i18n Panel.
- The Brazil flavor: The World Cup isn’t just about football. The human stories behind the games attract almost as much attention. This doesn’t just stop with the players, but goes beyond to offer a glimpse into the world of the fans, Brazilian life, football culture and the impact that the World Cup has on everyone who watches. Make sure you add some flavor to your game too.
Making these simple changes can help positioning of your game greatly in the eyes of all gamers who are geared up for the world cup. Updating game content with a viral trend keeps your gamers interested since they believe that the game is not static and is keeping up with the latest happenings. For the football fans who would play your games, this slight update to the game content may work wonders. It will enhance the fan experience and bring them closer to the action. And, it would result in people sharing your game with the world. With more than half the world gearing up for the world cup, there is a great chance that a good chunk of your game’s audience belongs to that category.
Advertisers will keep a close eye on social monitoring tools if they want to keep on top of what’s trending and leverage key moments to get their products into limelight and you, being the brand manager of your game, should not fall behind. Tell us in comments how are you getting your games amidst the action.
I am part of the GreedyGame team, we have built a simple and powerful tool to help you make these changes to your game. Check out this for more info.
asha chaudhry
hi arpit,
if you’re a part of the greedygame team – you might want to add that in the end as a disclaimer!!
Sushrut Munje
This is an awesome article! 😀 Thanks Arpit!