Virgin Mobile Flunks with Back-to-School Campaign
Mobile is the ever-expanding frontier for interactive campaigns and it is always interesting to see how advertisers utilize wireless capabilities to engage audiences. The Carling campaign in London for example, which we recently covered, integrates a GPS-enabled Bar Finder, which makes perfect sense. People pass all sorts of places when they’re on the move, and they have their mobile devices with them, so why not find a way to increase brand recognition as consumers travel? The same goes for scavenger hunt-style promotions that drive users to various locations.
Understandably, not all brands can tie in an activity, nor do they need to. The benefit of mobile marketing is that the audience is always accessible, regardless of time or place. However, sometimes the activities involved in the campaigns seem sort of, for lack of a better term, random. The latest offender is a joint venture between Virgin Mobile and Vibes Media. The result is a “text adventure game” in which teenage Virgin Mobile customers respond to questions and react to situations created by Vibes.
For me, such a “game” conjures up images of teens in a variety of situations with their heads locked forward in texting position, fingers frantically typing away. Those situations include everything from activities that could use a little entertainment, like long subway rides, to situations where texting is inappropriate, like class, and even to things that require the utmost attention, like crossing into oncoming traffic for example.
Oh, and the game’s title is the “Back-2-School Hook-Up Text Adventure Game,” and yes, that is “Hook-Up” in the romantic sense. So perhaps it’s not so much the strange choice of medium as it is what I believe to be Virgin Mobile/Vibes Media’s complete miss. The game (and I’m not sure where the “adventure” aspect comes in) challenges players to try to virtually “hook up” with their text-generating date, provided by Vibes. Each text message choice puts the player closer to hooking up or striking out. Responses to the choices are intended to be edgy like, “Rawr. He can’t hide how much he’s loving this. Shake those HIPS.” Sounds just like the dating advice we hope to pass onto our female youth.
The average path of texts, which ends in letting the player know their hook-up success, requires between twenty-five and fifty messages. Now, I enjoy texting, but that seems to exceed inbox capacity. When a player has completed a “date,” she (or I suppose the occasional he) gets a label like “Too Shy,” “Too Bold,” or even the profound “Playa Playa.” A tracker also provides some words of future dating wisdom. I’d imagine a mobile marketing provider would not be the authority on best dating practices, but that’s just me.
I can see this campaign as being amusing to those twenty-somethings out there on the dating scene, in that kind of “this is so dumb, but hey I wonder what it says about my skills….” sort of way, but for those learning the ropes of male-female interaction, this hardly seems like an intelligent choice. Dominick Tolli, VP of Mobile Data Services for Virgin Mobile USA, seems to feel differently, saying in a statement that, “It’s a brand new school year, there are new girls and guys to meet, and everyone’s anxious to test whether they’ve got game!” I wonder how much game one can really have with the mentality of “Hey, it worked on my Text Adventure Date.”
Perhaps this campaign is attractive to teens out there, particularly with its sweepstakes for five Virgin Mobile Stash Visa Pre-Paid Cards that come equipped with $500, but to an individual that frequently reads about mobile marketing campaigns, and what I like to think of as a tactful human being, this campaign brings the mobile medium a few steps backwards.
Virgin and Vibes have undertaken other promotions that involve text messaging, picture messaging, ringtones, and trivia challenges, and perhaps they should stick to such schemes and avoid advising on social relations. Virgin Mobile customers can only play the “Hook-Up Text Adventure Game” until October 2nd, at which point participants should look for a better source of “hook-up” inspiration.
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