The integrated marketing campaign, which included a massive PR push and e-mail barrage directing people to the website, generated 22 million hits on www.officeclippy.com within the first month (April 2001). According to Microsoft, the number of product information requests on Office XP was 60 times that of other campaigns added. Matthew Ringel, vice president of strategy and digital solutions for KPE, a New York City-based marketing communications agency that helped develop the Clippy game, says the game was the key to the whole campaign.
Alex St. John, CEO and cofounder of WildTangent, a 3-year-old interactive media company, believes that games will become even more effective marketing tools as the Web and new technologies bring richer game experiences to users. One of WildTangent's more successful campaigns was an online game for the film Jurassic Park III. In July, the joint venture of DNA Studios, Universal Pictures and WildTangent generated 284,000 plays (more than 20,000 per day) for an average of 19 minutes per game. Not a bad return when one considers that banner and pop-up ads get a few seconds' notice at most, and that click-through rates (CTRs) have sagged to 0.1 percent on average.
"Games are a media type," says St. John. "In fact, they are more effective at marketing than any other media type that has existed before."
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