This past Monday, Burger King (NYSE: BKC) announced their new multi-level mobile game named BK CITY. The company’s press release states the game, which was developed by mobile game developer Mobliss, will feature a host of mobile-centric features including user-to-user text messaging. The game is available on nearly 200 handsets and will cost $2.99 per month. The game can be downloaded across various Carriers by texting the keyword “KING” to 90210 or by visiting the Burger Website link - HERE. 
Sounds interesting and might be worth downloading to check it out, but from a mobile marketer’s perspective let’s discuss a few things about this idea.
First of all a big HIGH-FIVE to Mobliss for scoring a very memorable 90210 shortcode to promote this game and I assume other titles in their portfolio. (Quick shortcode ownership search on the CSCA site..HERE.).
Now, I can appreciate Burger King looking for new, hip ways to build awareness, loyalty, etc..etc around their brand and the KING character that dominates their campaigns these days. However, the question that first arose in my mind due to experience working with other forward thinking brands in the Mobile Channel was - was this money well spent in terms of a tactic? Here’s my line of thinking on this one.
Let’s assume that this game is NOT prominently featured on any Carrier deck for a moment as the company’s press release did not explicitly say the game was available FROM the Carrier’s (deck), but rather “across a variety of national Carriers.” This can be interpreted to mean that the Carriers approved the distribution of this game via various off-deck methods such as a keyword text trigger and via a website. That said, Burger King is going to have to find creative ways (and invest a few dollars) to generate some serious traffic to their website where the game is featured and ensure that any in-store signage, print and possibly TV ads have a very effective call-to-action. I have no idea what volume of web traffic Burger King generates, but I think the off-web promotions will make or break this campaign for a number of reasons:
- still to this day a very small percentage of U.S. wireless subs actually participate in MO-based (aka send keyword via SMS to a shortcode) mobile marketing campaigns. The MMA’s 2007 Mobile Usage and Attitude Study pegged the percentage of U.S mobile subscribers who participated in mobile marketing campaign at slightly over 5%. (25-44 yr olds slightly higher at around 8%) - the study further claimed that these participants favored mobile sweepstakes programs (45%) and alerts (33%) over game downloads (21%).
- the required MMA and Carrier compliance language can seem daunting to consumers at the point of download
- downloading a game to a handset can be a cumbersome task to those who have not done so before in an off-deck environment. Conversion rates between the initial MO - the double optin that will be required due to premium charge and the actual download will be low.
Add to the list of adoption hurdles the fact that the game costs money - a recurring subscription nonetheless!! - and because of this fact the Company is going to have convince consumers (especially the 15-34 demo) that this game is worth it. How does the company intend to induce trial??? (Discussion for another time). Recurring premium subscription models can get messy, especially if consumers start calling their Carrier to complain about mounting fees they claim not to know anything about (wink, wink) Once complaints start rolling in, the Carriers get ancy and can threaten to turn off the program.
In closing - it’ll be interesting to see the results of this campaign in a few months time. I’m betting that the $2.99 subscription will soon be dropped.
OTHER NOTES:
Game downloads here in the U.S. have not lived up to their hype as the number of consumers who have played a downloadable game hovers around the 20% mark according to a recent MMetrics survey. PLUS, most games that are downloaded come directly from a Carrier deck. Couple this with the fact that those games that have consistently been at the top of the download charts for mobile have been casual games such as Tetris and/or an adaptation of a popular game franchise - e.g. Guitar Hero.
