innovative mobile marketing in Japan

So how does a crisps snacks manufacturer promote its two new brands ?

Well here in Poland I would imagine the company would hire an advertising agency that would make a tv ad, few outdoor posters and if the agency was digital enough it would through in a few banners on some web portals and social networking sites. An innovative, cutting edge social media creative agency would probably make a profile on a chosen social networking site, post a few blog entries and try to get closer to the users by sponsoring some branded application or widget.
A Japanese agency Hakuhodo went a little further and they’ve created a mobile based massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) for the snacks manufacturer Tohato! The game is called the World’s Worst War. Tohato launched two new spicy snacks “Tyrant Habanero Burning Hell Hot” and “Satan Jorquia Bazooka Deadly Hot”. What they’ve done was they have created two Evil Armies associated with the two snack brands. Buying a bag of snacks and scanning a 2D code you could enter the game and join one of the two armies, depending on which taste you liked more. Players could recruit friends to join their evil army and get points for that. The Evil Armies had 31 battlefields for fight on to win the World’s Worst War. Examples of the names of the battlefields – “Sweet Sucker’s Execution Hall” or “City of Anal Torture”. Players would interact with the game through the mobile phone. News feeds regarding who won the battle or who dies were delivered by SMS.
Now this is a really damn cool campaign! Not only is it innovative, up-to-date and mobile based - it combines physical and virtual elements to create fun game precisely targeted at the selected audience. It’s digital, it uses social networking but it’s not intrusive – it doesn’t aim at hitting you with as many banners as possible just to get the brand stuck in your head, it’s smart and innovative.