One of the benefits of the holidays is having time to observe the full force of the marketing onslaught. While gauging the pulse of retailers pre-Christmas and post-Christmas marketing plans, I was struck by two television ads that I saw aired repeatedly. One was for Supercell’s Clash of Clans and the other for King’s Candy Crush Saga.
These two games represent the hottest properties in mobile gaming, as most any peek over the shoulder of fellow airline passengers could tell you. Candy Crush alone hit over half a billion downloads before the end of 2013. They follow in the line of crazes that extend back to the historical days of Words with Friends and Angry Birds. Yet, I don’t recall seeing any of those franchises using broadcast TV to feed their respective runs. Unlike console games, the rise and fall of previous mobile gaming hits took place almost entirely in the digital/social realms it was designed for.
The use of TV to drive online downloads is consistent with a trend that is increasingly erasing the divide between offline and online marketing approaches. You can also see this in the refined sales pitches coming from Facebook and Twitter. They are increasingly touting the synergistic effects of their platforms. Pitches that used to be be about the unique effectiveness of online marketing now emphasize the ways that online advertising enhances the effectiveness of offline marketing. Like most marketing trends, it’s a move that shows marketers catching up with human behaviors. As we increasingly jump the line in our real lives, it’s natural that our consumer lives would follow.
The Ryan Report 