A look back at Matmi’s branded game for Lily Allen

Almost 3 years ago, Matmi worked with Parlophone to promote the Lily Allens’ second album “It’s Not Me, It’s You” with the following objectives:

To create an innovative global marketing tool.


  • To reach a new and relevant audience for Lily Allen
  • To upsell Lily Allen content, drive physical sales and pre-orders.
  • To capture consumer data for future marketing
  • We created a branded advergame called “Lilly Allen in: Escape the fear” featuring a free play of the album’s debut, and released it six weeks before the single was available to buy.  The artist’s appeal ensured a rapid spread of the game online, snaring fans and gamers alike.

 “Escape the Fear is the promo video of the digital age. It delivers engagement, interaction, loyalty and sales opportunities on a new level for our artists. The game has delivered tens of thousands of click-thrus, pre-orders and downloads, and even features on the album CD itself. The results speak for themselves – we’re absolutely delighted with this launch.” – Dan Duncombe, Digital Director, Parlophone/EMI

The results?

In one word, incredible (even if I am a tad biased).

 

It received over a million plays per month from 70 countries, with a dwell time of 4.37 minutes. That’s over 4 minutes that consumers are engaged with the Lily Allen brand – a minute longer that the single itself. Subsequent analysis by Parlophone showed a direct correlation between penetration rates for the game per head of population, with the chart position of the single and album in that country.

 

Just more proof of what branded entertainment can offer. To see more details on what we achieved with this flash game, see here.

 

It’s important to note that it’s not enough to just develop any old game and expect it to reproduce the success of the Lily Allen campaign. It first requires an understanding of who your target audience is. What they want, where they go to access it and what motivates their behaviour. Are you looking for capture mobile users? Web surfers? Or both?

 

So ask yourself, -how well does your brand know its audience? And more importantly – how well do they know you? I can feel a brief coming on…….

 

When you are ready to maximise your potential for customer engagement, loyalty, motivate buying behaviours and increase exposure …You know who to call.

February 2013