In a move sure to shake up the $8 billion retail gaming industry, Viacom-owned Blockbuster Inc. will make its biggest advertising splash to date July 1, telling consumers they can buy video games in the firm’s stores.
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The campaign, which could be worth nearly $25 million over the next six months, comes on the heels of the company’s announcement in May that it would dedicate space in its rental stores to sell everything from video games to equipment. The move represents the most aggressive retail play in the industry and overnight could make Blockbuster one of the top video game sellers in the world.
Blockbuster’s move comes as the video gaming audience is expanding. Unlike other habits that kids give up when they move toward adulthood, many young gamers stick with video games.
So it should be no surprise that Blockbuster is skewing the campaign to a slightly older audience, aiming mainly at men ages 20-25. Gaming is expected to be the top entertainment choice by the end of the decade.
The J. Walter Thompson, Chicago, campaign consists of four new 30-second spots, each broken into 15-second vignettes (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). The last half of the spots feature goofball antics of gamers as they discover they can rent or buy at their local Blockbuster.
Each vignette starts with a teaser phrase. One starts: “How to be a better gamer: Channel your anger.” Then the ad cuts to a woman who is yelling “die, die, die,” as she’s in the middle of a heated video game. Looking nervous, her friend asks: “What do you do again?” The woman answers unexpectedly in a sweet voice: “I’m a nurse.”
The spots end with a new tagline: “Rent. Buy. Game Your Way.”
“We wanted to play with the audience a bit. This audience is a little more cynical and jaded,” said Jeff York, group creative director on the spot. “We didn’t want to treat the stores as reverential.”
Blockbuster will run the campaign aggressively mainly on network cable TV, including MTV, Comedy Central and ESPN 2. Print ads are scheduled to run in gaming-enthusiast magazines.
Draft may stir Cannes: In a speech that is likely to make some waves at the annual creative ad festival in Cannes, Howard Draft, chief executive of Draft Worldwide, is expected to question whether great creative advertising is actually results driven. Draft is among a handful of top direct marketers asked to give a speech at the annual creative showcase.
“You laugh at our portfolios and reels with all those calls to action,” Draft is expected to say in his speech to the creative world amassed there this week. “You mock our mailings, look askance at lead generation, and heap scorn on our persistent desire to ask the consumer to do more than just admire the brilliance of advertising.
“So even though we come to Cannes, we direct marketing professionals refuse to worship false idols.”
Another slice for Grant/Jacoby: In its second account win in as many months, Grant/Jacoby won the Giordano’s Pizza business after a review. Billings weren’t disclosed. The agency will handle advertising and public relations for the chain of 40 restaurants in Illinois, Florida and Wisconsin. Last month, the agency was named agency of record for Bay Furniture.
On the move: New Pepsi-Cola North America president Dawn Hudson named her new management team Thursday. Dave Burwick, senior vice president, marketing, carbonated soft drinks, was named senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
Curiously annoyed: With a prolonged ad slump plaguing the business, magazine ad sellers already are bending over backward to appease some demanding buyers. No surprise then that some sellers in town were less than enthusiastic when greeted with one agency trying to be funny. As part of its annual request for magazines to pitch for the high-profile Altoids advertising pages next year, MediaVest urged magazine reps to buy a bunch of Altoids and build a structure out of empty tins and enter it with the proposal. Given the pressure on representatives today to make numbers, most felt compelled to play in the silliness out of fear of not getting on the Altoids list. “What do they think we are, a bunch of circus animals?” fumed one media rep. In a statement, MediaVest said: “The Altoids media team here at MediaVest has historically put together fun, quirky RFPs [request for proposals] to give media reps a feel for the uniqueness of the brand. It wasn’t our intent for this to be taken seriously. As always, the RFPs will only be assessed on the ability to meet the media objectives Altoids has identified.”