Role: Web Developer

Location:London, Farringdon

Salary: Dependent on Experience

Do you thrive under pressure and have a passion for working within a team of highly creative people?

About Naked Penguin Boy

We work with a wide variety of clients such as film distributors, book publishers, gaming, banking and retail clients and on a multitude of digital projects, including design and build, social media, mobile and games which are often time sensitive and deadlines must be achieved.

Should you apply:

You need to be ambitious, efficient and a responsible problem-solver if you want to join us. Be ready to take on challenges and manage large & small projects through the studio with the support of our tightly knit and highly talented team.

Your basic skill set:

·         PHP

·         MySQL

·         jQuery

·         HTML/CSS

Wider skill set preferable, being eager to learn and adapt to new situations and technologies is important as are having a good fun personality.

Please send your CV to info@nakedpenguinboy.com

No agencies please

As we work with many children’s brands building websites, games, competitions and marketing strategies all aimed at kids this was a good venue for us to increase our profile within the industry as well as allow us to touch, play and experiment with the products of the future.

Rarely is networking so much fun when you get to play  with so many new and innovative toys and to see the rapid  growth of Moshi Monsters who seemed to be everywhere.

Our main sponsorship area was the Coffee Shop which we  named the Naked Penguin Café and provided free wireless  to all guests. It was interesting hearing some of the  conversations where people were egging each other on to  invite friends to the “Naked Penguin Café” and giggling at the name. I guess they thought it was a bit odd but I can’t see why?

We met a number of great people with some really interesting toys, some brand new, some really old that brought back memories and many licensed toys with big brand names on them which just goes to show that its not always just the innovative toys that do it, its brands that sell.

Kids are just like adults when it comes to brands, though they tend to be a lot more fickle. However, once they like a brand they are all over it until the infatuation fades or they grow up and move onto the next big thing.

Retailers are pretty much the same as buyers from Disney, WH Smith, Waitrose, Waterstones, Toys R Us, ToyMaster, Tesco, Smyths Toys, Shop Direct, Sainsbury’s, Play.com, Next, Mothercare/ELC, The Entertainer, John Lewis and Harrods, who all browsed through the event playing with toys, placing orders and requesting more information.

This is a big reason why we enjoy marketing in the kids industry – it’s fun, we work with some great brands and excellent assets, building really engaging micros-sites, games and advertising while occasionally being given a few toys to play with ourselves

 We put a lot of thought and passion into everything we do. If it’s a tiny Facebook ad or a complex ecommerce site we design and build with both your customers and business objectives in mind.

 We also track and analyse every element of our campaigns both for our clients and our own learnings. A few years ago our analysis showed that in almost every instance of online marketing, games would always give the best ROI.

 In a pound-for-pound comparison, it might seem unlikely that a game would provide a better ROI than a rich-media banner, with games costing tens of thousands of pounds to develop and banners costing next to nothing.  However, once you take into consideration the large media spend required to place the banners on high traffic sites such as Yahoo and MSN, it’s easier to see how a simple banner campaign can become quite costly, and provide significantly less engagement than is possible with a game.

 Of course, games still require a seeding budget, but most agencies usually account for this as part of the overall game development costs, ensuring there are no hidden surprises to come later down the line. Game seeding is also much more cost effective, with placements costing far less than that of their banner equivalents and providing almost incomparable levels of customer engagement.

 It’s not only the direct cost as games have the following advantages over many other forms of online advertising and marketing:

• Non-intrusive and requested by the user
• Content engages and captivates for minutes even hours
• Engage users with the brand in a positive manner
• Good for wide distribution
• Possesses a long lifespan
• Excellent Viral prospects
• Work well with social media
• Cost efficient in comparison to many other tools
• You don’t always have to pay for placement
• Impressions, similar to banners you are going to get that anyway
• Games can still drive traffic elsewhere

So whether it’s Adver-games, viral games, social games, Facebook games or whatever you would like to refer to them as, games should definitely be a part of every digital marketing strategy and can be extremely useful for….

• Brand Awareness
• Drive Traffic
• Data Capture
• Site Content – Stickiness
• Customer Acquisition
• Media Effectiveness
• Revenue generation

Ultimately, games increase sales, so the next time you are deciding what to do with your tight budgets consider a game to achieve your objectives and to deliver a good return on investment.

Games can be very effective marketing tools

So, besides suggesting that we all buy and give Christmas presents early, here are our other predictions for 2012.

1. Content marketing to increase – With Google’s upcoming Panda update, marketers are going to have to focus more on the quality of content rather than quantity, and creating engaging experiences for their audiences will have a direct impact on their search engine results.

2.  Mobile continues its expansion – After years of saying that it was the “year of the mobile”, 2010/2011 was the first year it really kicked off thanks to Steve Jobs (RIP) and Apple, with Android following closely behind. Mobile continues its expansion with more and more brands looking for mobile solutions to their business issues while closely watching the rise of tablets.

3. Gamification – the hot topic (more among agencies than brands) of 2011 will start to get more serious and structured and be implemented in more campaigns. Though, by its very nature it will hardly be noticed. You will engage and “play” with a brand but not quite be able to put your finger on exactly why you are enjoying it as you admire your collection of badges and trophies.

4. Games – With the rise of mobile, social media, gamification and the stress on ROI, more marketers will be looking at using games as a tried and tested method of reaching their consumers (adver-games or games for content).

Seeding and promotion of the games will also gain more prominence in order to reach the target market more effectively.

5. Cloud computing – This is a bit like what mobile has been for years. Suppliers of cloud computing are starting to tout it as the big thing of the year but it has not quite taken off and probably won’t until late 2012 either.

6. Social media continues expanding – Facebook trundles on with its privacy issues while users and brands wish it would improve its search engine and make finding new content easier. Google+ which has been off to a reasonably good start will allow its platform to settle in a bit and will then start to push and market it from the middle of the year. Expect to see some good celebrity related stories in the press to help this along.

7. Security – Slowly but surely the boffins have been winning the war against hackers making it more and more difficult for them. Unfortunately that is only in the PC world – with the growth of mobiles, tablets, cloud computing and with more employees taking work home with them, whole new areas have opened up to hackers and we will see some embarrassed companies in 2012 as data is stolen on both an enterprise and individual level.

8. Engagement strategies – closely tied with some of the above predictions, brands will realise the importance of developing an engaging and shareable brand. The most engaging brands will have the most brand advocates and will therefore be most liked by search engines. It’s a win-win situation if you can get it right.

9. SMO and SEO – Social Media Optimisation will play an increasing part in your overall Search Engine Optimisation where using social activities to support your SEO and the overall effectiveness of all social media marketing.

Think: sharing, engagement, content, recommendations and conversations.

10. Strategy – Surprisingly most brands don’t have a digital strategy in place and work on ad hoc projects instead. In 2012 more thought will be given to tying these projects together into a more effective strategy that will produce more gains and be more flexible over the coming years.

And in summary, 2011 was not the greatest of years with all the financial woes of Europe and the US, but 2012 should definitely be better; after all it will be at least one day longer.

The London agency will take the reigns of the account with immediate effect and has been tasked with driving consumer engagement across a number of digital communications platforms including viral marketing, social media, and mobile app development.

Naked Penguin Boy will work closely with incumbent PR agency Cow to develop campaigns that support Bazooka Candy Brand’s entire portfolio of confectionery products including Juicy Drop Pop and Mega Mouth among others.

Sarah Sibley, Marketing Director at Bazooka Candy Brands, commented: “We’re delighted to announce Naked Penguin Boy as our new digital agency, who combine great strategic thinking and creativity to deliver impressive digital campaigns. 2012 is going to be a very busy and exciting year for Bazooka Candy Brands and we’re looking forward to significantly expanding the presence of our leading products across a number of online platforms.”

PJ Jones, Client Partner at Naked Penguin, said of the appointment: “We’re extremely excited to have been chosen as the digital agency for Bazooka Candy Brands and can’t wait to get started delivering their digital engagement strategy over the coming months. We’re really looking forward to playing a pivotal role in growing the Bazooka Candy Brands portfolio of confectionery in the digital realm, where we already know their core target audiences are spending the majority of their time.”

- ENDS -

About Bazooka Candy Brands

Bazooka Candy Brands Limited, the confectionery division of Topps Inc., manufactures and markets iconic lollipop brands such as Big Baby Pop, Juicy Drop Pop, Push Pop, Ring Pop and Mega Mouth Candy Spray.

The Topps Company was founded in 1938 as Topps Chewing Gum, and in its early years produced a popular penny “Topps Gum” from a factory in Brooklyn, N.Y. After World War II, in 1945, the company developed the infamous Bazooka Bubble Gum, and in 1950, added trading cards to its product line. Today Bazooka Candy Brands Limited is focused on and committed to producing high quality sweets that are great tasting, interactive and entertaining.  It’s this combination of fun and creativity that kids love and why the brands continue to enjoy success across the globe.

Bazooka Candy Brands Limited also operates a ‘Tweet for a Sweet’ initiative via Twitter every Friday, offering its followers the chance to win some sweets to brighten up their day.

To learn more about Bazooka Candy Brands Limited, please visit the company’s website www.bazookajoe.com or www.twitter.com/BazookaCandy

On Tuesday Real Madrid announced the launch of the store on their official Facebook page, and in less than one hour the announcement had received over 10,000 ‘likes’. The app itself has received over 6,000 ‘likes’ in just two days.

The launch of the Real Madrid Facebook store supports the release of ‘The Legends’, the official digital music album of Real Madrid. The first single off this 10-track album is ‘Everybody’, a re-work of the original club anthem: Himno del Real Madrid originally composed in 1952.

This project is the first of its kind in world football – a once in a lifetime exclusive for Real Madrid fans, harnessing the power of music to bring them closer than ever to the highs, lows and thrills of the game.

Check it out for yourselves here: http://on.fb.me/ruPi2W 

Watch the video: http://youtu.be/HTZnXG2oJWQ

So we have gamification as the noun and gamify, gamified and gamifying as its conjunctive derivatives, and it’s been touted as one of the most important trends in technology by a number of digital experts.

But what does that really mean to you when trying to market a product or a service?

Gamification has been in use for a very long time but has only recently been named and categorized.

Remember when Mum said “Tidy your room and you will get sweets”?
Yup she was gamifying you, she was locking onto the reward centres in your brain that let you know, if you complete a certain task you will be rewarded.

The brain knows pleasure when it sees it and this tireless busy little organ works 24/7.

When the brain encounters a pleasurable sensation, the cerebral cortex (the thought, language and conscious part) signals the reward centre of your brain (ventral tegmental – associated with motivation, addiction, etc) to release the chemical dopamine into the part of your brain that makes up the emotional reactions and orchestration of thoughts (amygdala, the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus acumens).

Interestingly these reward centres can be triggered by many factors including challenges, food, sex or anticipation of sex as well as performing an act of kindness or generosity. To add an extra dimension to this, doing something scary or even thinking about it can also release dopamine.

This is what gamification is about, tapping into that reward centre and the associated emotions that are often triggered by playing games. Using the techniques and mechanics of games in a different environment such as education or marketing to solve problems and engage audiences.

Let us take a look at real life examples of well known brands using gamification techniques. First, take a popular game such as Pac Man that includes a number of different game mechanics including:
• Scoring: entices players to play again to better their score, demonstrates achievement and progress
• Leader board: Allows players to boast about their score and their abilities to peers
• Social aspects: players share the game, compare results, collaborate on techniques

Scoring
Twitter followers and FourSquare badges are all competitive game scores that are presented for comparison.
Starbucks, Nectar cards, Tesco, Homebase, My Coke Rewards and all the other reward cards, are scoring techniques to see how many points you can accumulate.

Leaderboards
Facebook: Your friend has more friends than you – this is peer competition, and introduces a challenge element.
Linkedin: Your colleague has more connections than you = respect, I wish I was like him/her, can I be like that?

Social AspectsNetflix allows you to gift a friend or family member with a free trial
NikeiD shoes allows you to customise your own shoes and show them off to friends

Microsoft even turned Office into a game (Ribbon Hero 2) to encourage users to learn the latest features.

Game mechanics such as achievement, progression, discovery, bonuses, status, reward schedules and urgent optimism and many more are all useful in marketing campaigns to help engage with customers. By implementing these mechanics into your campaign you won’t instantly convert the non-believers, but you will sway the ones sitting on the fence and you will engage on a deeper level with the converted.

Take a second look at your campaign – can you build a reward system into it, add urgency through countdowns, create demand by simulating scarcity through invitation only, as Spotify and Google + have done?

Could you challenge your target market to find out more, to dig deeper for a potential bonus item such as a discount or free gift?

So whether you are planning a new campaign or revising an existing one, , take a look at Gamification to see if it could help you to improve your engagement levels, viral capability, quality of leads and even sales.

You’ll be pleased to know that even a month after the incident, Pj’s still carrying scars from that evening of hell. If you happen to know of any other highly dangerous networking events we can send him on, please do get in touch!

Last year a friend of ours left a good marketing job to do three weeks volunteering work in Haiti with All Hands Volunteers.

Those three weeks have now turned into three months and besides helping to rebuild Haiti after last years devastating earthquake she is also assisting them with their marketing efforts.

They are re-launching their website in April and are desperately looking for free excess ad inventory.

Greg Heasley of Naked Penguin Boy has offered ad space on www.miniball.co.uk, www.viralclip.com & www.casinogeezer.com.
Other volunteers include: MSN, AOL, Lovefilm & Blinkbox.

They will supply their own creative’s – If there is any way that you’re able to help, please do so it’s a great Charity that are currently working in Japan and Haiti.
Please contact:
Jiella Esmat
All Hands Volunteers
Email: Jiella@hands.org
Haiti cell: +509.3482.8605
US cell: +1 617 901 4340

The final tweaks and amends have now been completed and our Android game for ITV/Aviva can now be found on the Android market.

The second in the series of Drama Challenges can also be found online here: http://www.bionicseed.com/games/aviva_drama_challenge/
The game is based on your usual mad dash to pack your suitcase before a holiday. The cab is waiting outside to take you to the airport and you don’t have much time.
Find as many items within the time frame as possible collecting Aviva time bonuses as you progress.

While the game does fit into a Treasure Hunt genre it also has some strong memory elements attached to it so the more you play the better you get as you need to remember in which of the four rooms your items are kept.

The aim of the viral is to drive traffic and ultimately increase sales on the website, where insurance is offered in simple and uncomplicated terms.

The game, titled ‘Bubble & Squeak’ after the Protect your bubble characters, requires the user to collect gadgets over 6 stages and there are 5 levels per stage, while avoiding the bad guys who track you down and try to stop you completing your mission. The game will be seeded on various sites, including Facebook and as an added incentive Protect your bubble is giving away an iPad a month to one lucky devil!

Greg Heasley, Founding Partner of Naked Penguin Boy said ‘We had a clean slate to work on as the brief was quite open for us to create a good viral that tied into the brand. As a company we believe strongly in the power of viral games, social media and in engaging with the targeted audience, I’m sure we’re going to hit the targets set for us.’
http://www.bionicseed.com/games/bubble_and_squeak/

The site went through two iterations before settling on the current version and was all built in under 10 days. The design and identity was created by Anthony Burrill, built by Naked Penguin Boy and totally supported by the good people at The Bank.

Plus, the five companies with the most referrals will win afternoon tea for them and their colleagues delivered by the Cafédirect Tea Lady.

Rowan Heasley of Naked Penguin Boy says “It’s a great campaign that not only promotes Cafédirect in a fun manner but also enables people to send a message to their company that they can make a big impact if they purchase ethically. It’s a Once in a Teatime opportunity!”

NMA: Site of the Week

Pony Friends 2 is named as Site of the Week by NMA magazine. Their comments have been copied below and the full article can be seen on their website by clicking here.

The aim of this site is to promote the computer game series Pony Friends, but it actually provides content that young girls will really enjoy. The site mirrors the detailed graphics of the game while the content provides a snapshot of what you can expect, such as mini-games, tips and downloads.

The two mini-games you can play are fairly basic (a 3D maze and a quiz) but give a taster of the full game. The site also includes a tab called Pony Club, which I assumed would be a forum or community but instead is a page introducing you to the ponies Peanut, Bella and Pickle and links to their Facebook and Bebo pages. This is a good move as too many brands waste time creating communities that only end up with about 50 people using them. Instead, this site hosts all the interesting content while the social network pages can leverage the communities to direct people to the game.

This is a great site which perfectly promotes a game in an uncomplicated way.

Naked Penguin Boy would like to thank NMA for taking the time to review our site, for giving it such high ratings and for selecting it as their site of the week.

To see the full Pony Friends 2 website please visit: www.ponyfriends.com

Naked Penguin Boy has designed and developed a new website for Pony Friends^TM 2, an exciting new Wii, DS and PC game from Square Enix Europe where players can create their perfect Pony. The website aims to capture the attention of fans of the first Pony Friends^TM game, as well introduce a new generation of girl gamers to the title.

Introducing children to the world of Pony Friends^TM 2, where they can choose from different breeds, groom and customise their ponies and take them for trail rides, the site is built for a target audience of 6-12 year olds. The game is presented via video content, free mini-games including “Design a Pony Blanket” and “Pony Maze”, a “How well do you know your Ponies?” quiz, along with more game content and a Desktop Toy to follow soon.

The Pony Club introduces children to three fictional ponies, each with its own personality, likes and dislikes, and invites them to become friends of the ponies on Bebo, MySpace and Facebook.

The website can be found at www.ponyfriends.com. Pony Friends^TM 2 is available now in the UK, and will be released under the Eidos brand portfolio.

About Square Enix Ltd.

Square Enix Ltd., a part of the Square Enix Europe business unit, is a London-based wholly-owned subsidiary of Square Enix Holdings Co. Ltd., one of the most influential providers of digital entertainment content in the world. Square Enix Ltd. publishes and distributes entertainment content from the Square Enix Group including Square Enix, Eidos and Taito® in Europe and other PAL territories. Square Enix Ltd. also has a global network of leading development studios such as IO Interactive^TM, Crystal Dynamics® and Eidos-Montréal. The Square Enix Group boasts a valuable portfolio of intellectual property including: FINAL FANTASY®, which has sold over 85 million units worldwide, DRAGON QUEST® which has sold over 50 million units worldwide and TOMB RAIDER® which has sold over 35 million units worldwide, together with other well established products.

More information on Square Enix Ltd. can be found online at http://www.square-enix.com

DRAGON QUEST, FINAL FANTASY, SQUARE ENIX and the SQUARE ENIX logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. in the United Kingdom and/or other countries. TAITO is a trademark or registered trademark of Taito Corporation. EIDOS, TOMB RAIDER, IO INTERACTIVE, JUST CAUSE, JUST CAUSE 2 and CRYSTAL DYNAMICS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Square Enix Ltd. in the United Kingdom and / or other countries. AVALANCHE STUDIOS is a trademark of Fatalist Entertainment AB. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Phil specializes in connecting people in the creative, digital and sports industries, helping colleagues grow their businesses, and having fun.

“We look forward to welcoming Phil into Naked Penguin Boy, he’s been someone that we’ve always respected and admired, and the timing of him joining us is perfect”, said Greg Heasley, co-founder of Naked Penguin Boy.

Many organisations still treat the website as a stand alone channel, which reduces the effectiveness and potential of the site. To ensure that our campaigns are relevant and engaging we need to add other elements to the mix such as social networking and digital PR to engage with and drive the consumer to our products and brands.

We need to clean out our databases and ensure we are delivering the right messages to the right audience. We need to monitor and analyse the data we are receiving and use it to talk to consumers effectively. We need to do so many things and yes we need to work harder than ever before. In troubled times change happens faster then ever before and great companies like GE, Disney, HP and Microsoft all started in a recession, who will be the new kid on the block in this one?

On the plus side

Petrol is getting cheaper
Gas is getting cheaper
Homes are becoming more affordable
Inflation is dropping
The future just may be greener with green incentives being used to kick start the economy.

This recession will end and the UK will bounce back though we do have tough times ahead of us. Cutting back during a downturn is a survival tactic not a winning strategy, lets market smarter.

The new site is the first belonging to HiT Entertainment featuring completely redeveloped CGI content, and includes an interactive rendering of the PontyPandy Fire station on the Landing page which allows children to explore various features of Sam’s workplace. Using Jupiter the Fire Engine’s steering wheel to navigate left and right, children can move across the Fire Station and discover many of the items and articles to be found lying around the building.

Game content from the original online offering is available on the new site, along with access to additional titles developed by Naked Penguin Boy to coincide with the release of the new website. More games are also scheduled for release during early 2009, and individual sections for Activities and Video have been included in the new build.

A new addition to the Fireman Sam site built for the re-launch is the PontyPandy section, which presents a newspaper-style biography for all of the characters that live and work in and around the little town. This also provides some simple cross-referencing between characters in the Fireman Sam universe, providing info on the who’s who of PontyPandy and what they do.

The overall structure for the redeveloped site was generated in close conjunction with HiT Entertainment around their plans to bring a basic uniformity to the core layout of all of their children’s properties. Navigational elements along with primary and secondary Feature areas now are flanked across many of HiT Entertainment’s sites by standardised advertising panel formats, maintaining a consistent layout. The site’s re-launch coincides with Fireman Sam’s sixth series on British TV to be broadcast from February 2009 onwards. The series has been generated using the new CGI styling from which HiT Entertainment’s website draws its inspiration.

Fireman Sam airs early 2009 in the UK and can be visited online with all of his old friends at http://www.firemansamonline.com/uk/

Included in the Toolkit is The Penguin Shuffle, a game with the objective of helping to get Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private through the treacherous African Savannah and safely onto their aeroplane to repair it. Over the course of four increasingly difficult levels, users find themselves up against the clock in trying to achieve their best score and make it on to the Leaderboard.

Commercial Director at Naked Penguin Boy Rowan Heasley said: “We were privileged in being able to work with Paramount on the release of the online global Toolkit for Madagascar in 2005, so being given the opportunity to create new content for a sequel meant we were really familiar with the brand and positioning of the title and the characters. As with all Paramount projects, they always present unique challenges to creating engaging online content, and are a lot of fun to work on”.

Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa will be released in theaters in the UK on Friday the 5th of December.

The “Wayne Gould’s Sudoku Challenge” website was launched to give sudoku enthusiasts the chance to take their puzzle busting skills to the next level by taking on Wayne Gould in the sudoku challenge.

Wayne Gould is renowned for popularising Sudoku puzzles in the UK. He pioneered the global success and popularity of the Sudoku puzzle outside of Japan.

Users are able to play grids across two difficulty levels and determine a handicap based on the time taken to complete each puzzle. A high-score table displaying each user’s handicap allows users to compete against each other and in addition, send challenge requests to their friends.

Users can also add the Wayne Gould SuDoku Challenge to their MySpace and Facebook profiles, where their current handicap is displayed and is updated as and when the user continues the challenge. Once again, friends linked into the players profiles can be challenged and invited to take on Wayne’s SuDoku Challenge.

An offline version of the game is also available for download, which is updated each month as new puzzles are added to the site.

NPB Media devised a marketing strategy for the SuDoku campaign that targeted and promoted the launch of the website to established and eager Sudoku players across the web; in particular, time rich individuals.

Commenting on behalf of NPB Media, PR and Marketing Manager Carolyn Mackintosh stated “The community and sharing element was an important requirement of our client’s and I do believe that Naked Penguin Boy have managed to incorporate this superbly into the various aspects of the game. Added to this is the online promotion of the game amongst community orientated sites helping to enhance the overall outcome and results.”

Naked Penguin Boy and NPB Media have previously worked with Harper Collins and handled the online Marketing and PR for a number of their book releases (“The Devil Wears Prada”, Michael Crichton’s “Next”, and Cecelia Ahern’s “A Place Called Here”) and are pleased to have been asked to help make the sudoku phenomenon as successful online as it has been offline.

Yes MySpace in the UK has lost 14% of its users in the past 3 months and Bebo has seen an 8% drop since October.

The media is full of articles on the failure of social networking because of these drops in usage but most of it focuses on the impact for those networking sites themselves and how they will generate enough
cash to survive their virtual worth’s of billions of dollars.

The fact remains that these sites still have millions of users and for the average marketer with limited budgets having access to these networks users is still very attractive.

These drops could also be seasonal downturns and let’s not forget that as social networks expand their users, the average session time will also increase as the users have
more friends to interact with.

Instead of focusing on the drop in growth of users, which had to happen at some time after the initial phenomenal growth, let’s look at current figures.

Facebook has worldwide more than 67 million active users (8m in the UK)

Facebook is the 5th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)

More than 65 billion page views per month

MySpace has over 80 million profiles (2.3m in the UK)

Bebo has 36 million users worldwide (9m in the UK)

From Hitwise

So don’t dismiss social networking because of media hype, it will settle down eventually but there will still be millions of potential customers worth targeting on these networks and the niche players are worth thinking about too.

When the Victor Chandler Group needed to create a new game to promote their online casino, Naked Penguin Boy jumped at the opportunity.

The Victor Chandler Group is one of the world’s leading independent bookmaking and gaming groups. The VC Group have offices in Gibraltar and the Far East and offer a wide range of gaming products tailored to each individual market.

Online Casinos encompass a significant part of VC’s business, and to capitalise on the popularity of these, Naked Penguin Boy’s brief was to create an entertaining, interactive and engaging online game to feature on the VC Casino website.

Through NPB’s extensive experience in the online gaming arena as a result of their work with other gaming clients such as Ladbrokes, Intercasino and Playboy Gaming, they were well versed and confident about incorporating the essential ingredients needed for a successful online game.

The “VC Chip Challenge” game has the player navigating and guiding a casino chip through a maze using the arrow keys, in order to reach the VC logo.

The player must complete all 10 levels in the fastest time possible and enter their name into the leader board.

To increase their chances of success, the player must gracefully and skilfully tap the arrow keys to maintain control of the casino chip and pass to the next level.

The game has enjoyed tremendous success and continues to achieve significant plays on the VC Casino website.

http://www.bionicseed.com/games/vc_chip_challenge/

The plot revolves around Sam, who on his 21st birthday, discovers that his parents had sold his soul to the devil before he was born. And now the devil has come to collect his due…

Enlisted by the devil as his bounty hunter, Sam is set to tracking down evil souls that have escaped perdition, and returning them to hell. With his best mate, Bert, along with a selection of weird and wonderful vessels in which to trap the souls, and various contraptions borrowed from his DIY day job, Sam gets to work.

We set out to create a game that was fun, engaging and communicated the marketing objectives successfully. This “damned fine” game has been a significant success and continues to be played on the E4 website.

The game shows Sam fighting his way through a plethora of demons before he can get anywhere near the real bad guy.

At the beginning of each level, the player gains access to a new weapon. They also have the ability to use “Power of The Mind” which allows them to move crates and obstacles in the game.

Coca Cola owned Fanta still holds the number one spot as the world’s most popular fruit-flavoured soft drink. To maintain its position, Fanta’s marketing communication is focusing on making the brand more relevant and desirable to a younger target audience.

The ad formats (leaderboard banner, skyscraper & MPU) were created for a homepage takeover on MTV.co.uk. Not only were they successful in highlighting the new look and feel of the Fanta brand, but also introducing the new characters to the target audience.

All three add formats included and required user interaction highlighting Fanta’s new branding message “Lets Play”. Users could choose various dance moves that the Fanta characters would perform, as well as getting a step-by-step and slo-mo demonstration as to how the step was done. Use of the Fanta characters in this respect allowed users to become familiar with the Fanta Crew and identify them individually; namely Merv, Kimmy, Jason, Ann and Andre.

Naked Penguin Boy have a proven track record for producing engaging and interactive ad formats. “We really enjoyed working with Viacom and Fanta on this creative and set out to ensure that the ad formats met all the required objectives, while maintaining a high level of engagement and interactivity” (Carolyn Mackintosh, Account Manager).

As a four-yearly quirk of the Gregorian calendar, the 29th February doesn’t belong to anyone and is a “free day” for all and sundry.

For too long, leap years have come and gone with governments and companies expecting their staff to work this additional day with no additional remuneration being offered or the day being given as an additional day to annual holiday entitlement.

If we are to work, we need to be paid for it. If we are not getting paid, we should not have to work and the government should declare the 29th February as Freeday Friday. Liberation starts here!

Online, the website was built using html & flash, including an embedded video and banners. A catchy, animated song with video was written and produced to stick in people’s minds and provide them with an entertaining experience as soon as they visit www.freedayfriday.com. (Campaign complete site is no longer active)

Offline, we designed a guerrilla poster campaign using a fun, bright and eye catching design, introducing the logo and concept throughout London, hoping to generate curiosity and initiate hits to the site.

Online PR was carried out by NPB Media. Various journalists were contacted to let them know about the campaign and the website launch.

The online microsite was created to provide a central platform where community marketing could be directed to. This gave the target audience an opportunity to engage with the book and it’s narrative on an interactive level.

The game was promoted through advertising on “Living TV” in an effort to aid the online PR push. Capture Kate was seeded across various community websites at least two weeks before the Book launch and during the month post-release, to drive traffic to the microsite.

Online PR extended the activity with competitions, reviews and news features, predominately across websites with a female skew and where possible homepage coverage and newsletter inclusion was negotiated to maximise exposure and increase purchase potential.

The game “Missing Things” is based on the main protagonists (Sandy Short’s) obsession with missing things.

The game is a memory game relying on the user’s memory of where items are placed in order to increase their score. Each level displays a different item that goes missing in the book, with the final level displaying faces of missing people.

Naked Penguin Boy also designed additional elements for the campaign which included a fully branded Bebo page with downloadable mobile wallpapers, screensavers and PC wallpapers.

The viral marketing campaign for the game was assigned to NPB Media, the Digital PR and Marketing division on Naked Penguin Boy.

NPB Media’s extensive understanding of the viral and digital arena enabled them to strategically place the game on key game and social networking websites. Buzz was created around the game through a competitive element where users were encouraged to submit their scores to a leader board and invite friends to play the game.

NPB Media were able to create pre release and post release awareness and interest in the book by leveraging the games creative and interactive elements along with the internationally known Harper Collins brand.

We were commissioned by Turner Broadcasting to create online games as content for their recently launched UK Adult Swim website.

Based on the popular, comedic, animated television series Stroker And Hoop, which is featured on adult satellite channel Bravo, the game aims for simple playability to keep the online audience engaged with the brand while enjoying the exclusive video content.

The series is a parody of the 1970’s American television series Starsky and Hutch.

Stroker is a bumbling detective and his partner Hoop is a self-proclaimed master of deception who is not very smart. Together with the aid if their talking car, they attempt to solve crimes and pick up chicks.

We created a “top-down” perspective game based on a Stoker and Hoop episode, in which both characters wake up in a pool of blood in a motel room to find their appendix and coccyx’s have been removed by beautiful twin cannibals.

The aim of the game is to catch up with the cannibal twins and get back Stroker and Hoop’s body parts. Only, they are loosing blood fast and need to catch the women before it’s too late.

The player must navigate the streets and obstacles (oncoming traffic and hotdog stands) using their arrow keys in order to catch the women. During the chase, blood transfusion sacks will appear at various intervals which will help to increase the amount of time the player has to complete the game.

Tongue in cheek and a perfect fit for the audience, the game was a hit with Adult Swim fans.

Digital agency Naked Penguin Boy were commissioned by DreamWorks SKG and Paramount to create an online viral campaign as part of their online media and PR work for the worldwide release of the cartoon ‘Flushed Away’ on DVD.

In response, Naked Penguin Boy fired the starting gun on “The Great Slug Race”. The game features slugs slowly competing in the style of mechanical fairground horse races. The welcome screen shows a demonstration slug race staged in a sewer waterway. Behind are images and elements from the cartoon’s story and includes a screen showing clips of the film.

Once registered and logged in, users choose the slug they think is going to win. A screensaver depicting slugs from “The Great Slug Race” can be downloaded that counts down to the start of the race. Once the race has started, the screensaver then counts down to the ‘Flushed Away’ DVD release date – localised for each territory.

Emails alerted users two days before the race started. They then received weekly updates about their slug’s progress but could check online anytime. Tokens were emailed during the course of the race to speed up or slow down any slug in the race.

The first slug home prompted an email to the territory winner linking them to their prize of an exclusive ‘Flushed Away’ screensaver. All entrants received ‘Flushed Away’ desktop wallpaper. Users could return to the site to see the three front “runners” holding their trophies.

“The Great Slug Race” was seeded across the net in general with advertising on several major kids’ sites and portals including Toonattik, CiTV, Jetix and The Disney Channel. It was seeded across 15 territories.

Due to its superior animation and star voices, the film grossed over $300 million worldwide at the box office. The DVD was expected to be equally popular, especially as the release date was geared to drive sales for the valuable 2006 Christmas market. The aim was to position it as the ‘must have’ DVD during the festive season.

Building on the charm and appeal of the cartoon and its strong characters, we created an online toolkit distributed across 14 territories. The toolkit included engaging games, trailers, DVD product information, various online advertising formats and downloadable content for PC, Mac and mobile phone. The media was placed on key sites such as Kids & Education Channel to reach the primary market of 4-10 year olds and their parents.

Online PR extended the activity with competitions such as a game placement on CiTV, promotions and links to retailers. Banners, margins and MPUs appeared on homepages and subscriber newsletters to reach the full spectrum of the target group and create 43 pieces of coverage and over 4 million OTS. Additionally, two games were built exclusively for e-tailer purposes to increase online sales in the run up to Christmas.

A hyperactivity disc was also created by Naked Penguin Boy for the 2-disc DVD edition. It contained extracts from the cartoon as well as content aimed at promoting the DreamWorks catalogue.

Naked Penguin Boy has successfully collaborated with DreamWorks before, delivering effective online DVD toolkits for several of their animated titles. These include Shrek 2, Shark’s Tale, Madagascar, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit.

“Working for DreamWorks is always a challenge” explains Rowan Heasley, Naked Penguin Boy’s Commercial Director. “They are open-minded and free-thinking which offers us the necessary latitude to work within. Creating the online toolkit for “Over the Hedge” was equally as entertaining as watching the film. Its characters definitely succeeded in bringing out the child in all of us.”

Digital Agency Naked Penguin Boy Ltd, together with betting giants Ladbrokes, created the Ladbrokes official website for the most awaited annual tournament of the poker year; the 2006 World Series of Poker.

The World Series of Poker is held in Las Vegas with the world’s most emulous poker players all competing for the coveted title of Poker World Champion.

The Ladbrokes official World Series of Poker site provides all the crucial information on the tournament from Ladbrokes Team Player Profiles, Tournament events and times, chip counts and rankings, as well as reports from the event with articles, news features and tournament results updated daily.

Naked Penguin Boy designed and built the site which included a Content Management System, which gives reporters separate log-ins to the Ladbrokes Admin Staff. This allows the reporters the freedom to upload content, articles and images simply and efficiently, with one overall Editor controlling the editing and publishing capabilities of the content on site. Fans and family members of the players are able to post Good Luck messages in the Messages channel, providing the ease of use that the Ladbrokes staff required.

“It’s exactly what we wanted, says Nigel Blower (Head Of Poker – Ladbrokes). We needed a site and a system whereby we could upload vast amounts of information quickly and easily, while still projecting a sleek front end. It was also very important for us to have the technical support out there, which Naked Penguin Boy were able to provide”.

Ladbrokes Poker www.ladbrokespoker.com is renown for being Europe’s busiest online poker room so what better place to form a team for the World Series of Poker than from the talent in your own back yard. A 90 strong Players team was sent to Las Vegas to compete in the tournament along with the Ladbrokes reporters, online staff and a staff member from Naked Penguin Boy.

Commenting for Naked Penguin Boy, Commercial Director Rowan Heasley states: “We have worked with Ladbrokes now for many years, so having one of our staff join the Ladbrokes team in Vegas is a real privilege; a compliment to our creative and design abilities, technical know-how and work ethic. The site looks great and we are proud to be associated with Ladbrokes for this prestigious tournament; we wish their team the best of luck”.

“Our long standing relationship with DreamWorks has enabled us to earn the company’s trust and creative respect,” said Rob Heasley, Creative Director of Naked Penguin Boy Ltd. “We are fortunate to have a client that allows us enough flexibility and time to create the most engaging interactive content possible.”

The agency produced a Madagascar microsite, five online games, a variety of downloads and other marketing materials. DreamWorks provided the new online content for its marketing departments worldwide, for regional distribution. The online content was also used by DreamWorks affiliate business partners, maximizing exposure for the Madgascar DVD release.

“When an agency can quickly understand the objective of a project and then provide creative input with little hand holding from the client, this is a relationship you really want to keep,” said Allison Grant, International Marketing Director of DreamWorks Interactive and Special Interest. “Naked Penguin Boy has delivered impressive work for Shrek 2, Shark Tale and now Madagascar, and we plan to continue using their services.”

The games developed for Madagascar are highly viral and have a long life span, providing DreamWorks with content that will become a popular online destination, and last for many years. Previous content created for the online promotion of the Shrek 2 and Shark Tale DVD and video releases remain a top destination on the Internet.

“We try to develop games, downloads and content that is timeless and will be as much of a classic in entertainment as the films themselves,” said Mr. Heasley. “Our team of illustrators, animators and programmers are able to create exceptional creative material using a client’s key art, without compromising any of the licensing or branding elements.”

By visiting the Madagascar microsite, fans found, in addition to games, mobile wallpaper of the stars of Madagascar (Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe), downloadable Desktop Buddies featuring the psychotic Madagascar penguins (Skipper, Riko, Kowalski and Private), wallpaper, screensavers and an email signature that could be downloaded for use in Outlook and Outlook Express.

Campaign Measurement In addition to online content, DreamWorks iused a new Tracker, developed by NPB, to measure success of the Madagascar online campaign. The NPB Tracker collected quantitative data for the microsite, games and downloads. DreamWorks was able to determine what sections of the site were most, or least popular, count the number of downloads made from the site, know the number of times games were loaded and played. The NPB Tracker measured where and when visits occured to the site and enabled DreamWorks to view the total statistics worldwide and localised the data, showing country-by-country progress.