Last night I attended the incredibly hip launch party in Melbourne’s Hosier Lane for the Smasher Dan Yellow Pages Yellovator game. There was great food, drinks, free button badges, stubbie holders, people in yellow tracksuits like Smashed Dan, guests who looked very “Melbourne” (You can tell I’m from Adelaide since I was wearing the brightest coloured shirt at the party which wasn’t Melbourne’s favourite shade, black) and a cool DJ who took song requests (including Snap-Rhythm is a Dancer… can you tell I requested that?)… but that’s just part of the atmosphere of a launch. The best part of course was the product.
Clemenger has created a game that can be played through stand alone adshells at high traffic areas in Sydney and Melbourne using your smart phone as a controller and the adshell as the screen. Yeah! So you can be waiting for the train and play this game on the ad screen with the rest of the train platform watching you. Look out for them at Flinders Street Station, Southern Cross Station and South Yarra Station in Melbourne, and Martin Place and Alfred St, Circular Quay in Sydney.
The best part is that you can play it no matter if you have an android phone or an iPhone because you log in to the game through the website http://www.yellovator.com and then type in the code on the adshell to be linked to that particular screen.
COOL HEY?
On top of that you can play it without the ad screens at home on your PC or on certain websites (such as Yahoo and Bigpond) the game will be served up as a side bar ad.
The game:
Basically you are Smasher Dan and you are at the top of an apartment block. At street level are some people with problems that need fixing (yellow pages can help!). You need to drop the phone and hit them without the phone getting stuck on a balcony or landing somewhere else on the street. There are 5 levels and at the end you are prompted to download the Yellow Pages app for your phone.
The game aims to remind people that Yellow Pages is still here in the 21st century and you don’t need to carry a 5 kg book around, it’s all in the palm of your hand. Neato!
The very clever Clemenger created this video of the launch party (which was emailed to me within 12 hours of the party ending. HELLO? Who stayed up all night to make this bad boy? High 5!). It explains more about the Yellovator game and what it aims to do for Yellow Pages.
Yellow pages have come on board with digital solutions a lot more recently which is super important to keep their services vital. They now have social media, advertisement tracking and other marketing options which make digital searches easier. Check out what they are offering HERE in this youtube clip (and notice the Yellovator game side ads there too).
Well there you have it! This is a very clever, novel idea that I think we will be seeing a lot more of in the digitalised market place where smart phones are becoming the norm. Get phone smashing with Yellovator!
What is gamification? Have a read of my previous post explaining it.
Marketing Nabbed! 
Is it just me or is this a pretty lame idea for a game? The technology is cool and its cool that they’re embracing digital and doing something different but I think they need to go the extra step and create something that’s actually interesting, but more importantly something that’s not so heavily branded.
On the other hand, when you’re bored even the simplest and cappiest games can be entertaining and the novelty of the technology might be enough to generate the interest to make this successful.