Scenario Silver Stream is a video games developer. It has been operating for 25 years, starting out in the bedroom of the founder, Kris Karebin, after finishing university. The company produces a diverse range of successful video games for multiple platforms. They have regional offices in Europe, North America, and Asia and headquarters in the UK. Their mission is to create innovative and high-quality games to meet the needs of gamers of all ages.

A recent development is a video game for personal computers and consoles featuring animals under the threat of extinction. This game will be appropriate for 816-year-olds and is called Safari. Gamers will play to save animals and their environment. Silver Stream has decided to donate a percentage of the sale to charity for every game purchased.

You have been given responsibility for creating the marketing campaign for the Safari game. The campaign budget is $50,000 and should run for three months.

Activity 1: Research the market

The Product:

Safari will feature endangered species, such as tigers, elephants, and gorillas. The gamers must complete a range of tasks to evade poachers and hunters and look after the habitats, to ensure the safety and survival of the animals.

The game will retail at $55 and for every game bought, Silver Stream will donate 10% to the charity World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

You are to research the video games market and an existing campaign.

Part One

You should research relevant secondary sources for data on the video games industry, as well as looking at Silver Streams proposed partner charity WWF. Use websites, trade journals, and media sources of games industry campaigns. You should research these aspects, relevant to the Safari concept.

Make notes on your research (to use for the rationale in Activity 2), covering:

competitors

market size, share, and structure

target market

trends

external influences.

Part Two

You should also research an existing video game marketing campaign. Write up the results of the research in a report that evaluates the effectiveness of this campaign, covering the following:

costs

timescales

media used

message communicated

use of marketing tools to enhance the effectiveness of the campaign

appropriateness of the campaign.