Buffalo Wings and Wolfman

The Idea

My friends at Attention PR have sent me another pitch for Buffalo Wild Wings, this time a casual game called Night Hunger, or as it’s subtitled in the email, Wings and the Wolfman. It’s a well-crafted game, with gorgeous graphics, that just gets you dodging the wild things. A pretty simple game that’s engaging and with a nice sense of humour.

the game is to promote their new Night Menu, the idea being that if you’re sticking around the place to watch the game or connect with friends, there’s casual items on the menu for you to grab after 9pm. To entice you, if you complete the game, you get vouchers to redeem for free food items at the restaurants, so there’s some motivation there which ties directly into the product and gets people trying the stuff, hopefully tempting them to experiment more.

The trailer movie is wonderfully over the top!

What I think of It

A good example of the genre, which grabbed me with the sound and graphics reminiscent of the 50’s. This is a different way of presenting what is an advergame, making it stand out. I had trouble with the gameplay itself, not being able to progress far, but looking a the scoreboard, that did not seem to bother many others. Tying it into vouchers for free food is a big motivation, as it encourages people to try more to win and then free samples encourage more purchases – as long as the food is good.

The main site has also been updated, to promote it, so it’s all linked together; one issue I sometimes have with these promotions is they seem to be tagged on and not pushed from the brand site, but this one is integrated.

The Pitch

I’ve posted about Buffalo Wild Wings before , so the email from Jeff referenced that as a way of affirming the relationship. As well as general information about the campaign, I got screenshots, an offer to talk to the agency and a link to a report about the casual gaming industry , which is nice additional background information even though it’s 2 years old, as a reason for why BWW has done something in this space. Looking at the mentions of this campaign in the press, it looks like AttentionPR does a very good job of getting their clients name out there, but it’s nice to see they’re taking that expertise and using it for blogger relations as well.

Screenshots from site