‘Star Wars’ game gets Brisk tie-in
Kinect players can scan code on bottle for a bonus
Pepsi has the Force behind a new marketing campaign for Brisk Iced Tea.
Specially marked 1-liter bottles of Brisk, available beginning today at 7Eleven stores, carry a special Microsoft Tag, a bar code that can be scanned using the Xbox 360’s Kinect motion sensor. That action provides players an exclusive Anakin Skywalker podracer in the new Kinect Star Wars game (out today, $50, for ages 13-up).
It’s the first major use of M-tags by Microsoft for a video game, and the first by Pepsi. “It made sense because it was a fit with our consumer,” says Brisk brand manager Chris Oates, “and it was a very innovative package design we wanted to be first to market with.” Other Pepsi products may follow.
Star Wars and video games both fit into Brisk’s target audience of young urban males, ages 18 to 29, Oates says. “To stay relevant with this consumer we have to stay current on what’s hot,” he says. “We know gaming is a passion point . . . and we knew Kinect Star Wars was going to be a really big deal.”
A typical Brisk buyer is 77% more likely to spend 20 or more hours per week playing a video game system than the average consumer, he says.
The M-tag video game promotion builds on the Brisk- Star Wars relationship that began in January with its
Brisksaber app (free for IOS or Android), a light-saber battle video game tie-in to that month’s release of Star Wars, Epi
sode I: The Phantom Menace 3-D. It also expands on Pepsi’s success at video game tie-ins. Specially marked bottles of Mountain Dew and packages of Doritos carried codes that earned players double experience points during online Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sessions.
Brisk, sold under Pepsi’s partnership with Lipton Tea, hit $1 billion in revenue in 2011. Pepsi has produced 7 million Kinect Star Wars- themed Brisk bottles with images of C-3PO and R2-D2 on the label. They will be available only at 7-Eleven in April and other retailers in May and June. At www.briskfeeltheforce.com, fans can enter to win one of 70 limited-edition Kinect Star Wars Xbox 360 consoles, special edition white Kinect sensors and C-3PO-INspired golden Xbox controllers.
The Kinect Star Wars game lets players use their arms and hands to wield an on-screen light saber, lift in-game objects using the Force and drive podracers. Kinect reads body movements “so you feel like a Jedi,” says Kudo Tsunoda of Microsoft Studios, which developed the game with Lucasarts.
With the game’s 3-D support, players duel Darth Vader against the backdrop of Cloud City. “We want to make you feel like you have stepped into the world of Star Wars,” says Lucasarts’ Craig Derrick.