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Reaction: Only 1% of branded apps downloaded over 1 million times

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

July 15, 2011 | 3 min read

With the news that branded apps are failing to capture the interest of smartphone or tablet owners, with only 1% of branded apps being downloaded over 1 million times, Donnie Kerrighan, founder of Glasgow digital agency Chunk reacts.

"Only 1% of branded apps are downloaded more than a million times". Noooooo! We not really shocked by that are we? We're not REALLY shocked. Most advertising doesn't work, we know that. There are a million books that tell us and there are a million agencies out there every day convincing brands they have a better shot than most. Some do, some don’t.

Ruling out games because of a crowded market place is nonsense. The same argument could be applied to almost any content. Take video, brands chuck funny videos in with the other billion funny videos on YouTube every day - how many get over a million views? Less than 1%? Should they still do it? Of course, but doing it brilliantly and marketing it cleverly is always the key to making great, successful content.

Games are amazing content for cracking the right brand challenges. Everyone plays them everywhere; young, old, male, female, online, on phones, on Facebook or on consoles. They’re playing all different types of games and nothing focuses their attention more; try Tweeting while playing a game.

There ARE loads of games on the app store but great brands and agencies can cut through it. The bulk of games on the app store are either bad or poorly marketed. And most are by individuals or small game developers who don’t have the audience, marketing experience or budget to launch a game - brands do and that’s why they can make it work.

Production being too expensive is as ridiculous as the $2m development example. If you’re strategy tells you that a $2M development will hit the spot, go for it, but it’s more likely you’ll want a casual Cut the Rope or Doodle Jump type game which will be no more expensive than anything else.

If you make sure a game is the right strategy, try to make it brilliant and make sure people know about it then a game has the same chance as any other great piece of content.

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