56 Sage Street - a game to help youngsters get to grips with managing their money

56 Sage Street   |   free game

Barclays has a bit of a history with games. They did incredibly well with their Waterslide iPhone game - "With over 16 million engagement minutes to date and thousands of reviews, interest in the waterslide campaign has really peaked again and we are thrilled," says Paul Troy, Head of Advertising and Sponsorship, Barclaycard, UK.( Source: Pocketgamer) and the subsequent Rollercoaster game which racked up a huge 1.2 million hours of gameplay with over 10 million downloads worldwide (Source: Barclays). So it's no big surprise that it's come up with a game aimed at young people to help them manage their money better - 56 Sage Street.

Barclays says: 'The question the game asks is: ‘How does someone with nothing end up with everything?’ The answer: 56 Sage Street, an addictive free game in which players roam a vast city finding work, or places to stay, meeting new challenges and picking up contacts to help players make it to the top. If you reach 56 Sage Street you'll have proven yourself to Mr C and he'll give you his empire to run. Score!'

This is a roleplaying game and you choose your character and you are set tasks to improve yourself and your bank balance by working - and you need to choose the right kind of job, improve your chances of getting work or somewhere to live by looking after your appearance and doing good turns like walking an elderly neighbour's dog, being friendly, being good at your job etc. And this all affects not only your bank balance, but also your energy levels, appearance and reputation - all of them count so it's not just about money which is a good life lesson in itself. There are also some scams along the way to avoid.

I'm not a big gamer, online or otherwise, and I'm certainly not in the target market so I'm interested to see reviews from real players rather than reviewers like myself. Since the game links to a virtual mobile, it would be interesting to see how this would play out on a mobile - maybe the messages and tasks come through to your mobile phone? Or the game is ported to compatible devices (it would have to be devices with a decent-sized screen)? And let's not forget the Sony PSP as I know *a lot* of mobile traffic comes by way of that device. But I digress. The game is not currently available for mobile and maybe that's sensible since it's not teenagers and young people who are obsessed by the iPhone, unlike some of their older siblings.

Anyway, I've played the game. It is engaging. It does teach you the basics about managing your life and your money and it seems to be good fun. You don't have to play the whole thing at once as you can connect it to Facebook and save your status. And if you're so inclined you can share some of the medals and awards you win along the way via Twitter and Facebook. I didn't, but I can see that teens and tweens might like to do just that. Whether or not it's good fun for the teens and tweens they're trying to reach, I can't tell as I'm not in that age bracket, but the game felt pretty slick. Mild criticisms would be that it's not that easy to navigate and some of the tasks are repetitive. And the car noises definitely got on my nerves very quickly, but you can turn those off. And I think the ending needs some work too. But I won't reveal that to you in case you'd like to try it. Nevertheless, it's worth a look. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how many young people play the game, what they say about it and on top of that, choose to share how they're getting on with it with their friends. I shall be watching with interest.

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Motorola Wirebreakers campaign launches

Lee from Cake (who by the sounds of it is also suffering a post-glasto-meltdown this week) had just let me know about the latest viral video campaign, Wirebreakers, from Motorola to promote their new stereo Bluetooth product, The MOTOROKR S9 wireless headsets. I already know, anecdotally from my niece, that the Motorola KRAZR phone has better sound quality than her ipod so I'm hopeful that this product also rocks (or should that be RKS in hellomoto vernacular?).

The videos show a fictional dance crew, The Wirebreakers, encouraging members of the public to join them in random dancing in public places like the golf course, the shopping mall or a squash court. There's an example of one of the videos above.

The campaign is aimed at a younger demographic and focuses on strengthening Motorola's link with music. Does it work for you? Answers on a text message...

A couple of viral campaigns with a touch of mobile

I've stumbled across a couple of nice viral campaigns, both with a hint of mobile video about them, via Alfie and Tom respectively.

The first is an exclusive McFly video of 'Baby's coming Back' with the band appearing on customised mobile phones. It's a really imaginative use of mobile video and put a smile on my face. I also signed up to the JoinUp campaign at http://www.sendmyfriend.org/mcfly/ where they're campaigning for education for all children globally. Once you've signed up, you can download your own arms and accessories for your mobile phone. And I hope, in time, we'll see some similar treatments of other music videos and/or some spoofs. Looks like it's pretty simple to do. Never mind the DRM ;)


The second example is a campaign for the Royal Navy called 'Get the Message'. Again using mobile video, here you can choose a method of delivery for your message ranging from a Diver to Helicopter Pilot, then you can choose to send the message to your friend's email address or mobile phone and then you can insert a short message. If you've chosen mobile (I sent one to myself), then you get sent a wap push message telling you that you have a confidential message waiting for you and a link to a wapsite to collect it. The link loads very quickly and you see a video and at the end, your message appears and is customised with your precise message. Very cool. You can see my test example here.



As you can see, my words aren't the most imaginative in the world, but you get the idea. The icing on the cake with this campaign would be to make it very easy to save and embed the video to leave a message with a mate on myspace for example. Instead I had to sideload my video from my phone to youtube and get the link from there. Nevertheless, it's a very nice campaign and an effective use of mobile video as part of a mobile marketing campaign.