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Case Study: PopCap’s Bejeweled Twist Hits Global Audiences Through MultiVu’s Multimedia News Release and Outdoor Video Distribution Service

Background:
PopCap Games has provided a platform for easy-to-learn and captivating computer games since it was founded in 2000. Based in Seattle, Washington, PopCap Games has a staff of over 200 employees located in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Vancouver, B.C., Dublin, Ireland, and Shanghai offices. The games PopCap provides are available on the Web, desktop computers, mobile devices, video game consoles, and airline in-flight entertainment systems, making it the only casual games developer with leading market share across all major sales channels.

The various games PopCap provides have been downloaded more than 1 billion times by consumers worldwide. Bejeweled, PopCap’s flagship title, has sold more than 25 million units across all platforms and has been downloaded over 350 million times. In October 2008, PopCap games unveiled Bejeweled Twist, the first new Bejeweled game in four years. Bejeweled Twist, the centerpiece of PopCap’s game library, is not only available via download globally, but it is also available for purchase at North American retail chains. Since Bejeweled Twist is an important and substantial part of PopCap’s business, they needed a dynamic and innovative public relations strategy for its release.  Therefore, PopCap turned to MultiVu, PR Newswire’s broadcast and multimedia production company. MultiVu created a Multimedia News Release (MNR) with international distribution for PopCap. Additionally, the 30 second video created for the MNR was distributed to large, digital screens in Times Square and Las Vegas.

Challenge:
The challenge of PopCap’s campaign was to reach an extraordinarily large consumer audience, in multiple countries, with a single news release.

Solution:
PopCap’s target audiences for the Bejeweled Twist campaign were the mainstream media, online media, video and computer game enthusiasts and potential Bejeweled players.

In order to reach the largest possible audience, MultiVu created a Multimedia News Release (MNR), which allows the incorporation of text, videos, photos, and social media links. They used the MNR as an all-encompassing platform for consumers and the media, new and traditional. Bulleted lists of Bejeweled Twist’s new features were included in the MNR.

MultiVu also suggested including a video, which can be embedded on blogs and social media platforms. Thirty seconds of this one minute video was distributed through PR Newswire’s specialized channel to two prominent digital billboards. The first billboard, in New York City’s Times Square, is the largest digital billboard in the world. It is seen by an estimated 1.5 million people daily. The second billboard is comprised of four digital screens. Because of it’s location at the Fashion Show Mall on the Las Vegas Strip, it has the ability to reach the 43 million pedestrians and 35 million vehicles that travel the strip each year.

The MNR incorporated downloadable photos, featuring screenshots of Bejeweled Twist and a link to PopCap’s Web site where consumers can purchase the game.

Customizing the release for the international audience, PR Newswire translated the release into the following languages: European French, European Spanish, German, Italian, Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Malay. The French, Spanish, German and Italian releases were distributed through PR Newswire’s Western Europe circuit, and the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Malay releases were distributed through PR Newswire’s Asia High Tech Circuit. For the American audience, the release was sent nationally via PR Newswire’s US1 circuit. 

Results:
The MNR was distributed on October 27, 2008. The results were incredible and the MNR proved to be exactly what PopCap needed for a release as substantial as Bejeweled Twist’s. To date there have been: over 3,000 page hits from the MNR, over 2,000 online video streams of the embedded video, and more than 5,600 file downloads from the MNR.

"MultiVu’s exclusive Outdoor Video Distribution service was an ideal flourish with which to top off the many PR and marketing efforts we conducted around the launch of Bejeweled Twist, our biggest, most-anticipated game ever. The big screens in Times Square and Las Vegas showed the new game in all its widescreen glory and made the game bigger than life for both the consumers in NY and LV as well as PopCap’s own workforce. The MultiVu and PR Newswire teams were incredibly helpful and supportive: professional, responsive, creative and circumspect in bringing our vision to life in a way that helped make the introduction of Bejeweled Twist the most memorable and exciting product launch in our company’s history," Garth Chouteau, Senior Director, Public Relations, PopCap Games, Inc.