A boutique player in gaming is looking to make a big splash with its first Super Bowl commercial, even if it is only 15 seconds long.
The company, uCool, will show an ad for its first mobile game, Heroes Charge, which came out in October and quickly became uCool's biggest-selling game. The company's other games are Tynon, Evony and Commanders of Evony.
The ad was created internally. The game maker was a late entrant in the game, and NBC has yet to tell the company what quarter the ad runs. In an Adweek exclusive, here's a first look at the spot:
The opportunity to make a splash on the most-watched show on television, with an audience expected to hover around 110 million, was too big for uCool to pass up. Also, as a result of the buy, uCool expects brand awareness of Heroes Charge (and uCool) to spike significantly.
"Players seem to love our game," said Tony Cerrato, uCool's marketing officer. "We're getting good responses from that, and we figured that by going on to a bigger venue like the Super Bowl, it should be successful."
Heroes Charge is a role-playing game that's free and popular among casual and hardcore gamers. Also, its more than 9.7 million players are almost evenly split between men and women. So, the Super Bowl's audience seems like a good match for uCool; that is if its short ad doesn't get lost among all the longer-form executions, which range from 30- to 60- to even 90-second spots.