EA Sports and Google have teamed up to promote the Madden video game franchise by allowing fans to create GIF ads and personalize the message to reflect in-game action.
This new method of real-time marketing is part of an initiative by Google to compete with social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. Once created, the GIFs will be circulated through sports-related sites, rather than social media feeds, as ads during halftime.
"We're piloting ad delivery technology that allows brands like EA Sports to be part of moment and after something happens on the field that brand can be out there on message with an ad," says Mike Glaser, Google's marketing manager of creative projects.
The tool to create these GIFs is called Madden Giferator. Utilizing Madden 15's graphical engine, star players are recreated to perform all sorts of actions such as dance, spike the ball, and beat their chest. A simple four-step process is necessary to generate the GIF.
The GIFs are made by deciding what the team wants to represent, picking from a set of pre-made actions featuring star players, selecting a background, and choosing from a list of messages or crafting an original message.
For example, if Kansas City Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles is dominating a road game, a fan could pick Charles' action, and create a message that reads, "Painting your town red."
The process is really simple and takes less than a minute to complete on the first try.
Madden enters its 26th year as a mainstay of the video game community, and a financial juggernaut.
EA Sports spends "eight figures" annually on marketing for the Madden franchise and the results are undeniable. The company expects to make $1 billion on Madden 15's downloadable content alone.
Madden 15 was released in North America on Aug. 26, 2014, and is available for purchase on the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 260, and Xbox One consoles.
