Free Stuff for Playing Angry Birds? Yes Please.

By Nicole Fletcher

Well no … not exactly….Angry Birds hasn’t jumped on this bandwagon yet, but newbie start up Kiip has hit the ground running and their idea is, in my opinion, promising. By the end of this year there will be 72.8 million gamers in the US. That’s arguably an awesomely sized target market. How do advertisers plan to appeal to them? Insert Kiip, a startup founded by yet another under aged wonder-boy, 19 year old Brian Wong. The foundation of the concept is simple: reward gamers for winning.

Kiip claims to have access to 12 million+ gamers via free app developers. That’s a solid chunk. When gamers play and win, they’re happy. Not rocket science right? Wrong. Until this point there has been no way to take part of that high moment – that happy place players go when they crush a level or even….beat a game. Kiip, with an impressive list of advertisers including Vitamin Water, 1-800-Flowers, GNC, Carl’s Jr, Hardees, Dr Pepper, PopChips and Sephora will reward gaming gurus with prizes, thereby engraving a positive brand sentiment into them when they are happily vulnerable at that moment of euphoric victory.

Sounds pretty awesome right? I think so. Honestly though, I’m not a gamer- though I’m seriously thinking about adopting the hobby if I’m gonna get free stuff- so the question is: will gamers embrace these real world prizes won in a virtual world or will they resent the interruption and squash Kiip with an iron fist?

It’ll be interesting to see the success or lack thereof they see – but in the mean time, game on and tell us what you think on our facebook page.