Coca-Cola, which is one of the most recognized brands in the world, is going on one more marketing campaign, this time in the Chinese gaming scene! According to Adweek.com, Coke has signed a deal with Global Gaming League (GGL) to host tournaments in cyber cafes across the nation and on Coke’s website.
This is a first-of-its-kind deal for China in terms of reach and coverage for this type of competition. It covers over 15 provinces, 100 cities and 4,000 cyber cafes in China. Ted Owen is the chairman and co-founder of GGL. He says, “Gaming is a culture now. It’s the MTV of the new generation.”
Coca-Cola has lined up a lot of iCoke tournaments for gamers in China. In fact, winners of these tournaments will be flown all the way to New York to compete in the 2007 Digital Life gaming tournament that will take place from September 27-30. Not only that, the GGL will host regional online tournaments on the iCoke website, which currently has more than 29 million registered users.
Kyong Kon Ko, Director, e-marketing, Coke’s China division said, “Of all the online gaming communities with whom iCoke could have partnered, GGL is by far the most recognized in the world and China. Also, it already has the existing expertise and infrastructure in place to promote and support live online gaming tournaments totaling hundreds of thousands of players.”
Frank Yong, CEO, GGL China explains, “The Gamezone will include video gaming content created by GGL, such as exclusive videos from GGL’s Hip-Hop Gaming League and the online gaming technologies. GGL’s global video-gaming tournaments will also be offered to the online gaming fans, of which they can take part.”
Ted Owen also indicated that GGL has plans to bring about this initiative with Coke in other countries including Brazil, Japan, and Korea and sooner or later in the U.S. and Western Europe. GGL will start this scheme is some of these countries later in 2007.