Culver City, Calif. - Dippin’ Dots is using a clever online game developed by Animax Entertainment, the digital studio and branded content creator, to promote its unique beaded ice cream .
The game allows fans to go to a special Dippin’ Dots Web site where they can create their own animated shorts featuring the brand’s mascot, “Packy.” The most creative and original animated shorts will win cash prizes and a supply of the product.
The promotion is called the “Adventures of Packy Movie Mash-Up Challenge.” It launched last week and runs through mid-September. The contest site is located at
www.dippindots.com/contest.
Animax Entertainment developed a first of its kind in user-generated content: a Flash-animated mash-up tool that allows visitors to create their own animated videos. Animax worked closely with matrixx Productions Inc., a Santa Monica-based branded entertainment production company that created the original concept and marketing campaign consisting of in-store promotional displays, a text-based interactive mobile initiative, and viral seeding across video sharing, social networking, and other targeted online properties.
As part of the collaborative effort, Reality Digital, a San Francisco-based digital studio and software firm, designed and hosted the game site. Visitors to the site can easily create original content, without having to upload any of their own videos. Instead, the movie mash-up game includes a tutorial that could easily amuse everyone from kids to film school graduates. It shows how Dippin’ Dots amateurs can add background plates, props, actors, transitions, sounds, and text bubbles to their productions, and provides a timeline chart for the intro and exit of these elements from the frame.
Animax created all the animations that go into the movie mash-up tool, which is one of the first ever to be built entirely in Adobe Flash. Videos will be judged by a panel of Dippin' Dots judges, who will select the top five based on Web site visitor ratings and views, plus creativity and originality. he selected movies will advance to the finals where contest members will vote for their favorite as the grand prize winner.
“This is a fun game that adds a new twist to the concept of user-generated content,” says Animax Entertainment managing director Michael Bellavia. “By developing a game which contains all the pictorial elements needed to make short movies, we’ve provided Dippin’ Dots with an easily accessible tool that will help facilitate user interaction with the brand while still letting people tap their creativity. We can’t wait to see what people do with this.”
Animax Entertainment has recently created online games for a number of leading marketers, among them Ty, the maker of Beanie Babies; Sesame Workshop, Eastman Kodak, for its
www.InkIsIt.com printer launch; and Kellogg’s Yogos fruit-flavored snacks.