Case: Lada Racing Club

A Russian developer Geleos is scheduled to release a new urban racing simulator "Lada Racing Club". The game action will take place on the streets of Moscow and is built around a real Russian car brand Lada by VAZ. Besides the natural exposure of the Lada brand and commercially available advertising space on billboards and mass transit vehicles, the game offers new innovative formats of brand integration:

• Real-life autopart and accessory suppliers' products are included in the tuning part of the game where players tweak their own vehicles. The game provides the real-life pricing and suppliers' contact information along with performance statistics. This information is also included in the user manual.
• Russian Media Group, a holding company that owns several popular radio properties, provides content for the games' soundtrack, complete with jingles advertising the real-life radio stations.
• A Russian rapper collective Kasta wrote an exclusive piece for the game that became its theme song. The video clip based on the song includes game footage and will launch on TV before the game launch.
• Every copy of the game will include a plastic card offering discounts for products partnering with the game.
• The publishers are partnering with an arcade maker to create a specially designed Lada Racing simulator that will become an additional channel for the game distrubution and the advertising integrated therein.

Keywords: interactive brand integration, in-game billboards, vending machines, Lada Racing Club, urban, Moscow, music, radio, arcade Resources:

Geleos presentation by Olga Saulenko (transcript, in Russian, accessed online on December 16, 2006)