Angry Birds has unveiled a new mode in Augmented Reality (AR), in partnership with Areyes Studio.

The campaign takes social media users on a first-person joyride, letting them steer characters and dive into the playful world of Angry Birds.

Users can also select their favourite Angry Bird, establishing a connection between the Angry Birds 2 AR advertising and the game.

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According to the company, its advertising campaign is all “about interactive fun, grabbing users attention by providing a truly unique player experience”.

Areyes Studio Co-Founder Ivan Pavliuchenko said: “In 2024 we will witness how AR market makers like Meta, TikTok and Snap will more actively integrate AR into the advertising toolkit to enhance business interaction with end-users through playable AR-Ads.

“It has now become a commonplace tool among prominent brands,” he added.

This comes as Snapchat’s UK Business Solutions Director, Fintan Gillespie, told Mobile Marketing Magazine that platform was at forefront of AR innovation, revolutionising advertising by enabling interactive AR experiences.

He said: “AR gives consumers an immersive experience, and it offers a richer form of consumer engagement for advertisers.

Read the full interview HERE.

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The game, called Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs, will enable fans to take on the common enemies in the game series, the green pigs, with the help of the well-known Angry Birds characters.

“Introducing the Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs is an exciting step for Rovio in exploring the future of gaming,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO at Rovio Entertainment. “We are thrilled that millions of Angry Birds fans will soon be able to literally step into the Angry Birds universe with the powerful sense of presence you get with VR. Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs continues to demonstrate the many unforeseen ways fan can interact with their favourite characters and gameplay.”

Tommy Palm, CEO of Resolution Games, added: “Angry Birds lends itself perfectly to VR, where players can experience the already highly engaging characters and gameplay mechanics in a much more tangible and immersive way than ever. Just as Angry Birds was applauded for its intuitive controls and gameplay on mobile, we feel Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs will continue that legacy for VR.”

In September, Rovio teamed up with Magic Leap to bring Angry Birds to the Magic Leap One Creator Edition in the form of Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot.

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Developed alongside visual computing-focused game studio Resolution Games, Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot puts the user in control of a virtual first-person slingshot and augment the Angry Birds world into the actual environment around them. The game is expected to arrive this autumn/fall.

“We’re excited to expand the Angry Birds brand and universe to new and emerging platforms like Magic Leap, delivering fans a unique way to engage with their favourite characters,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO at Rovio Entertainment. “Resolution Games has done an incredible job bringing Angry Birds to life in a new experience that will let players see and feel what it’s like to battle the pigs like never before.”

Tommy Palm, CEO at Resolution Games, added: “It has been an incredible experience bringing Rovio’s massively successful and beloved entertainment franchise to mixed reality. Developing for the Magic Leap platform was a very unique and inspiring process for our team, and we’re confident fans will love how the game is brought to life.”

The Magic Leap One Creator Edition was finally released in six US cities last month. The headset is only available to ‘developers, creators, and explorers’ for the price of $2,295.

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Hit mobile game Angry Birds made its debut in 2009 and stormed the mobile gaming charts with 3bn downloads and 5m hours of game time a day, as a global obsession with slinging multicoloured avian creatures at mysterious green pigs took hold.

But despite so much acclaim from users, this week the mobile gaming veteran Rovio – the creator of Angry Birds – has been knocked off its perch, announcing the closure of its London office following a profit warning, blaming tough competition and higher marketing costs for the bleak outlook.

There are an infinite number of game developers battling for consumer screen time in a saturated and extremely competitive market, including gaming giants like King, Electronic Arts (EA) Mobile, and Activision, but also smaller Indies like Voodoo, which has grown from 10 games to over 70, including four in the Top Free Apps list. What’s more, mobile users have on average around 10 apps open each day, which, considering there are 2.8m apps on Google Play, and 2.2m on the App Store, means it’s a tough market to crack.

Becoming the go-to gaming app can be an insurmountable challenge because of these reasons, and most apps don’t generate profit themselves, simply acting as an extension of the business they’re part of. Driving installs is essential, but the longer-term strategy needs to look at ways to retain customers using a lifetime engagement model. And this doesn’t necessarily need to be an
expensive undertaking.

With this in mind, here are my top five tips for long term engagement for continued success in the gaming market:

Convert long-term users using appropriate channels
The long-term aim for mobile gaming businesses is not just to retain new users, but to build a relationship with them over time so that they are loyal. This is all about attracting and converting the ‘right users’ from the start, rather than just aiming for a number of acquisitions. This can be achieved by using appropriate channels to engage and connect with users, and understanding the nuances of each to be able to use the best one to attract your target audience.

Ensure that in-game purchases are relevant
In-game purchases can be a key driver of revenue, if they are done correctly. Ultimately, it’s about building a relationship with users so it feels natural for them to visit a shop and make a purchase. Some businesses get this wrong and create a scenario where consumers have to make purchases just to continue playing a game. This doesn’t provide any additional value for the user, so many users may simply switch off and go elsewhere.

Careful with those push notifications
Push notifications can be beneficial because they serve as a reminder and drive post-acquisition app engagement. But, some users find them irritating and intrusive, so a balance is needed to make sure you don’t disengage otherwise loyal users. To put it simply, they need to be used sparingly where they will have the most impact.

You can be more creative with your use of push notifications, moving beyond simple text, to include images, videos and GIFs, that are more enticing to the user. It’s worth testing these to see what method works best for your users, and then allowing them to control what notifications they receive via the settings within the app.

Creating a personal experience
Consumers have a hugely intimate relationship with their mobile devices, so the relationship with an app needs to take this into consideration. Therefore, any method you use to engage with your users must be relevant and engaging, but also personalised so that it adds value to their experience. Ensure the advertising you are serving fits contextually within the user experience, and make sure that nothing interrupts or intrudes on the experience.

Personalisation through name-, location- or behaviour-based tailoring remains one of the best ways to engage customers in the long term. All of these allow the user to feel like they are being personally catered to and offered something unique.

Continue to re-engage customers
User data can be used to not only acquire new users but also to build retention with active and dormant users. For example, a mobile gaming business could advertise its other gaming products to its existing user base, and offer them a small reward for a download. Playrix is particularly good at doing this across its various games, including Homescapes, Gardenscapes and Township, where they offer in-game currency or additional lives in return for downloading a new game.

Lifetime loyalty
Curating lifetime loyalty is a delicate process that needs to filter through every part of the business strategy and user journey. This needs to be tailored to the individual business and can be aligned with long-term targets. By keeping customer experience front of mind, and ensuring that the strategy is personal, mobile gaming businesses can build longer term business stability.

The announcement from Rovio should be a stark reminder that even the biggest names can struggle, and there is lots the industry can learn from reflecting on its business journey.

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The IPO is expected to include the sale of secondary shares from its largest shareholder Trema International Holdings, along with certain other shareholders. Rovio plans to raise around €30m (£28m), with shares expected to be offered to private individuals and firms in Finland, Sweden and Demark, along with investors in Finland and internationally. The company declined to put an estimate on the value of the company, or give a date as to when the IPO would be occurring.  

The money made would help the company to grow, give it access to capital markets and broaden its ownership base, says Rovio. It also aims to use the IPO to strengthen its brand recognition and use the money raised to seek out potential acquisitions.

“We believe Rovio is well positioned to succeed in the growing mobile gaming market and see a bright future ahead of the Company,” said Mika Ihamuotila, chairman of Rovio’s board of directors. “The contemplated IPO and listing will offer new shareholders an opportunity to participate in Rovio’s success.”

Earlier this year, Rovio sold of its TV animation studio, book publishing business and some non-Angry Birds properties to Kaiken Entertainment, and let almost 10 per cent of its workforce go back in February.

Rovio has struggled to diversify its offering, and only really has Angry Birds going for it. Of course, that franchise has birthed several mobile games, a movie – with a sequel on the way in 2019 – and tons of merchandise, but those picking up shares in the company may have their reservations about what more the company can offer.

“I am confident in our games-first strategy. The contemplated IPO and listing are an important milestone in developing Rovio into an even stronger games-first entertainment company,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio.

The Angry Birds game has been downloaded more than 3.7bn times, while the first Angry Birds Movie grossed around $350m worldwide in 2016. The other games in its collection are just different themed versions of Angry Birds and Battle Bay. So, the problem is clear for all to see.

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Though the mobile game developer refused to delve into the possibility of a Tencent acquisition, it confirmed that it is weighing up its options in regards to going public at some point.

“We and our shareholders regularly assess different alternatives to further develop Rovio,” the company told Reuters in an emailed statement when asked about The Information report. “A stock exchange listing at some point in the future could be possible in order to support the continued strong growth of Rovio and its strategic targets. However, Rovio and its owners have not made any decisions regarding a possible IPO.”

Last month, Rovio announced that an Angry Birds Movie sequel was in the works and due to arrive in 2019 to celebrate the game’s 10^th anniversary. The first Angry Birds Movie grossed around $350m worldwide last year – while the game itself has been downloaded more than 3.7bn times. Despite these successes, the company has faced problems over the last few years and been forced into several job cuts.

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The movie is planned to hit theatres on 20 September 2019 to coincide with the 10^th anniversary of the original Angry Birds game.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 will be directed by Adventure Time’s Thurop Van Orman with co-direction from Rick and Morty’s John Rice. Production will be handled by Despicable Me’s John Cohen and Ice Age’s Peter Ackerman will pen the movie.

“We are thrilled to be teaming up again with Sony Pictures after the fantastic cooperation in the first movie and I cant wait to experience the new journey in the upcoming film,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio Entertainment. “Rovio is continuing to focus on creating exciting new stories and experiences around our games and we’re eager to take fans back into the vibrant Angry Birds world on the big screen.”

The first Angry Birds movie was released worldwide last year, grossing around $350m. Despite the success of the movie, and the 3.7bn times its Angry Birds game has been downloaded, the entertainment studio has faced several problems over the last few years and was forced to cut 10 per cent of its workforce in February this year, 18 months after reducing staff by a third.

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Over the next two years, Rovio London will be building a collaborative team of some 20 people.

The London studio joins Rovio’s four other in-house studios (three in Espoo, Finland, and one in Stockholm, Sweden) as well as the company’s global network of external partner developers.

“Our business is profitably growing and London is the most logical place for us to found a new studio that will complement our overall global mix of internal and external developers,” said Rovio SVP Studios, Antti Viitanen. “London is also a fantastically diverse talent magnet.”

Angry Birds is the top-grossing paid mobile app, but despite licensing deals – including a 2016 movie – Rovio has struggled in recent years, laying off more than 300 people in 2014 and 2015.

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One cant help but look at those figures and imagine that somewhere, there are Rovio executives feeling very relieved. The company has sunk a huge amount of its capital into the film in the hope that its apps success could translate into box office success, and that number one opening must surely come as a massive vindication to executives who have been accused of wagering the companys fortune on an incredibly risky prospect.

Flying High
Finnish developer Rovio was founded in 2003 by three students from Helsinki University of Technology following their victory in a mobile game design competition sponsored by Nokia and HP. Following initial success with Mole War, one of the first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile games, the company received an injection of investment capital and, in 2009, released Angry Birds.

The game was perfectly timed to take advantage of the growth of the smartphone and the app economy, rising to the number one spot in Apples App Store after six months. The original game has been downloaded over 1bn times, with paid downloads accounting for over 25 per cent of the total, making it one of the top selling games on iOS.

In many ways, Rovios success is the mirror of the traditional model of mobile marketing. From a starting point of a mobile-exclusive product, the company used its popularity to expand into other media, including cartoons, comics, console games and a wealth of merchandise.

The company has partnered with entertainment companies such as Hasbro and 20th Century Fox to produce branded spin-off games including Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers, and in 2011, Rovio first announced its intention to produce an Angry Birds movie that would capitalise on the apps popularity, especially among children.Spending the Nest Egg
Still soaring high in the app charts, the decision to produce a film based on its successful and lucrative intellectual property seemed like a natural one, but Rovio immediately attracted controversy with the way it chose to finance the production. The company chose to take on the majority of production financing itself, sinking a huge amount of its capital into the venture and essentially gambling on the success of the film.

If it proved profitable, Rovio would reap the lions share of the revenues, but if it was a bomb, the company would have spent upwards of €100m (£77m) on a project well outside its comfort zone, hugely damaging its finances in the process.

While co-producers Sony Entertainment helped cover some of the €100m cost of marketing and distributing the film, Rovio was responsible for the entire $73m production budget. It worked with ex-Simpsons and The Office writer Jon Vitti for four years on a script, and secured high profile names including Peter Dinklage, Jason Sudeikis and Sean Penn to voice characters.

Meanwhile, Rovios finances were already beginning to suffer. A host of other projects including mobile video distribution, activity parks and merchandising saw profits drop by half from 2012 to 2013, and by a further 73 per cent between 2013 and 2014.

At the end of 2014, Rovio cut around 14 per cent of its workforce, around 110 jobs and shuttered one of its studios in Tampere, Finland, blaming over-expansion of the Angry Birds brand into merchandising and animation as the reason behind its falling profits. Those cuts werent enough, however, and in August 2015, another round followed, with over a third of the workforce let go.

The 2015 cuts, which saw around 260 staff made redundant, came despite the successful launch of Angry Birds 2, which was downloaded around 50m times in its first month of release. In fact, even when profits dropped by almost three quarters in 2014, revenue from games actually increased 16 per cent.

Rovio was still great at making mobile games, it was just all its other ventures that were causing it to drop like a stone. Regardless of this fact, there was only one department in the company not to see any job losses during the 2015 cuts – the team working on the feature film.A Wing and a Prayer
Even as its finances suffered and the Angry Birds game began to fade from popularity, placing the success of the feature film in more doubt, Rovio continued to find brand partners keen to work with the firm, working with General Mills to cross-promote the companys cereals and the new Angry Birds 2 game, and partnering with Lego and Alibaba Group ahead of the movies release.

As The Angry Birds Movie neared its premiere, the merchandising engine began to heat up again, but this time around Rovio worked more extensively with licensing partners to spread the cost of building its brand. At the end of 2015, Pekka Rantala, the CEO who oversaw many of the cuts and redundancies, was replaced by Kati Levoranta.

“As we move into the next phase of the Rovio story, we will be getting back to our entrepreneurial roots with the leaner, more agile organisation that Pekka leaves us with,” said Kaj Hed, chairman of Rovio at the time. “Kati Levoranta has been an inspirational presence at Rovio since 2012, and I am certain that she is the right leader to empower the business units and take us to new successes in all our businesses.”

The stripped-back Rovio was indeed turning things around. While the company was still making a loss, early financials for 2015 showed costs were greatly reduced and the games business was continuing to grow, bringing in 80 per cent of the companys €142m revenues.

Now, with The Angry Birds Movie a box-office success, the decision to sink so much capital into its production is looking like a worthwhile gamble and, while the company has been forced to dramatically pair back its staff and other projects, the firm looks poised to take advantage of this new high-profile victory.

In fact, with the success of the film, Rovio looks like the home of the first truly successful pop culture property to have originated on mobile, making it a potential trailblazer as mobile comes to dominate more and more of our time and attention, and properties that start out on our smallest screen become more likely to make the leap to the biggest one. In fact, ahead of the weekend box office results, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Halfbrick Studios game Fruit Ninja had been optioned for the cinematic treatment.

So where does that leave Rovio? Well, the company has already learned the dangers of trying to fly too high too fast when it comes to expanding into other mediums, but it has also seen its biggest gamble pay off, so who knows what the future holds. Perhaps it will capitalise on the success of The Angry Birds Movie to expand once again. Perhaps it will focus on developing new games and intellectual property, hoping to repeat its success with a new game. Or perhaps it will fade into the background, having reached as high as it possibly can, and remain only as a cautionary tale for mobile developers about maintaining a tight focus on what you do best.

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The campaign works using an AR function, powered by Zappar, which has been integrated into Angry Birds Action.

Action players can scan bird-codes printed on Angry Birds branded merchandise, from H&M clothing to Pez dispensers, to unlock in-game content. McDonalds packaging, for example, can be scanned to play a whack-a-pig mini-game, while WalMart stands link to daily power-ups for the game.

With the Angry Birds Movie coming out next month, the BirdCodes will also appear on Sony Pictures marketing materials, linking the game and film.

“Angry Birds Action is the cornerstone of our comprehensive digital movie program, which bridges digital and physical entertainment like never before,” said Miika Tams, VP Games at Rovio “And with more than 1bn bird-codes to be found out in the wild, at a scale never seen before either.”

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