Social Media Campaign Review: PUMA Finger Bash

As the current IPL season comes to a close, PUMA is running the PUMA Finger Bash campaign in association with cricketers such as Yuvraj Singh, Adam Gilchrist, Marlon Samuels and Harbhajan Singh. The game features the virtual avatars of these cricketers.

Objective:

Puma is using a gaming experience to engage users in the last leg of the IPL season.

Execution:

To begin with, you don’t need to ‘Like’ the Facebook Page in order to play.

Users can play PUMA Finger Bash (PFB) against the virtual forms of their favourite T20 cricketers like Andre Russell, Marlon Samuels, Brendon McCullum, Adam Gilchrist, Yuvraj Singh and Luke Wright.  Similar to the famous and age-old game played with the hand ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ – PFB is easily played on-ground between friends and makes for a very entertaining past-time.

Some of the most famous cricketers have already been caught playing PUMA Finger Bash. Yuvi took on Gilly, Sanga played against Ishant Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan lost a close contest to Harbhajan Singh.

To choose who bats first, there is a toss. You have to choose an even or odd number. When the toss happens, depending on which number you chose, the sum of yours and your opponent’s number decides whether you win or lose the toss.

You can choose if you want to play a one-over or two-over game. While batting, you must choose a number that decides your run.

The batting team scores when it quotes a number higher than the bowling team’s. If the batting team quotes a lower number than the bowling team, then it scores the number of runs that it quoted. If you choose the same number as the bowler, you’re out.

While bowling, choose a number that decides the type of delivery. Again, if the batsman chooses the same number, he is out.

 Positives:

The app is using virtual avatars of cricketers as players in the game. We have all played video games involving cricket. However, a game involving Rock-Paper-Scissors, that too in the virtual format, is rare.

Fans are no longer passive spectators, they can play a virtual game with their favourite players! Its an engaging activity and creates fun experiences among users.

The design and the interface of the application is smooth, creates a nice gaming experience!

Scope for Improvement:

The game takes too long to load. The instructions mention that you get to play 3 overs against Team PUMA. The app actually offers you between playing a one-over or two-over match.

Even if the team batting second wins, that is, meets the target of runs to be scored, the match continues until the number of balls is exhausted.

Although the game is being promoted on the Puma Cricket Twitter and Facebook page, it has received only 200 odd monthly users. Considering the popularity of the brand and the efforts in creating such a nice game, I feel it deserves a better number. Maybe an attractive prize would have helped. Besides encouraging more participation, a relevant prize could help introduce Puma's collection to more people.

Moreover, Puma could have capitalized these users by making them like the page. Sometimes users may have an eye on the prize, or they play the game and not remember who the brand is.

@pumacricket #PUMAFingerBash Guys any prizes for the high scorers ?? Woul love 2get some #Puma merchs :)

— Ashish (@sethiashish6) May 24, 2013

Timing is very important. A campaign at the fag end of the IPL, seems odd for a sporting brand like PUMA. The campaign should have been up and running at the beginning of the IPL season.

Conclusion:

While the concept is unique, Puma could have found some ways to capitalize on the game.