BlackCherry Blogs

I came across an interesting company this week Foomojo, they are the makers of Foopets. Foopets are virtual pets that you can embed on your webpage, a kind of web-based Tamagochi.

Here’s mine:

I’ll give a disclaimer right now, I love pets, especially dogs. I have a flesh and blood border collie at home, but I hate these types of service toys/apps (as cute as they may be). By service toys/apps I mean you have to be constantly at their service. If mine appears to be dying or unhealthy please refer to my disclaimer above. I also think I would have found this product much more interesting if I hadn’t given my kids Nintendogs for their DS’s a year or so ago. Foopets seems to be a very similar, although somewhat less developed, version of this popular DS game.  There is innovation here though, one that I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t jump on.

 

By all accounts, Foopets have done well in their first incarnation as a Facebook widget and now  renamed/rebranded for a wider audience. Probably the most interesting part of their strategy is aligning with a brand, in this case Purina. While this seems to be a great strategy for raising development capital I wonder how it impacts on the long term viability and reach of the product. Branded applications and entertainment products have been on the rise for the last few years. The web has been less discriminating, or more accurately less regulated than traditional broadcast television. This greater freedom has allowed content creators to target younger audiences with advertising campaigns.

This product appears to be targeted at tweens with maybe a long tail to an older demographic (I don’t know about you but I barely have time to play with my RL dog). Targeting kids as a path to the parents is not a new idea, though the web has provided sophisticated new interactive options for this approach. One description of this strategy is Pester power.

"We're relying on the kid to pester the mom to buy the product, rather than going straight to the mom."
Barbara A. Martino, Advertising Executive

Read the full article

 

This article outlines some of the concerns surrounding advertising to kids. As a company developing entertainment products for kids it’s obvious to us there is a fine line to walk here. Marketing to kids will inevitably involve marketing to parents. Kids generally don’t have access to discretionary spending or a Visa card. The key is to ensure the product has intrinsic value while not being perceived as exploitive. I can’t help but think attaching an innovative product to a commercial brand crosses the line most parents are comfortable with and limits the long-term potential of that product. I'm going to do some more research on this question and follow up in future blog entries.

As for the case of Foopets, or with any other product, time will tell.