Well Snapchat users, Under Armour has something new for you.
Scrolling through the Discover page, you might find yourself clicking on a new game to play.
The game, It Comes From Below, stars NFL MVP and Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. And instead of just watching him quickly dodge various objects, the game allows you to control Newton — with your fingers choosing how fast he can avoid the obstacles.
“Under Armour is always looking for opportunities to connect with consumers in a new and innovative ways, evidenced by our Cam Newton Snapchat game,” Jim Mollica, vice president of global consumer engagement at Under Armour, wrote in an email to the Baltimore Sun. “By using Snapchat, we are able to directly communicate with a vital audience: digitally focused, on the go, social consumers with a love of gaming, sport and performance.”
That vital audience is primarily Under Armour’s 14-to-22-year old target group, a demographic that is already involved with Snapchat, according to Adweek, which first reported on the game.
In the game, players get to keep Newton running around obstacles such as trees and wolves as long as they can keep him alive.
Once users have finished playing the game, there are able to take a snap of their score and send it to friends. When their friends view the snap, they are able to click on it and launch the game for themselves. If their friends do not snap the game to them, it can be found through 10-second ads that appear in the sports and NFL-related areas in the Discovery section, Mollica told Adweek.
“We have two on-ramps that we’re testing: One that has the Cam Newton ‘Prince of a Thousand Enemies’ footage that leads into an invitation to play the game and another one that is much more game footage and an invitation to play the game,” Mollica told Adweek. “When you swipe up that then launches the game.”
According to data obtained by Adweek, in the first day running ads for the game, 20 percent of the app’s 60 million daily users (in the U.S. and Canada) swiped up, initiating the game to begin. Those who swiped up spent an average of 78 seconds playing the game, and 19 percent of those users shared the game with one or more friends.
Under Armour plans to run the game on Snapchat through October, according to the publication.