Building the (virtual) Yellow Brick Road

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Strategic Marketing, Virtual Goods, Virtual World strategy

KZero client Summertime Entertainment is enjoying our full range of services in support of their upcoming animated movie Dorothy of Oz. We were appointed earlier this year to provide strategic services relating to the development of the virtual world, virtual goods and social gaming elements.

With the movie coming out early 2012, our focus has been on developing the virtual platforms to build pre-launch awareness of the movie as well as provide online destinations for fans (and monetisation of course). All online efforts are designed to bridge the Wonderful Wizard of Oz franchise to a new generation.

We’ve created the end-to-end business plan and model for the virtual world, leveraging both the Dorothy brand and the movie. This effort includes the in-world feature sets and user journey as well as game/questing mechanics, socialisation mechanics and the supporting virtual goods strategies. Now we’re working alongside Dubit to build-out the world and bring it to market Q1 of next year.

Here’s some concept artwork for the movie.

To support the launch of the virtual world we’ve also created a social gaming strategy (with our new service KZero Games) incorporating both Facebook and casual gaming sites.

The aim of the social gaming element is two-fold: provide a pre-launch user base for the virtual world by introducing key elements of the user experience and secondly to support the growing fan base for the movie – in other words a closed loop for marketing and user engagement. The first social game will be launched next month.

If you have an existing brand or IP that you think may be suitable for the virtual world/casual gaming sectors, contact us here to learn more about our services and expertise.

KZero services:

Strategy

Business Planning

Marketing/Media

Product Development