My company Killer-Apps has started to sponsor some clubs and people. One of the clubs is the local soccer club of the village Hedel I’m living in. This is partly conventional sponsoring, where I hand over some money to the club and they place billboards along the soccer fields, plus some advertising in their club magazine. On the other hand I will also be contributing to their website and introduce some web-application thingies there.
Besides that I am also sponsoring the Counter-Strike clan (Kumbaya) that I play in. I’m taking care of the hosting of a CS game-server. In return I (co-)”own” the box. The server is called “Killer-Apps CS Server”. Besides that I placed virtual advertising in the in-game playing fields. The pictures give you an idea of one of the fields without and with the billboards and banners.
I’m observing a trend here: virtual advertising in this way is becoming more and more common. One other Dutch server is sponsored by Philips and has billboards with Senseo Crema coffee machines, Philips headsets and other game materials. Just imagine that a company as large as Philips is sponsoring and advertising virtually.
What more can we expect? Any ideas, anyone?
Update: the first customer has bought half a year banner-time on the Killer-Apps Counter-Strike server.