Kevin Butler is the man for all of SCEA’s marketing campaigns now, but many people probably don’t remember that the character made his debut in an ad for MLB: The Show. Appropriately, SCEA has something special cooking up Kevin Butler for MLB: The Show 2011 with cover athlete with Joe Mauer.
“We have all the baseball gamers on PS3… as far as market share we can’t target more baseball gamers, so we have to target sports gamers in general,” said Scott McCarthy, brand manager for PlayStation software. “And so with that in mind and using the Joe Mauer/Kevin Butler ‘Well Played’ [vibe] that we got last year, we wanted to expand on that just as we’ve expanded on PS3 in general with the ‘It Only Does Everything’ campaign. What that led us to in the spot was Joe and Kevin sitting down on the couch together really smack talking back and forth with each other, continuing that ‘bromance’ that started last year. .”
“That’s in an effort to talk to sports gamers everywhere, not just fans of The Show. So we’re targeting anyone who’s ever played FIFA or Madden or NBA, so they can look at The Show as something that provides them with that sports fix also, he continued. That’s something that’s been missing in general from previous year’s campaigns with baseball games. It’s really spoken to baseball fans who appreciate the nuances of the game, and so we want to bring that out to people who just appreciate great sports. The first airing will be during Red Sox-Yankees on Opening Day.”
This new theme for the marketing campaign is going to find its way into a series of web videos with Kevin Butler. “Another big thing this year is co-op. If I know baseball and you don’t we can actually play on the same team this year. Co-op is one of those important modes that helps us bring in the sports gamer. And how we’re messaging that is actually kind of funny. Going back to Kevin Butler, we made a series of online videos where Kevin is actually teaching consumers how to increase their level of trash talk,” said McCarthy. “Because The Show is on such a higher level this year, you have to increase your trash talk to get the most out of the game at least that’s what Kevin thinks. We’ll be unveiling a series of videos where Kevin is unveiling his shaft method of trash talk. So everyone’s going to get shafted by Kevin Butler!”
Source: IndustryGamers {link no longer active}
