This was originally going to be a triple-barrelled article about app launches today, but Val already did a great preview of the upcoming NIN social networking app. Also announced today is a mobile gaming application coming to iPhone from Coca-Cola, as part of a larger advertising campaign. We’ve also got an app designed to help Diabetes sufferers to lead a healthy life.
Coca-Cola:
The Coca-Cola “Happiness Factory” campaign, showing the inside workings of a vending machine, was one of it’s more succesful campaigns. Moving to capitalise on this, the company is releasing an iPhone game in the next few weeks, which will be a multiplayer effort.
From the release:
Miguel Moreno Toscano, interactive marketing manager for Coca-Cola Europe, said, “The original ad was probably the most successful ad in the history of the company in terms of video pick up, so we’re hoping to do it again with this third ad. Users can watch the ad online, and we’re hoping the environment we’ve created around it makes sure this lives up to the original Happiness Factory campaign,” he added.”
Diabetes Guidance and Management app:
Sensei is a mobile and on-line producer concentrating on health and lifestyle application. It has released the My Diabetes Guide, claiming that there are 24 million Americans with diabetes, and another 57 million with pre-diabetes. The My Diabetes Guide offers step-by-step advice to people living with diabetes.
The application offers a lot of services to it’s users. It sends daily and weekly reminders for a list of “To Dos”, including monitoring glucose levels, taking medications, and checking feet and weight. It delivers new information and research about diabetes directly to the user’s mobile phone. There’s a “To Eat” that offers advice on smart nutrition decisions.
The app is available now at the Apple App Store for 99 cents, and will be coming to other mobile phones soon.
From the release:
“My Diabetes Guide goes beyond blood glucose tracking and nutritional information research. It is a comprehensive tool that takes patients, and those involved in their care, one screen at a time through all fundamentals of diabetes management. Physicians, dietitians, and diabetes educators from Joslin reviewed the diabetes content, and our tech experts built an application that gives users the best chance to succeed in the evolving person-centric healthcare system,” said Dr. Robert Schwarzberg, cardiologist and chief executive officer, Sensei, Inc.
What we think?
I think it’s a sign of the times that Coca-Cola would release a gaming application as a mobile advertisement. Without doubt the most popular kind of app downloaded, mobile games are really walking tall at the moment. Branded games haven’t traditionally done very well though, and the most popular games are downloaded because of good gameplay, not because people like Coke.
I like the diabetes app. I’m not a sufferer myself, so I can’t comment definitively, but the range of services it offers looks genuinely useful. Most important, I think they got the price right. This isn’t the kind of app that can be supported by advertising – that would feel inappropriate on a genuine medical application. But a tiny price tag like 99 cent won’t deflect someone who could get genuine use from this.
I also find it amusing that Sensei had a certain amount of insight that Coca-Cola lacked: the Diabetes app is going to be launched on more platforms than just the iPhone.
