FarmVille starts first real-world crops next week

Jul 16, 2010

In coordination with the organic food company Cascadian Farm, Zynga will be offering its virtual farmers in FarmVille a specific food brand. Players will be able to plant blueberries from Cascadian Farm, a subsidiary of General Mills, in an attempt to teach players about organic farming and green living, while earning more points to grow the virtual fruits and vegetables on their virtual farms.

“We’re at a crossroads for the brand,” said Tim Goldsmid, marketing manager for Cascadian Farm, in an interview with The New York Times. “We’re looking to get our message out in a bigger way, and we wanted a creative way to do that.”

This is FarmVille’s “first branded, in-game crop integration, and we chose Cascadian Farm to offer our users something that would benefit them online and offline,” said Vish Makhijani, senior vice president for business operations at Zynga.

While this is the first time Zynga has teamed up with a company on crops, it’s not the first cross-promotion that’s been run through FarmVille, nor is it the first time they’ve joined forces with General Mills. In May, its Green Giant Fresh subsidiary ran a promotion giving players free “farm cash” units for purchasing broccoli, celery and other produce sold at 4000 Target stores around the country. In five weeks, more than $100,000 worth of the units were redeemed by customers, averaging two coupon codes each.

Cascadian Farm is embedding their brand by offering players branded blueberry crops, which will offer players an opportunity for faster harvests and a bigger cash return than other crops. The promotion will run from Monday to July 26.

The promotion is short, according to Makhijani, because it fits FarmVille’s style. “It is a little like episodic television,” he said. “We add new content every other day, whether it’s new features, new crops, new buildings or different ways of doing things. Many users play two to four times a week, and some more often. About 60 million people play in a month.”

Also available through FarmVille will be a one-dollar coupon for Cascadian Farm products. Cascadian Farm will also be measuring the success of the promotion by Web activity and call-ins to the company’s 800 number, and hits on its blog.

Cascadian Farm execs hope that the FarmVille venture will get more people into organic foods, and certainly, their particular brand. “This is a great venue to have a discussion,” Goldsmid said. “We hope that most FarmVille users will plant our crop. We are going for all 20 million.”

[source] The New York Times