Our visit to Helsinki, Finland started off with our tour of Rovio Enterntainment, the makers of the most downloaded mobile game “Angry Birds.” Rovio is at the forefront of the industry shift of being a traditional company to a digital media company.
Their company is broken up into two branches, consumer products and digital entertainment. Consumer products includes activity parks, retail shops, and licensing (spread business through the use of partners). Digital entertainment includes games and game partnerships, videos, movies, and digital services. Their latest venture is in the learning business, which is a combination of the outstanding Finnish education system and their global business.
As far as marketing goes, Rovio puts their fans first. This results in an unparalleled, passionate, and engaged social community with the fastest growing fan base of over 2 billion people. For example, one fan wanted to propose to his girlfriend within the game and Rovio made that happen by creating a special code. Angry Bird’s popularity has resulted in tweets from celebrities such as Slash and Justin Bieber. Organic tweets like these has helped this entertainment media company to generate free publicity. They even invited Slash to their office and created a Slash character in the game.
Rovio Entertainment’s most recent project is their feature film due in 2016, which is the single biggest investment produced by Columbia Pictures. It would be exciting to see how this company will continue to branch out their Angry Birds brands as well as their other businesses.
