Pokemon Go – The Virtual World Made Into Reality

For those of you who were absorbed in the Pokemon games as a child, you may now be spending your spare time racing around various locations to catch your favour...

By Harry Fielder

CEO & Co-Founder

Harry is our fearless leader aka CEO at Umi. He's half developer, half marketer so his key role is turning our clients business goals into robust software and creative marketing solutions. When not in the office you'll find him out and about sharing his knowledge and insights to the masses at a multitude of events. In his free time he's still about the tech and most likely tinkering away with his custom PC. Side note: he's quite tall.

For those of you who were absorbed in the Pokemon games as a child, you may now be spending your spare time racing around various locations to catch your favourite Pokemon creature. Having only reached the UK in the last week compared to the US, Pokemon Go has transformed the gaming industry with a resounding 21 million daily users (Marketing Week 2016). The new Pokemon Go app, gives you the ability to live and play your childhood game in the real word by the use of Google Maps. Users can search for Pokemon across the UK and interact with other gamers whilst doing so.

So how can your business get involved?

A key functionality with this app is the ability to activate hotspots to ‘lure’ in Pokemon, as you may have already seen on many YouTube clips, once a hotspot is live, gamers instantly race to these locations to catch their beloved Pokemon. Setting up a hotspot near you could benefit your business, a tired or thirsty gamer may stop by your business to grab a drink or a snack. Once one the these ‘lures’ are set up they can only be live for 30 minutes, so make sure you have an enticing offer to give out to your guests when you launch it.

What’s next?

New opportunities for companies are becoming available through this ever-increasingly popular app, including ‘cost per visit models’. So keep an eye out for these!