Prizes such as T’s Pub pizza and Dante’s frozen yogurt await users of BoodleUP, a free application that allows users to play games and win prizes.
In BoodleUP, users can play games such as “Three in a Row” to win prizes such as Quinn Popcorn and a free pants dry cleaning from Rite Way Dry Cleaners.
“[We thought about] how advertisers are going to survive in the digital world,” said Kate Snyder, BoodleUP’s Boston director of sales and marketing. “How much time do people spend playing games on their phones?”
Those are the questions the Zylo Media team asked itself when developing the free BoodleUP application, she said.
Winners of the application’s games can read the products’ description and retail price, Snyder said.
Based on a decision marketing strategy, winners can take the offer and be “locked out” of the games for a maximum of 30 days or keep playing to access offers they like best, she said.
“Of course, [promotional marketing] is not new,” Snyder said, but advertisers who cannot or do not have the time to offer free products to consumers can do so on Boodle Up.
She said BoodleUp has 1,000 registered users who have provided a local address and their email, and more users sign up daily.
The games should become available on android phones this weekend, Snyder said, and are accessible in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
In “Find Two Before Boo,” users pull 12 curtains and must find two identical offers before flipping the monkey card, which ends the game.
The games allow players to win many times, “but not so much that it would not be economically feasible,” said Colin Snyder, co-founder and chief technology officer of Zylo Media.
BoodleUp targeted students and young professionals by first launching in Boston after a 2010 beta test in Portland, he said.
Remi Trudel, a marketing professor at the School of Management, said the games are too simple for users.
Because users have to take the extra step of physically getting their prize instead of receiving samples directly, they are less likely to try products, Trudel said.
But he said he does see an advantage in engaging consumers through a game.
“If you spend time and effort into something, you value that thing at the other end more,” he said.
Trudel, however, said he does not expect BoodleUp to succeed without some changes.
Prizes should be categorized so people can look for specific products, and winners may not want to take the extra step of collecting them, Trudel said.
He said the company would also have to attract more businesses to attract users.
“Most apps have a pretty high user rate early on, so it’s to get people to continue to use it [that is challenging],” he said.
The games he compared to “tic-tac-toe” are too simple, he said.
Although Colin Snyder said he plans to design more games, he said users who win about once a minute will not become bored.
“It’s the feeling that people get when they win [that] is the driving force,” he said.
Some Boston University students said the application was useful.
“It’s like one of those games that everyone has on their phone, but it’s actually useful,” said College of Arts and Sciences senior Zeynep Deligonul, who regularly plays games on her phone.
Rose Bridges, a first-year graduate student in the College of Fine Arts who played “Three in a Row” while she sat at a table in the George Sherman Union, said she found some advantages to the application.
“I just moved here, and I would like to find [out] about the fun stuff I can do around here,” she said.
But College of Communication senior Johnathan Gaudet said he would not play the game.
“I just can’t imagine the prizes are always going to be that great,” he said.
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