Tooling up for digital sales Princess Auto aims to attract customers with release of first-ever retail-related augmented reality videogame By: Martin Cash Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023

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This article was published 09/01/2023 (669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In years gone by one of the tag-lines used by Princess Auto, the 50-store Winnipeg-based hardware chain was, “The Unique World of Princess Auto.”

Where else can you find a portable diesel fuel transfer pump or a pistol-grip air punch and flange tool? Many of the items are sold under Princess Auto’s in-house brand, Powerfist.

In keeping with that “unique” theme, Princess Auto has teamed up with the local video game developer, ZenFri, to release what is believed to be the first-ever retail-related AR (Augmented Reality) location-based game.

Far from a cheesy store promotional item, Powerfist Defence Force is meant to be a fun game about alien invaders who plan to steal humanity’s tools — by attacking Princess Auto stores, of course — to improve their fleet of space ships and to send humankind back to the stone age.

Players defend the stores and gain tools to destroy the alien ship and re-build them to be deployed against the aliens.

“We wanted to do something a little non-traditional,” said David Mathes, Princess Auto’s head of business development. “We wanted to try something that was not obviously a utility like our regular ad channels and try to invite people to come to the stores for different reasons.”

There are currently no store discounts or loyalty points that are part of the game — though it is something that could be introduced later — but there are incentives to play the game in the store, like quicker access to parts and tools to re-build the ships and QR codes around the store that provide in-game benefits.

Mathes insists this was not “an extravagant investment that might make prices go up” but rather a fun experiment that may bring people into the stores who may not even have been familiar with Princess Auto’s Powerfist brand.

Princess Auto owns the intellectual property (IP) and other than a fee for service ZenFri, one of the largest independent game developers in the city with about 10 employees, will not make additional revenue regardless of how popular the game may become

For Dee King, one the co-founders of ZenFri, said working with Princess Auto was “fantastic”. ZenFri has developed games for third-party partners in the past and has built and released many on their own, including a location-based mobile app called Clandestine Anomaly that came out just before Pokemon Go became a sensation. Its latest release is The Last Taxi, a virtual reality narrative adventure game.

“We love the concept,” said King. “It lets people do something while they are in the store. It they want to pick up some rope or go to the surplus section they can find some QR codes and play.”

“We love the concept… It lets people do something while they are in the store. It they want to pick up some rope or go to the surplus section they can find some QR codes and play.”–Dee King, co-founder of ZenFri

But you don’t have to be in the store to enjoy the game.

“We tried to create engagement, where they never have to visit the store, just extra stuff that gets them going,” they said.

Mathes said the game is intended to be fun and any marketing value that accrues will be a bonus. In the future they are thinking about perhaps providing discounts or coupons to the top players on the leader board.

But Mathes does acknowledge that depending on its success it could get his marketing team to start to think about attracting a new audience.

“We have a typical customer base that comes through the store and our traditional marketing and advertising channel keep inviting the same people,” he said. “This gives us a chance to try something different.”

Having said that, there is a bit of a myth that the Princess Auto customers are old people who don’t have smartphones and don’t know how to use technology and the Internet.

But Mathes said, “In fact a customer base that is interested in figuring things out, fixing things, doing research has some of the highest usage of technology.”

Any further marketing that might emanate out of the game will come later if it eventually builds up a user base.

“This is intended to be fun and to build out the name of both Powerfist and some of the ideas of what we do in the store,” Mathes said. “And to celebrate the customers a bit from that standpoint.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca