Meet the man behind Kate Upton's tweet that will never die
youtubeMobile gaming company Machine Zone spent $40 million on its campaign with Kate UptonIf you've signed on to Twitter anytime in the past few months there's a decent chance you've been confronted by a promoted tweet from Kate Upton.
Upton's tweets beg users to "be her hero" and download the breakout multiplayer mobile game "Game of War: Fire Age," or watch her Superbowl ad for the company.
Baffled and frustrated users have tried reporting Upton's tweets as spam, flagging them as "offensive" content, yet it's nearly impossible escape her promotional messages online.
The man behind the tweets is Gabriel Leydon, founder of gaming company Machine Zone and creator of the breakout hit Game of War: Fire Age. A recent Bloomberg story on Fire Age and mobile gaming reveals that Leydon's company, Machine Zone, "spent $40 million on a four-month campaign with Upton as its spokeswoman."
"In the hours after the Super Bowl, the mobile game, for a few hours at least, succeeded, as measured by rankings from Apple's App Store. Which is exactly what Leydon had hoped for," Robert Kolker at Bloomberg reports.
Aided in part by its media blitz, Game of War now grosses more than $1 million a day, according to Think Gaming, which is twice as much as it was bringing in a year ago.
And this could just be the beginning.
Michael Pachter, a gaming analyst at Wedbush Securities, tells Bloomberg that by next Super Bowl it won't just be Fire Age vs. Clash of Clans. "You might see 10 ads," he says.
In the meantime, blocking @KateUpton seems to work.