DeNA, a Japanese company who runs the Japan’s possibly-No.1 social network Mobage Town, announced [J] that they would change their current brands, Mobage Town(mbga.jp) in Japan and Plus+ Network (by ngmoco, which DeNA purchased in October 2010) in overseas, into single brand Mobage from March 28, 2011.
At now, Japanese Mobage-Town’s logo is mix of Japanese “Mobage” and English “Town”, which is not understandable in overseas.
DeNA declared to proceed their two growth strategy, “X-device”(Cross-device) is to construct platform over multiple devices like cellphone, smartphone, PC, etc. “X-border”(Cross-border) is to broaden their platform globally, to English-speaking countries and China at this point.
DeNA explained the design image of the new logo is “An eye to gaze the world, and the future”. They also said that people can share joys and emotions by eyes even without words.
“The eye part design is given a meaning to wish users enjoy communication in virtual community, where you can not see others faces. The color “Mobage Blue” is a color of sky and ocean to connect the border-less world, also a color can express globally understandable feeling of trust.”
A big alliance on PC-based game platform with Yahoo! Japan, Yahoo! Mobage logo will be also changed [J], too.
See Also:
DeNA Exports Mobage In Alliance With Samsung
Gree Opens English Corporate Site – How About Others?
Great start and excellent objective.
But how do you pronounce “Mobage”?
And is it really a brand image that works in US? Hmmmm. I am having a difficult time saying it.
North Americans may need something simpler. Successful brands = “Yahoo”, “Google”, “Twitter”, “Groupon”… easy to say, very very simple, almost sarcastic, not deep.
Once I can say it I may love it! Good direction!!
I am inquiring about that. If it is same as current Japanese one, that sounds moe-ba-gay.
You may listen on their TV commercials, the third one in this article,
http://asiajin.com/blog/2010/11/26/loveplus-followers-assaulting-cellphone-gree-and-mobage-town/
I had a discussion about this name with a DeNA executive when first reports started circulating about the name change and the use of Mobage as the brand in the US and elsewhere (i.e. on CNN.com).
That person said DeNA expects Mobage to be pronounced like Akky wrote below: that’s pretty unfortunate.