Summit Entertainment is promoting the latest installment of the Twilight film franchise, "Eclipse," both with ad-supported and premium mobile games.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Movie Game and The Twilight Saga: Memory Quest were developed by gaming company GameHouse. The mobile gaming initiative includes both ad-supported and premium components, and dovetails with a larger Twilight promotional campaign that aims to engage fans in as many channels as possible coming off of Eclipse's release in theaters on Wednesday.

?The strategy behind the Twilight mobile games was simple; to bring one of the most popular book and movie franchises of all time to mobile devices,? said David Zemke, director of global marketing and publishing at GameHouse, Seattle. ?We wanted to let the fans relive and remember the experience on their mobile devices.?

?Ask any 17-20 year old what they consider as the most useful or desired thing they want, and a majority of them will say a ?mobile device,? he said. ?Over 80 percent of teenagers 13-19 own a mobile device in some form.

?When you combine that statistic with the target audience of The Twilight Saga in book and film form, it just makes sense.?

Santa Monica, CA-based Summit Entertainment is a motion picture development, financing, production and distribution studio, which handles all aspects of marketing and distribution for its films.

GameHouse claims to be one of the largest casual gaming destinations on the Internet.

Specifics of the campaign
When it comes to an entertainment juggernaut such as the Twilight franchise, marketing campaigns tend to exert cross-channel reach, which sometimes includes the creation of mobile games.

For example, when Disney was promoting the release of "Toy Story 3" last month, it launched an iPhone application that included both free and premium mobile games (see story).

The Twilight Saga is no stranger to these tactics, as it launched its first mobile game, The Twilight Saga: The Movie Game, for the iPhone and iPod touch last November (see story).

?We have released several mobile games based on the Twilight Saga, which have all been successful and popular with the Twilight fan-base,? Mr. Zemke said. ?For the Eclipse movie, we geared up with the biggest launch to date, releasing two Twilight games.

The mobile games are available for download in the Apple App Store and built for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The games engage users with a variety of different game play environments.

Earlier installments in the line of mobile games have focused on trivia and puzzles to draw users in.

The new games both build on that formula and branch out into new waters.

?The first game [The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Movie Game] continues with the trivia and puzzle-based format and will provide die-hard Twilight fans with all the details of their favorite movie series,? Mr. Zemke said. ?The second game ? The Twilight Saga: Memory Quest ? takes the brand in a new direction with a game which will engage users and test their memory skills with more action/puzzle game play.?

Here is a screen grab of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse Movie Game:

The monetization for the three Twilight mobile games works as follows:

The Twilight Saga: Memory Quest can be purchased in the Apple App Store for $2.99. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Movie Game is free, and supported through in-application advertising. The Twilight Saga: Movie Game is free, and ad-supported, but also lets users purchase more content within the application, which turns off the advertising.

GameHouse and Summit are promoting the mobile games across several different marketing channels, which a particular emphasis on social media.

?We are reaching out to media and the fan-base of Twilight through various websites and social media,?
Mr. Zemke said. ?The important thing is to reach the fans wherever they spend time, which these days, is online and in social sites.

?We are also running fairly large-scale online search engine marketing and social marketing campaigns to drive downloads of the Twilight iPhone games,? he said.

All of the mobile developer?s other applications also link to Twilight mobile games.

Here is a screen grab of a call to action prompting users to download The Twilight Saga: Movie Game from one of GameHouse?s applications:

Final Take
Peter Finocchiaro, editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer, New York.