The Travel Channel has partnered with Booyah, makers of the location-based iPhone application MyTown, to promote upcoming Food Wars episodes.

The campaign, led by appssavvy, Booyah?s direct sales team partner, is designed to engage users of MyTown, where players are able to check-in to and own their favorite real-world locations. Fans will also use the social gifting aspects available in the game, as well as being able to stream in-application full-screen trailers of upcoming Food Wars episodes.

?The Travel Channel is a new exclusive partner, and they are making a huge push into mobile in 2010,? said Chris Cunningham, founder and CEO of appssavvy, New York. ?This more from a sponsorship angle to provide value.

?If you combine competitors FourSquare and GoWalla, MyTown?s audience is actually bigger and more spread out geographically,? he said. ?The Travel Channel Food Wars campaign is a nice transition from the integration into MyTown we recently did with H&M.

?We?ve been in conversation with the client and their agency and for a while, and the ability to integrate video trailers made it a no brainer for the Travel Channel?the client is extremely thrilled.?

The Travel Channel, recently acquired by Scripps Networks Interactive, is available in more than 95 million U.S. cable homes. Its mobile content platform, Travel Channel Go, is a provider of mobile travel video and audio content.

Booyah, headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, is dedicated to creating new forms of entertainment to the masses by bringing together elements of the real world and the digital world.

The entire development team draws its creativity not only from highly respected studios, including Blizzard Entertainment, Activision, EA and Insomniac Games, but also from industries such as the semi-conductor, consumer Web and social gaming space.

Appssavvy is a direct sales team that connects hundreds of social media applications on Facebook, MySpace, Google and Apple?s iPhone with leading brands and agencies.

Partnered with the largest vertical social applications in entertainment, moms, travel, games and pets, appssavvy provides advertisers with contextually relevant programs.

Food Wars go mobile
The Travel Channel is promoting Food Wars, a show which pits iconic dishes in the same city against each other, though MyTown, an iPhone game that recently surpassed 1.5 million players and is growing at a rate of more than 130,000 per week.

MyTown players that check-in to a restaurant, grocery store, or other food-related location, will earn valuable Food Wars-branded in-game items, which can be used to help a player collect points and upgrade their town.

In addition to these items, full-screen in-application trailers for upcoming Food Wars episodes will be streamed to these player?s phones, which appssavvy claims is a first-of-its-kind campaign.

With the recent addition of social features to MyTown, users will have the ability to send items to one another.

The Travel Channel will be the first advertiser to reap the benefits of this feature.

Players can help their friends? progress through the game by gifting points, earning items such as the Food Wars-branded items, which in turn increases the exposure of the campaign.

?In addition to contextual relevance, the ability to highlight and target video trailers is pretty dynamic, and was one of the larger selling points for the Travel Channel,? Mr. Cunningham said. ?They get to expose Food Wars to an audience they know is engaged in food through video.

?By checking in at a restaurant, consumers are earning points and getting new points that are Travel Channel-branded, and they have the ability to watch a trailer for an upcoming Food Wars episode,? he said.