• by March 31, 2011

Landing a tie-in vehicle for clients such as P&G, Outback Steakhouse and 7-Eleven to reach the elusive and growing market of female casual gamers, Seattle-based marketing and promotions agency Rally Marketing Group has agreed to acquire PassionFruit Games, a pioneer in developing games based on paranormal romance novels. The deal is expected to close within a month.

While making such a purchase marks a new direction for Rally, Brenda Narciso, vice president of strategy and planning, told Online Media Daily that the agency "chose to take advantage of an existing company and revenue stream in an attractive and relatively untapped market."

Narciso pointed out that 30 million regular romance novel readers spend an average of $100 monthly on such books, with sales of paranormal romance books doubling since 2004, primarily due to the popularity of the "Twilight" series. Casual gaming has 141 million participants, with 74% of them women -- and high reach and heavy usage in the 45-54 and 55-plus age ranges -- Narciso said, citing comScore research.

A year ago, PassionFruit Games released "Tiger Eye Part 1: Curse of the Riddle Box," based on the paranormal novel "Tiger Eye" by Marjorie M. Liu. Since then, it has become one of the biggest-selling casual games based on any novel, according to Rally.

Narciso said Rally will be working on the development of a second game in the "Tiger Eye" series, due for release in September. Plans are also afoot for a tablet version of the first game. In addition, she said, Rally will explore various authors and genres for future game concepts, as well campaign-specific games for clients.

Rally plans to retain all current PassionFruit Games staff, who will work out of Rally's Seattle headquarters.