islandhippy

Hats off to Jennifer of Once Upon an App for some inspired guerilla marketing! She must be searching for blog posts about iPhone and iPad apps then leaving messages about her company’s recently launched apps. Like a true pro, she takes the time to read a couple of posts on the blog to ensure her message is relevant and not binned as spam. Jennifer recently left a message on our blog introducing “Piffle’s ABC Book of Funny Animals”, a new app from her company Once Upon an App. I decided to make her 69.3 cents richer (the cost of the app less Apple’s 30% cut) and download the app to my iPhone. What the company has done is produce a song and a couple of games from of an out-of-copyright kid’s book. Piffle’s ABC Book of Funny Animals was written by Howard Eyre Altemus in the early 20th century; I’m not sure whether he was also the illustrator. You can either listen to the poem being sung while viewing the antiquated illustrations or you can opt to play one of the games. In “Choose a Letter”, you pick a letter of the alphabet which reveals an animal’s name beginning with that letter and four illustrations of animals, only one of which is the correct animal. The second game is basically the other way around: you choose an animal from a series of illustrations then have to guess the animal’s name from a list of four possibles. If you make a mistake the app very politely says “Close, try again” instead of “Wrong, fool”. And with animals such as vicunya and bruin, your kid is liable to slip up. Olive tried the app and enjoyed looking at the animal illustrations and listening to the song and she can guess some of the animal names. If this app really takes off I think I’ll republish the book and cash in on Jennifer’s success!

Download the app here.