Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Scvngr lands Dunkin' Donuts as game client

By Rodney H. Brown

While it may be counter-intuitive to be promoting iced coffee in early March, Dunkin Donuts has teamed up with Scvngr Inc. to bring the Cambridge company’s mobile game platform to Dunkin locations so customers can win things such as Boston Bruins T-shirts – hence the ‘iced’ coffee – as well as discounts on coffee and donuts.

According to a press release, the game will run through the end of March, and in addition to the rewards mentioned above, players can also take a shot at winning tickets to Celtics and Bruins games. Example games including taking a photo of the player with iced coffee and including the outside temperature in the photo caption, or texting a ‘pep talk’ in which the player tries to pump up Bruins players for their next game.

In January, Scvngr raised $15 million in a round of financing led by new investor Balderton Capital, a European private equity firm. Existing investors Highland Capital Partners and Google Ventures, the venture arm of Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), returned to participate in the round, which valued the two-year-old company at $100 million.

That new money brought Scvngr’s total venture investment to near $20 million and added some international breadth to the Boston startup’s board of directors as Barry Maloney, a partner at London-based Balderton Capital, joined Scvngr’s board of directors.