Using games in your marketing
Using games, stories and puzzles with your brand marketing is a growing trend, from short, sweet advergames to longer, involved, engaging ARGS. So, if you are going to consider using games, what should you think about?
Strategic vs Tactical. What I mean here is using games as a long term part of your marketing versus using them as part of a campaign that has a finite lifetime. I’ve seen very few brands, (outside of game companies ;) ) that use this method longterm. Wrigleys, with their CandyStand, is one example. Candystand is a 10+ year old site that was bought by Wrigleys; all it does it provide casual games, a short burst of mental pleasure in the way that candy provides the taste pleasure.
There’s nothing else that I’ve seen to date that fits into the strategic mould for a consumer goods product. Tactical implementations are growing fast though. They’re tied into the latest campaign, hopefully adding a different aspect beyond the marketing message.
Single game or collection: Within a campaign, are you going to one game or a series? Honda Joy of Problems have a number of games within the site and across all the other media. Other brands go the ‘viral’ route by building one and hoping it spreads. Ask yourself why you are doing the game and what best suits the ideas you are trying to convey.
For fun or for prizes. Are you going to offer a prize for the best players of your game or are you just offering it for fun? The motivations of people playing will be different and offering a prize could encourage cheating as people try to win instead of learning about your brands. But prizes will definitely draw in players and if one of the targets is just eyeballs, that is a good way of hitting that. The other choice is big or little prizes. Are you going to offer one big prize, or lots of smaller ones, such as product samples or money off your product to increase trial? It has to tie into the larger objectives; too often I see competitions that offer things like an iPod or a games console, good stuff now doubt but in no way related to what the brand is trying to sell. if you’re offering a prize, be creative in relating it back to the brand. If it’s just for fun, again it should have some relation to a brand aspect, not just an off the shelf advergame with your logo slapped on the front.
Simple vs Hard: how hard do you want to make the game. I’ve seen trivia quizes where the answers are obvious, games where there is no skill involved but no challenge. On the other end of the spectrum, ARGs require large numbers to play and collaborate as they need a lot of obscure skills to get through. Choosing where you are going requires you to know your audience and where you want them to be after playing the game. Don’t leave them too frustrated. This dynamic also relates to how hard it is to develop the game. Flash, standalone games are pretty straightforward, requiring few resources to design and develop, once out there, that’s it, it can be left alone. Fully Fledged ARGs require far larger teams to develop AND to run, they can’t be left alone and need steering guidance and interaction throughout.
One-player or collaborative: Most games require just one person to play and succeed. At the complex end of the scale, as previously mentioned, you need multiple players who collaborate to work their way through the problem as no one player would have all the answers. I’m also seeing a middle road, where a game can be played alone, but friends can be invited and played against. This has the advantage of encouraging the spread of the game - people want to play with their friends
Vehicle or component: This can be a subtle classification. With a vehicle, the objective could be to get a message in front of as many people as possible, a game is something that lots of people could play, so we’ll build a game and tack the message on. The game just carries your advertising, it’s often just considered an add-on, done because you have to have a game! As a component, it’s far more integrated into the marketing and encourages deeper engagement in what the brand is trying to say.
Open or closed journey: This is related to how interactive the game is. ARG’s/storytelling will involve listening and reacting to players, changing the journey if required. They are resourece heavy, needing lots of time and effort to manage to an effective level. For most implementations in this area, this is not required, you design the game, test it and release it. No changes required - you hope. (I have seen games, such as Google and Bourne Ultimatum, where testing my not have been as vigorous as desired and changes were having to be made during play to fix the problems, based on player feedback.
Single Site or Distributed: Are you going to make the game for one site only? Or are you going to allow it to be distributed across the web, making it embeddable in social networks and personal sites? If the latter, it makes the build more complicated, as you need to build different versions for different sites. What works on Facebook won’t work on MySpace or a blog. Know where your audience is and build something that suits them.
Distribution strategy: I’ve seen games that won’t let you enter a competition or play more than once without the player entering more email addresses. Fundamentally, this is you spamming. If your game is not good enough for people to want to spread to their friends then it’s not doing any benefits for , in fact forcing the distribution this way raises negative vibe more than positive. You do need to make it easily spreadable, either though an email mechanism, a embeddable game or through a link that takes you to the game, ie don’t bury it in a flash site where a visitor can’t go direct to it.
Budget: Don’t underestimate the cost in running a game. I’ve known marketing managers and account teams think games are cheap and easy, in the same way that they think ‘viral’ means there’s no need for marketing/distribution spend and it all magically happens. These are not quick ways to get involvement; coming up with a concept that ties in with what you are doing elsewhere and then getting it implemented effectively is expensive, especially when you really want to engage and interact with your customers. Saying that, there are ways of dipping your toes into the area with simple, fun games, just don’t expect to go all the way without some effort.
Pull all these together and you have a baseline from which to develop a gaming strategy, which hopefully delights and engages those customers you want to reach. Remember, it’s not about what you can tell them, it’s about what you can do for them to add value
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POSTED IN: Alternate Reality Experience, Competition, Engaging the Customer, Fun and Games
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