Brand Strategy Article in full

I'd like to thank Brand Strategy (November issue) for using my piece promoting advergames in their magazine. The counter argument by Jonathan Salem Baskin (The author of "Branding Only Works on Cattle) also makes very interesting reading. I actually think some of his points are similar to mine. Thanks also to Dan Mascall for locating this opportunity for me. Anyway - Here is the unedited (sorry) version of my piece. It's worth noting I wrote it two months ago. Already many things have moved on....

Everyone wants to win

The fundamental success of gaming is due to everyone’s desire to beat their rivals and impress their peers - To experience the thrill of achieving an easily identifiable victory in a World where real life success can be hard to gauge.

Advergaming taps into these motivations and uses them to create an online experience that supports specific marketing objectives. Gaming can be used to drive brand awareness, educate about product features or provide compelling calls to action. Conventional marketing campaigns struggle to compete for the attention of a passive audience. Advergaming uses basic psychology to guarantee the audience actively participates in the brand experience and has fun while doing it.

From the marketer’s perspective, advergames allow your audience to feel an instant positive emotion directly connected to your campaign content. For example, consider an online racing game where you can pick up a new set of branded tyres half way around the track that improve your virtual car’s grip.
“Wow – I won!” and all because of the benefit of that product. Now I’ll challenge my friends to beat my lap time, encouraging them to share the brand experience (and appreciate my glorious achievement!).

What turns a game into a successful marketing tool?

Organisations as diverse as charities, drinks manufacturers and political parties have all used advergaming to promote their messages. The most successful campaigns follow three fundamental rules:

1. Fun first, message second. Whatever your game concept, it must be entertaining. You want people to instantly enjoy their experience and share it with their friends. Don’t bury the potential for fun beneath bland marketing messages or overt sales objectives. For example, several campaigns have failed because they ask for the participant’s email address before he or she is emotionally engaged with the game and willing to part with any personal data. Virtual Worlds that insist on a user joining before giving them access to any fun content can suffer a similar fate.

2. Choose a simple promotional message. The player’s primary focus will be on completing the game, so don’t expect them to remember anything too complicated. Large amounts of information don’t sit well in an entertainment-driven format.

3. Incentivise response. Good advergames will incentivise the player to perform a set action after participation and reward them for taking that next step. For example, a Monty Python themed campaign for Spam asked users to enter product barcode numbers in return for unlocking various in-game enhancements. Last year the Telegraph’s Fantasy Football Game rewarded participants with player transfers for entering code words found in the paper.

The rise of social networking gaming

An advergame has greater intrinsic entertainment value than most marketing content. This gives you a lot of leverage when it comes to ensuring return on investment. For example, third parties may be willing to promote your game for free via their website because it gives them a way to entertain their own audiences. Their motivations may be kudos, personal allegiance to your brand, or to generate revenue by placing their own advertising around your content. They would be unlikely to consider a similar deal with more conventional marketing content.

This means that a few days spent ‘seeding’ an advergame on relevant websites can produce high volume traffic far more cost-effectively than paid-for advertising. (MIKES NEW COMMENT - This is changing VERY fast at the moment and will probably be no longer be true by the end of the year in the UK)
A new wave of social network websites specialising in games such as Newgrounds.com and Kongregate.com make this seeding very simple. These sites allow anybody to upload their content for free, combining professionally created advergames with material added by highly skilled and passionate amateurs.

A wealth of ideas, instant feedback and recognition can be gained by participating in these communities. Just as importantly, they provide a shop window for the thousands of other sites looking for free, interactive content for their own properties.

If you want to understand how these social network sites will develop in the future, turn on an Xbox and make some new friends. You will soon experience the pride of being personally invited to participate in a team game by other people on the Xbox network who are impressed by your skills.

In terms of marketing strategy, there’s obviously a balance to be struck between the free traffic to be gained through social gaming networks and the need to control the context in which your campaign is viewed and the profile of the audience you attract. However, the ability to drive high volumes of traffic and engage that audience in a richly interactive experience makes seeding a powerful technique.

But what makes a great game?

Of course, to be successful advergaming relies on creating highly addictive and enjoyable games in the first place. Some brands find games fit naturally with their ethos and style. Others may dismiss games as not suitable for their target audience or messages. However, there are remarkably few brands where an effective advergaming strategy cannot be devised. Here are some pointers to consider when brainstorming ideas:

· Target audience: set aside the notion that advergames will only appeal to children or computer geeks. The online gaming demographic has broadened significantly in the last couple of years. For example short-format ‘casual games’ attract a significant audience of women in their 30s and 40s, whilst games such as Scrabulous on Facebook re-introduced traditional board games to the social networking population. Similarly, advergames can be used to attract any audience you want, as long as you pick the correct genre. The successful “Dyson Telescope Game” and the RNLI’s recent “Brain Waves” campaign both utilised puzzle-based formats to attract an adult female audience. Games for young males lean towards racing and shooting challenges.

· Nostalgia and originality – everyone’s played with a paper aeroplane in their past and yet that didn’t stop 200 million of them being thrown via an online advergame created to promote Microsoft Flight Simulator. Giving a new twist to an established game format is very effective. The audience will immediately understand the basic game objective and enjoy the feeling of nostalgia it may evoke. At the same time they can admire the novel elements and creativity of your particular version

· Utilising existing rivalries – GMTV’s Toonattik.tv website asks children to score points for either the boys’ or girls’ team. This encourages kids to keep playing to ensure their team is victorious each week. Sporting loyalties, professions, countries and age groups can all be used in this way to build a sense of competitive spirit and give people a reason to want to keep playing

· Personalisation - many commercial games including Spore and Little Big Planet now allow users to completely personalise their gaming experience. This helps the game to stand out from the crowd and drives player loyalty. Sophisticated personalisation is now also within the scope of advergames. For example, the latest LEGO BIONICLE online game allows children to create new levels and share their creations with others. This has the added bonus of increasing the lifespan of the promotion as the challenge to other players is continually growing.

The future of advergaming

Walkers Crisps recently demonstrated that big brands are willing to push the concept of user-generated content even further by launching their “Invent the next flavour” competition. Getting your audience to collaborate with you in shaping the future of your brand is an enormously powerful technique. In the gaming world, new software and online tools are making it ever easier for enthusiasts to build their own games with high production values. In the near future I predict this trend will extend towards “Designagaming”. The more adventurous brands will run competitions for the public to create advergames on their behalf. The money previously used for content creation will be switched to prizes for the most successful games and building libraries of assets for willing developers to utilise. Why have one campaign when your target audience can create a hundred different variations, all competing to become your most effective marketing material?

A more imminent development will be the impact of the growing number of virtual worlds being launched by brands such as LEGO and MTV to compete with Second Life and World of Warcraft. These projects represent the natural evolution of the online gaming experience and offer enormous marketing potential. A good quality advergame currently has an average session time of around ten minutes. But if the same game is presented as an integral part of a virtual world, then the capacity for a brand to engage and entertain the visitor online can be extended indefinitely. You may never want to leave a branded virtual world if the game content inside is good enough.