Their Walmart, Argos

A review of Argos’ advergame on Adverblog with a revealing comment on the relative size of UK retailers:

I have no idea who Argos is, and the site isn’t innovative at all in graphics and interactivity, but it’s based around toys from the ’80s, and this is enough to grab my attention.

Maybe the game will change that…

quick links 8-Dec-06

A well crafted idea for Logitech: http://www.ballbalancer.com/

Smart but a little over-cooked game for Argos: http://www.goodgamegoodgame.com/

Whack-a-mole re-skin for the National Christmas Tree Association*: Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Trees

*only christmas trees can join.

Meal Or No Meal?

The more virals there are, the harder it is to get noticed. And as we get desensitized to the extremes of the funny, the fleshy or the foul items that crash into our inboxes our own criteria for what IS and what ISN’T worth forwarding on get ever more refined and hard to meet.
But this makes the cut for me.

Meal Or No Meal? is an advergame made to promote a handy new auction service called Price Your Meal where the items on offer are tables in restaurants. It’s a highly satirical take on Deal or no Deal, the TV quiz show for which we have Noel Edmonds to thank. I’ve not seen much of Deal or no Deal but I can safely say this is much better.
What is so impressive is the lengths to which the fellas at Chunk have gone to with the dialogue, video and production quality (the casting of the host is borderline genius - he should be on telly). All for an advergame. The bar just got a little higher.

Roadie Runner

I got sent this by the creator of this game Roadie Runner. It’s a frogger-type game for Make Roads Safe, a group that campaigns to reduce road deaths globally. There are 3 charming things about it: its simplicity, the graphics for the vehicles and the Dirty Pretty Things soundtrack. Have a look and remember to sign the petition.

quick links 16-Nov-06

A smart, well produced Sonic derivative for the School Food Trust - called Snack Dash. I find it a little too hard - but then again, I’m not 12 years old anymore.

Aygo is a weeny car that Toyota make and this is a game about it.

Big, Flat and Twisted is not a game about the Millenium Bridge. It’s for Capri-Sun and it’s very good.

Top ten viral marketing mistakes

This is an interesting list posted on e-consultancy but created by the folks at AzACreations. Apart from the slightly alarming thought that there are even 10 ways to make mistakes with viral marketing, this is a handy list for advergame creators:

1. Neglecting promotion and seeding
Utilise mailing lists, press releases, forums and invest in banner impressions or PPC.

2. Failing to create an incentive for users to pass it along
Make the content itself good/funny – according to AzACreations, 88% of web users say they have forwarded on jokes or cartoons.

3. Failing to capitalise on a campaign that proves successful
If your campaign starts to take off, ask yourself whether you can get any further publicity, further monetise incoming traffic or use it to generate leads.

4. Trying to copy a popular viral campaign when it doesn’t fit your aims
If a campaign isn’t suited for you, you will end up with something that’s out of synch with your brand.

5. Failing to integrate viral campaigns with other marketing efforts
Implement the concept of viral marketing to other campaign processes, and test out different types of viral campaigns.

6. Using a sledgehammer rather than a fine scalpel
Simple ideas, such as email signatures, often produce better results.

7. Failing to understand the SEO value of viral marketing
Try designing viral pieces around your important keywords, and provide users with easy means to link to your application or site.

8. Forgetting to ask the user to take action
Encourage them to submit an email or sign up for a newsletter, as well as adding the application to their website or blog.

9. Not making it easy enough for users to forward content
Use send to friend forms, single button clicks etc.

10. Confusing your marketing message with ‘the hook’ that will attract users
Don’t be too self promoting.

Only one thing I would add - use a specialist.

quick links 16-Oct-06

We keep telling whoever will listen that girls like games and a lot of smart game productions have come through recently targeted squarely at them - here’s a couple:

Kiss Chaser - created for Tampax

Action Impulse - created for Unilever’s Impulse

Chrysler.com - an Alexa rank of 9,000?

How can this be? Chrysler.com has an Alexa rank of 9,000. For an online brochure? Surely this is a spike caused by a runaway piece of viral content?

But no - a small amount of casual Googling reveals that Chrysler have been using branded games with huge success for over 2 years now. As a consequence of this partnership with Wild Tangent, they have found that online activity has had an increasing influence on the whole selling chain:

Chrysler is using a variety of custom branded games involving their products to lift its brand recognition and purchase intent among consumers. A “Chrysler Golf” title signed up 124,732 players and resulted in a 33% lift in purchase intent, while a “Jeep 4×4 Trail of Life” game got 383,403 users …and more than 1,000 Jeeps had been sold to players of the game in the last 18 months.

Recognising that I might be the last person in the games industry (or on the planet) to have spotted Chrysler’s investment in advergaming I still can’t believe this has been going on for so long; as our feeling is that it’s only this year that ad agencies and brands are accepting games as part of the language of marketing so that that they’re discussed as known feature of the landscape rather than ‘unknown territory’.

What I particularly like about what they have done is the ‘if we build it they will come’ approach. These may have been created as one-off promotional games but there is ongoing value in aggregating all the content to give their target audience exactly what they would have gone elsewhere for. Which means that once more I can post a link to this: It’s time to experiment 3.

Hitching a ride?

There’s a boom in advergames for cars at the moment, and some are much better than others.

A recent game for the Toyota Yaris was nicely produced, but it squanders this excellent foundation by being too difficult to understand and play.

Worse, it drives straight past its target audience. If the idea was to market the Yaris to young women flaunting their car about town, then this wasn’t helped by the game’s harsh colours, structure and complexity. In fact, the car at the centre of the game comes off like an aggressive prowler stalking the neighbourhood. Not a good look.

My guess is this was not developed by a games specialist, but rather by an in-house web designer or programmer who decided to try their hand at games design. Why is this my guess? The final product seems not to be based on solid market research, meaning that while the production and the design are pretty good, the fundamentals are missing.

This don’t mean I dismiss the possibility of using advergames to market cars to young women — far from it. For example, racing games such as Peugeot Time Trials and Driving BMW may seem masculine, but their simple objectives and adrenaline charged experiences have made them popular with diverse audiences, which naturally would include young women.

At 3RD sense we recently created an advergame for Nissan that we hope is another example of how content and gameplay can be tailored to the particular interests of a target market segment. The idea behind this game was to show how an extreme, outdoors model of car would complement an active lifestyle. In the game, characters ride snowboards down a valley, hurtling towards Nissan Xtrails parked by the finishing line. The game engages with its target audience because it is fun, has an unobtrusive soundtrack, is more graphically advanced than most other car games and above all, it gets the adrenaline pumping.

If we want to make successful games for the car industry, or any industry for that matter, we must be creative, take risks and move onto new things if our idea isn’t working. Above all, we should always tailor the gameplay and content to the target audience and objectives. If we’re not onto something good then we should get out of the drivers seat and find another ride.

5 ways to protect kids from junk food marketing

The (curiously named) Obesity Task Force has issued a report highlighting the massive hike in food companies’ activity that is now targeted towards children online and is discussed in detail in this Guardian article published yesterday.

Children are being targeted by junk food manufacturers through internet advertising, chatrooms, text messages and “advergames” on websites, an obesity watchdog warned yesterday, calling for global action to protect their health.

Self-regulation by the food industry has failed, according to a report from the UK-based International Obesity Task Force to a conference in Sydney, Australia. “New forms of advertising are increasingly being employed which bypass parental control and target children directly,” says the report by Tim Lobstein, coordinator of the taskforce’s childhood obesity group.

“These include internet promotion (using interactive games, free downloads, blogs and chatterbots), SMS texting to children’s cell phones, product promotions in schools and pre-schools and brand advertising in educational materials.”

It’s no surprise that self-regulation has failed - it never really stood a chance. It’s the corporate equivalent of the fad-diet. But perhaps what is surprising is how cynically some companies have moved to exploit the lack of ANY regulation governing marketing to children online. While the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is pressurising Ofcom to reduce the exposure of kids to junk food ads on TV (and with the support of the British Heart Foundation amongst others) there is clearly a need for a cross-media regulatory body with teeth - and nice, sharp, shiny white ones too.

Without an effective media neutral regulatory body, it’s left to the stakeholders - food manufacturers, media owners, digital agencies and parents - to figure out what’s fit for kids’ consumption. As an advergame creator, we have a responsible role to play in this process and it’s one we take seriously, but you can’t regulate successfully from the bottom up - this is what we have now and it clearly isn’t working so here’s my 5 alternative ways to protect children:

1. Manufacturers - make healthier food. So simple it’s brilliant! I have found that my kids *will* actually eat food that hasn’t been pumped to within an inch of it’s life with sodium, saturated fat and sugar.
2. Government - tax junk food. If they won’t take out the unhealthy bits, then add an ‘NHS surcharge’.
3. Parents - do your bit. Lead by example - explain what a bad diet can do. And figure out how the parental filters work on the pc.
4. Agencies - anticipate the regulations; they will come. Be more scupulous and exercise some sense of ethical propriety.
5. Sweden - move there. They’re just so much more grown up about these things.

Quick links 25-August-06

Appletiser game - http://www.appletiser.co.uk/obsession/obsession.html
Toyota Aygo game - http://www.aygodriving.co.uk/interface01_content.htm
*Pick of the week* - Nortel Networks game - http://www44.nortel.com/

Two types of marketing

Marketing is changing, again, with a long-overdue move away from what is now called the interruption approach.

What do I mean by this? The traditional model for advertising is to find an activity that your customers enjoy and then to interrupt it with a message. Whether we’re watching television, listening to radio, sitting in the cinema or just walking down the street, we’re interrupted continuously. When it happens, we must choose whether to act on that message — but if we’re not interested in the interruption, we’re more likely to use that time to fetch another beer from the fridge.

The interruption model is finally starting to retreat - giving way to permission-based marketing (most famously written about by Seth Godin).
The internet in a way had the opportunity to change advertising for the better, but for the last 10 years online advertisers have relied on interrupting the user. In fact, the interruption model has probably been pursued more aggressively online than in other forms of media. Pop-ups, interstitials — it’s all about getting in the user’s way, and these sort of things haven’t helped the market.

But now, at last, we’re starting to recognise the opportunity to create engaging content that we can integrate with commercial messages — content like advergames. Consumers don’t avoid rich engaging content precisely because it’s not an interruption. In fact, they pull this content in to their world, rather than just filtering it as it’s shoved their way.

Advergaming is not a broadcast medium — it’s one where every audience member chooses the content and experiences they want, creating their own package of entertainment. And it’s within that environment that we are best able to deliver a valuable message.

The interruption model is still going strong, but it faces a huge challenge: the limited amount of consumer attention available for capture. The problem is this: no one gives you their attention just because you ask for it. After all, why should they? They’ve got better things to do.

If you can’t force feed them, you have to give something in exchange for connecting with you, and that often means engaging content. This is how we structure long-term relationships with game players on behalf of brands.

Everybody’s an expert

Marketing managers often fall into one of two categories.

The first kind is looking after the whole marketing cake. Of this, advertising is a small chunk. Of this, online is a small chunk. Of this, games are an even smaller chunk. So we’re there on the radar — but we’re off to the side.

The other kind of marketer has all these things to do too, but has a bit more freedom. This marketer likes games, and gets right into it. Advergames become almost their whole radar and the other stuff becomes less interesting and just falls away.

But whether the marketer is focused on marketing in general or advergames in particular, the briefing process should still begin with the question: “What are you attempting to achieve here?”

We don’t kick off the conversation by saying a game is necessarily the right thing. We start by asking what they are trying to do. Then if we think a game can help, we’ll push them in that direction.

But there are times where we’ll say, “Why do you want a game? I don’t think it’s really going to work.” After all, it’s much better to be honest and have these guys come back with a better brief rather than proceeding in a way that isn’t going to do them any favours or make anyone any money.

Advergaming grows up

In the earliest days of our industry, most advergames were fairly clunky rebadges of existing games. So you’d create a basic game for one product, then someone would come along and say we want our True Blu Cola™ in there instead, and we’d plaster their logo all over it and charge them a fee.

That was well and good, but there was no real conversation about what the objectives might be other than having a game that sported their brand. It was very much a “me too” thing. Marketers reasoned that games were cool, sticky content, and decided to involve some of their brands. And why not?
Luckily, the market is now much more mature. You’ve still got jokers who are willing to take anyone’s money and run, but most advergames developers now have a much more sophisticated approach to creating what’s effectively an online advertising solution.

They’ll now invest in a proper briefing process in which they try to establish what the objectives are for the campaign, what the assets are, and how you can measure the game’s return.

Why has this happened? Simple: marketers are seeing the benefits of developing bespoke content for their campaign, even if it costs a little more than rebranding someone else’s content.

If someone still wants a rebadged game and their objective is simply to have a game, then that’s fine, because the rebadged game has met an objective (even if it hasn’t helped their business).

But there is a lot more you can do with games, and people are starting to realise their potential and be more ambitious.

I’m not saying these games must be created from scratch. After all, there’s no such thing as an original, creative idea. Everything takes influences from other parts of life. We reuse game engines, we reuse bits of code, we reuse promotional ideas.

The point is not that games must be created from scratch, but that every solution we offer must fit with what our client is trying to achieve. It must be created on that basis, rather than just because we’ve got an engine that’s lying dormant and we want to use it for another game.