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…

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.

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.

Jacqueline Wilson said…what exactly?

First, the well known and hugely popular childrens author Jacqueline Wilson said that junk food, tv and the internet are ‘poisoning childhood‘

“They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.”

But then follows a statement of regret that standards of kids’ tv will naturally fall as a result of any loss in ad revenue brought about by a ban on junk food advertising:

“For various reasons including the lack of advertising, our children are not going to get the very best television programmes any more,” said Wilson.

I dunno. There’s always the Beeb. Or maybe for the sake or decent drama on childrens’ commercial channels we should install Krispy Kreme vending machines in all primary school classrooms. These days you just can’t have you’re cake and eat it.

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.

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.

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.

Integrated marketing

Every day, advergaming moves further up the food chain, and we take our briefs earlier and earlier in the planning process. This is a good thing, as it dramatically increases our effectiveness.

However, sometimes we still take our brief very late in the process, when the marketing campaign is almost ready to roll. As a result, we miss out on opportunities to integrate the game into the entire marketing strategy, and we may even miss out on the chance to achieve sign-off on the game concept itself.

Late briefings happen for a number of reasons. Maybe no one has considered how games can support and feed off the other elements of the campaign with well thought-out integration. Maybe they’re thinking “this campaign is almost ready to roll, better add a game to make it complete”. Sometimes it’s a scenario like “Oh look, we’ve just realised the World Cup is next month, can you come up with some World Cup related brilliant idea that we can strap on to our campaign?” Or it’s “we’ve got some money left over, so let’s do a game”.

Whether, the strategy is in place and they just want us to embellish it or there is no strategy at all, coming in late is a problem. Of course we still do our best in these situations; we always want to be proud of our work. But it’s better to be involved much earlier.

For a start, if you come in late you may not have time to get buy-in from all the decision makers. Often we’re approached by just one member of the team — from the agency or the client — and until several other people are on-board with the idea, it simply can’t go ahead. It takes time to build relationships and that can be where the process comes undone.

The other concern is how effectively the game can be integrated into the marketing strategy if the briefing occurs too late. If you want to see how an integrated campaign works, check out our work for Crusha, where we tied the game in with SMS, TV, online and the in-store experience. This level of integration — and these results — are only possible if you get in early.

Act Like a Man - drink beer

You’re a beer brand, so you need to connect with your audience through either common areas of interest (football), event-based content experiences (live music) or aspirational advertising. Right?

Not if you’re Milwaukee’s Best Light. Just create some simple, well produced, funny and original advergames that appeal to the average Joe. They left me grinning and more than a little thirsty. Can you get this stuff in London?

7 out of 8 don’t believe TV ads…

…according to new research from ITV and discussed in more depth at Big Picture. Unless 1 in 8 people have had a lobotomy, what’s most amazing here is that some people still do believe (after all, it’s on telly - it must be true).

Use a specialist

Have a look at this advergame for PJ Smoothies. It’s a well produced and thought out promotion - except for one thing - the game is a shocker. It’s such a frustrating experience that it undoes all the other good work that’s gone into it. Advergames do nothing until they engage the user - once you have their attention, a dialogue can begin and many things become possible. But a weak game undermines the whole package.

My advice? Use a specialist. Yes, this is more than just a game, but without a game that get’s my attention at its heart, it’s doing more harm than good.