Real objectives

I know I’ve mentioned the AT&T campaign before, but it’s worth discussing again with regard to the whole issue of strategic thinking in advergames design.

Achieving 87,000 hours of brand exposure — as claimed for the AT&T game — is a process goal. It’s a means to an end. It’s not an end in itself.

Strategic thinkers in marketing want to track the relationship between process goals and marketing outcomes, such as measurable increases in awareness, consideration and purchase. The advergaming industry needs to get smarter if we want to shift games from the “nice to have” basket to “must have.”

Branding is increasingly something you can offer as a metric with games and other online content. There are opportunities to deliver accountable solutions, whether you measure new leads or increases in brand awareness. When we’re accountable, we’ll have the respect of marketers.

Gamers don’t mind ads…

…and advertisers are learning to love gamers. Is the pithy headline to be distilled from the eye-wateringly impenetrable summary of a recent comScore report.

Ok, so gamers don’t really like ads but then who does?

That said, ads are an accepted part of the gamer’s landscape and most gamers accept the quid pro quo of ads and free content. Just as long as the publisher follows a consistent and ethical ad policy then the user knows what to expect and where the boundaries lie they can be deemed a necessary evil - like shaving or politicians.

However, the problem with this ‘trade-off’ approach for advertisers is 2 fold:

1. It increasingly relies on the brand being if not the ‘bad’ guy, at least the ‘tolerated but irritating’ guy, waving his arms from behind your screen saying ‘pssst - check this out’. Who wants to be that?
2. It assumes the current model for ad-funded content remains unchanged; with ads kept away from the content like foxes on a chicken farm.

But there is another way and advergames are a part of it.

Brands need to profitably engage with their audience and, whatever the medium, this needs to happen through good ideas - for tv programmes, events, websites and games. Only through strong original content can a brand engage a consumer, retain their attention and start a conversation.

I’m not the first to point this out but as our media consumption habits shift away from the old ‘interruptive’ models of brand involvement (and we herald the day when online overtakes tv on one of those ‘media usage’ graphs), brands need to recognise that conversations with consumers are going to become harder to start and trickier to maintain unless they stop going ‘pssst!’