sxsw2008 Stories, Games and Your Brand

A look at how interactive gaming, storytelling and puzzles can engage users with your brand. Movie and TV producers are increasingly using these tactics to promote their entertainment but is it possible for other brands to provide such experiences for their adorers or to attract new customers.

Rachel Clarke, Bibrik Ltd
Dan Hon, CEO, Six to Start
Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher, Penguin
Roo Reyolds, Metaverse Evangelist, IBM

Notable campaigns using games

• Cloverfield
• Honda
• Perplex City
• Alleve

• Rather than interruption marketing, games offer a way to interact and converse with consumers.But, Jeremy did point out that Penguin’s treasure hunt game for The Malice Box [Jeremy I'm assuming it was this, correct me if I'm wrong] didn’t work as a marketing tool. But paying bookshops for space did.
• Know your audience and know that there are multiple levels of players. Distinction online between Hardcore and Casual users. But no one ever talks about the Hardcore television audience, the kind of people that are really into LOST or a soap and then go online to find out more.

Convincing brands to use games

• Penguin has an ‘innovations fund’. So projects like ‘we tell stories’ aren’t paid for by the marketing department.[All publishers should do this, the larger ones can certainly find the money. It makes far more sense than using marketing budgets for digital projects as many marketing departments are set up for traditional marketing and really only plan far enough ahead to put together outdoor marketing. Whereas a good digital campaign, whether it's a game, blog or a user-generated project needs a lot of time to plan, execute and fix the inevitable issues that will unexpectedly crop up.] Penguin want to explore the future of the story.

Metrics

• Need to think about how you can use metrics to measure the depth of involvement. Are the traditional results of unique visitors and page views enough?

Games vs traditional marketing

• It needs to be relevant to the core of the brand.
• It’s all about collaboration. The sharing of knowledge and working together to solve a game is a powerful medium.
• Short term campaigns don’t necessarily make sense when you’ve spent time fostering a passionate user base. The Office Max Christmas Elves game was brought back each Christmas and has increased in success year after year. 1 million users first year, 11 million the second year.
• Niche success has an impact, it doesn’t have to have a mass appeal.

Are there brands that can’t use games as a tool?

• Definitely. The game has to be tailored to the campaign and brand.

Points arising from the Q&A

• You have to offer something to the consumer and community, two-way relationship.
• Jeremy made a good point that other publishers aren’t our competition, games are. We need to engage people with other ways of storytelling.
• Educational games can have the same objectives as the classroom. If a child reaches a certain level, or completes a task then we can prove that they have achieved specific learning objectives.