Games as branded interaction

BY: BRIAN ROBBINS  |  Branded Entertainment

Our goal here is always to create compelling and interesting content around our client’s brands - ones that will actively “grab” the user and make them WANT to pay attention. While there’s lots of ways to accomplish this, one of the best ways is often with an advergame.

Unlike other traditional advertising media it’s very difficult to passively consume game content. By its very definition you need to be interacting with a game in order to play it, and that implies active consumption. It also means that we don’t have to beat the consumer with a stick to get them to hear what we’re trying to say. Instead we can afford to be a bit more subtle and focus a lot more on the final experience than we do pushing the exact message through as quickly as possible. As they play the game, they will get what we’re trying to say, and the impact it will have will be much, much greater that from a traditional 30-second spot.

In fact, the real challenge for us is not engaging the users, but bringing the brand messaging into play in a way that makes sense and is a natural fit for the experience we are creating. An obvious example of this is when we created Hemi Highway to promote the Dodge Charger. The goal was to create a game that showcased the performance aspects of the new Charger, and the game was an easy way to do exactly that.

What’s not as obvious is when we want to show how a brand or product can solve a problem for the consumer. Fortunately these types of projects lend themselves to trying out something that’s a bit different, and that in turn results in even great attention and engagement from the users. Take our recent campaign for Johnson & Johnson’s Reach product line.  We built an entire mystery adventure where you needed to use the product to solve the mystery. Sure, a couple of the situations were a little bit contrived, but it did so in a natural way that didn’t push away users. In fact, because we were honest about what we were doing the visitors to the site expected it, and I think, enjoyed the end result even more.

To me, that’s the true power of games as branded entertainment. It’s an incredible way to create fun experiences that users want to engage with, where we don’t have to yell and scream about the message our client is trying to deliver.