Online Gaming as a Brand and Engagement Tool

A couple weeks ago I attended the MITX panel: Is it all Fun and Games?: Online Gaming as a Brand and Engagement Tool. The panel gave me a great sense of how effective online games can be in developing and reinforcing a brand. As a digital marketing novice with more than a bit of skepticism, it was great to hear these experienced professionals share their insights.

Panelists included:

Moderator: Victor Lee - Vice President Group Director, Marketing and Branded Entertainment, Digitas

Panelists: Steve Curran, Founder/Creative Director, Pod Digital Design; Marc Girolimetti, Co-Founder, ActsLike, Inc.; Glenn Leeder, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Gaming

Panel Description: Online gaming, and the social interaction associated with the games, is a powerful way to engage with your customers. The number of people playing social games is expected to grow to 250 million in 2009, new platform developments have created new opportunities for engagement, and users have become accustomed to high quality, connected experiences at a low cost.

With all these changes, how do you create successful online games? Is it possible to make money - and how? How do you create a brand experience that stands out in the crowd? Join MITX and a panel of seasoned gaming experts as we discuss the evolution of gaming and how marketers can successfully use games an engagement and branding tool. Discussion points will include:

• What does it take to have a successful online game? What are the rules of engagement? Where are the main frustrations and how can they be overcome?
• How do you "brand" the game in a way that successfully communicates your messages but doesn't interupt the user experience?
• What are the pros and cons between a website with gaming elements, a branded microsite, an online gaming community and a social network with gaming elements?
• What do you need to know about the platforms? Which ones work better? Which ones have niche offerings to improve engagement?
• Despite the low cost/low margin structure of social games, how can you make money with interactive games? What advertising options should you consider above-and-beyond traditional banner ads?

My comments: I was really impressed with the variety of experiences of the panelists. MITX does a great job of selecting participants. The moderator, Victor Lee, is from Digitas and has great experience with entertainment brands and uses these experiences to inform Digitas's campaigns for consumer brands. He showed a clip from a digital game campaign that Digitas put together for Buick using Tiger Woods. The idea was that gamers would predict Tiger's scores in tournaments for a season and then the person who was closest to the actual score would win a round of golf with Tiger. Unfortunately, Tiger had to bow out because of his problem with his knee but they got lots of ESPN coverage for the game and a winner was chosen.

Steve Curran with Pod Digital Design (which he described as a branded entertainment and production company) was really impressive. His team put together an online game that was meant to raise awareness for the History Channel program "Expedition Africa". Other panelists raved about the game and about how addictive it was to play. Curran noted that it was important not to replicate the outcomes of the reality TV show but to use the game as an extension of the content that would launch the program. He underliend that planning is key. Obviously, the goal is to sell the product and encourage engagement with the product (in this case increase viewers of the TV show). To reach this goal, you must research and finely target the demographic you wish to reach and how/where they will find this game. Curran got a lucky break when Apple chose their game as an Iphone app of the day/week (not sure which) which resulted in 350K downloads. I don't believe Curran detailed any other information on metrics.

Glenn Leeder from Microsoft Gaming had a muchmore focused perspective since he focuses on XBox and digital marketing. They have undertaken campaigns with Sprite and the NBA. He pointed out that XBox was a good platform for repurposing advertisements. XBox can also be "re-skinned" which gives brands many options for prominent exposure. XBox is especially good for 18-44 yo male consumers who are among the most difficult segments to reach. He underscored that gaming should be considered a part of mainstream expenditure and Microsoft's "4-screen" approach. He pointed out that gaming can be affordable. A game will cost $50K minimum but that compares to $100K for television ads. Games also have a longer shelf life than TV ads and a game (on XBox?) can get between 5 and 10 million visitors. You also have an ability to position your product next to another brand (presumably Microsoft/XBox). He described a campaign for Burger King in which consumers had to buy the the game (for around $3) but the campaign helped drive a 41% increase in sales for that particular quarter. The game was also able to be extended globally to a 10M consumer audience. Leeder also emphasized that a digital game is the beginning of a long-term dialogue with the consumer. Name capture is essential. You can't simply send out content without a way of using the information available (RFI requests). XBox also has some impressive engagement data for their emails to captured consumer names: 52% open rate; 38% click through rate. But he stressed that they only send XBox related emails and do not sell their data or submit emails on behalf of outside brands. He also stressed that games and associated sites must continually refresh since the consumer will become bored with the game or with the branding message.

Marc Girolimetti, co-founder of ActsLike, described some really interesting campaigns including a game engineered to draw FEDEX users to their website to help launch the online booking tools FEDEX had just launched but consumers were slow to embrace. The campaign drew 18K new online users. They also had great success with an online game for the Warner Brothers film "A Scanner Darkly" and a 2nd Life Playboy retail merchandise presence.