Why games and brands are a perfect match

Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne and his team have published a fascinating set of charts about the long, slow decline of old-fashioned broadcast and cable TV. There has been a 50 percent collapse in broadcast TV audience ratings since 2002 and the same time online video and mobile apps have exploded.

Games dominate the app usage and given the explosion of smart phones, you can reach over billion people instantly through games. Thats a bigger reach than Superbowl or most of the global media companies have. For brands games are the perfect media, since they are engaging by nature.

I´ve met with dozens of game studios and what still strikes me odd is that still only few of them see themselves as media or entertainment companies or take advantage their media-like posture. Many brands would gladly seize the opportunity to speak to an audience of hundreds of millions if given the chance. Of course it doesn´t work just by placing a logo in the game. Brands need to bring something more to the fans, not just billboards on the side of the road when you play Need For Speed, but really augment the game and have an active role in it. For example Michelin tires to make your car go faster or in-game currency handled by Visa. The level of engagement is in a whole another level so the brands should not be passive. Even with casual games that usually last minutes, the attention and focus is beyond anything you´ll get from a traditional TV ad.

But one should not limit themselves to just have an active role inside the game. Thanks to mobile gaming, augmenting can be done also in a physical place. The Angry Birds & McDonald´s campaign we did in China is a good example of this. By entering a McDonalds restaurant, Angry Birds players would unlock in-game currency called Power-Ups and hidden game modes, giving them chance to play as the pigs and use the power-ups to get a better score. These features could be unlocked three times a day, so that drives traffic to the actual restaurants several times a day.

There is also the question of should a brand develop a game by itself. In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. Yes, I you have the resources and are ready to promote and develop the game in a long run. No if you see this as a campaign gimmick, thats live for some weeks and then fades away (and the game is about using the product in a boring way). Like always, you should listen and respect the fans.

Don´t invade, engage!

According Wikipedia, the first banner ad was sold by Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe and the rest was advertising history. Wheather the now defunct law firm with a Silicon Valley office started what is today a multi-billion dollar industry or not, is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that ever since the first display ad hit the screens, the evolution of online advertising has been non existent. What makes it even worse is that it basicly animated print ads and use a much smaller space. So when James Salins, the CEO of Supersonic Ads said at Mobile Games Forum 2013, in London: "In-game advertising is twice as effective as online advertising, and four times more effective than TV advertising", I started thinking that maybe now is the time to do something different. Most of the in-game advertising are the same display ads that are used on sites, but since gaming is all about engaging, even those annoying, old fashioned banners get more attention. So we have the audience, how can we create new ad forms?

Brands should see games as a platform to engage the audience and deepen the brand experience – they need to argument the game and the gaming experience instead of invading it. Think it from the gamers perpective. You´re trying to finnish a level, beat the boss, get the high score and you have spent the better half of the hour trying to achieve all that. At the same time a local bank is blocking part of your view with ad promoting a credit card (which you don´t need at that particular moment) and the car shop trying to sell you a pair of tires (you don´t even have a car!). Feeling the love? Not likely. But what if the brand would help you to achieve your goals or added a new level? What if the brand was a part of the gaming experience and would tell its story through the game? That would benefit the brand, the game company and most importantly – the fans.

We, at TBWA\Gamelab, recently did a campaign for McDonalds China with Rovio Entertainment. Rovio´s Angry Birds has over billion downloads worldwide, making it one of the biggest media platforms on earth. And to be honest, the campaign included display ads and TV ads, the traditional ad formats and we even had paper posters, POS materials and toys (it´s Angry Birds, you got to have the merchandise), but we also created something unique. McDonald´s would offer the fans something extra, using a new ad space within the Angry Birds game and the GPS available in every mobile device these days. By entering a physical McDonald´s restaurant, customers would be able to unlock new levels and game modes (you could play as the pigs) and get in-game currency called Power-ups. McDonald´s was offering this to anyone who had Angry Birds installed in their mobile phone and was at the restaurant. The campaign was a success both in advertising metrics as well as business.

Moving away from display ads to new ways of engagement also creates new challenges for gaming companies. Game engines need to be designed from the beginning to offer the tools to create augmented brand experiences and there should be sufficient amount of data about the gamers. No brand can invest if they don´t know what they are getting. And to calculate the marketing ROI, we need to understand what is the value for in-game brand engagement and that requires new metrics and measuring tools, since the current ones are still based on the 1990´s display ads.

New Entertainment Ecosystem

By publishing good quality games about the movie or TV IPs, studios and production houses engage an audience that might not be interested otherwise. Hollywood studios spend millions of dollars to promote the upcoming movies with TV ad campaigns but seem to forget that the cost of creating a good game is only a fraction of that. Not to mention that if the game becomes a hit, the studios can earn more money. But of course not every game becomes a hit, just as not every ad campaign brings results. Before in order to get the attention of the 15-25 year olds, the studios have to advertise in TV with millions of dollars. What the new entertainment companies have realized, is that by releasing an IP as a game as well as a TV series or a movie, they reduce the need to market with bought media. In fact, the IP ecosystem can be used as a platform to market other brands more efficiently than with traditional bought media. The game drives engagement and grows awereness and monetizes the IP. The TV and movies grow the awereness even further and keeps on monetizing (the long tail is of course the DVD release and the TV rigths). 

Game IP´s on the other hand, need the TV/Movie adaptations and licensing of their games to reach a wider audience and to build depth to their story. This is needed especially with casual games, that have to be simple enough to engage the widest audience possible which often means that the story behind the game is minimal. TV/Movie adaptations bring depth to the game characters and open up the game world which deepen the relationship between the fans and open more possibilities to licensing.

Merchandising and licensing is the third and equally important part of the new entertainment ecosystem. If for some reason the IP hasn´t reached all of its potential audience, the merchandising and licensing will. And will also monetize the IP even further. In order to support the new entertainment ecosystem however, the M&L must be done with the same dedication to quality in mind as the game and the TV/Movies. Again the devil is in the detail and nothing can screw the IP like a bad product and the risk of that happening is high, since majority of production is usually done by third parties.

Rovio´s Angry Birds is a prime example of the new entertainment ecosystem. The company has hundreds of millions of fans that connect with the Angry Birds brand through games, videos, products, theme parks and more. Even Disney has noticed the change, they released Wreck-It-Ralph as a game and a movie simoltaniously and merchandise is sure to follow. But just releasing a game and a movie doesnt make hits. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. At the end of the day, fans decide whether or not an IP makes it and the fans are well equipped to see through scams. That means that the game and movie studios need to evolve in to entertainment companies that sustain immemerers brand experience through the different touchpoint, be it games, movies or merchandising.