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Game time: Marketing opportunities in social gaming
Catherine Thorn
August 27, 2009
Moxie Insight Spotlight Webinar
Agenda
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 2
“Broadcasting an ad on television or in a newspaper is
admitting you have no idea who your customers are.”
– Gary Loveman, CEO Harrah’s
The marketing challenge
Marketers need a new medium • Consumers are paying less attention to
TV commercials than ever
• Despite the recession, 2008 video
game sales topped $21 Billion, a 19%
increase over 2007
• Video games account for 1/3 of the
average monthly consumer spending in
the U.S. for core entertainment
content
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 3
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
Agenda
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 4
Viral & Community Oriented
Provide Value
Command Full
Attention
Social games can be used
to create marketing that
gets attention, is
enjoyed by consumers
and is passed on to their
friends.
What makes social games better?
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 5
Popular game types
Puzzles
Racing
Sports
RTS
FPS ARG
RPG
Social
Invest
ment
FS
What is social gaming?
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 6
52% of online
consumers in the US
play video games for at
least 2 hours a week
Family Gamer (23%)
Game Socialiser (24%) Traditional Core (21%)
Weekend Player (23%) Online Puzzler (9%)
But do “normal” people play games?
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 7
Agenda
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 8
Fantasy sports: Different from your usual games
• Though very different from a video
game, fantasy sports involves
strategy and is very competitive &
social
• 27 million fantasy sports players in
the U.S. Mostly 18 – 40 year old men.
• Annual revenue estimates range
from $ 1 to $4 Billion.
• Premium add-ons typically include
scouting reports and draft kits
(usually priced at about $10 / year).
Yahoo! Sports was the most popular destination for sports news in 2008 – beating out the
likes of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports. We believe that their enormously popular
fantasy leagues (in 1999 Yahoo! was the first major media company to offer free fantasy
games, and they continue to be the leader) are one of the main reasons why.
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 9
• Provides a platform
where friends can
meet, chat and engage
in friendly competition
while watching their
favourite TV
• Still has over 40,000
monthly active users
This Facebook application transforms watching television
into interactive, cross-media experience
tvClickr: Adding value to an old medium
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 10
The Prosumer
Gaming Platform • Sims Carnival allows
anyone to create video
games by simply
answering questions
about their game
• Game creators discuss
tips & tricks on the
forum
Sims Carnival: Allows non-experts to be prosumers
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 11
Digital items overlaid upon the real world
Sony’s Invizimals use
augmented reality to battle
artificial animals against each
other in physical space
Using a webcam, real-world video is
overlaid with computer-generated
graphics to enhance the gaming
experience
Augmented reality: One of the newest gaming technologies
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 12
Agenda
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 13
Digital experiences extend
physical products
Physical products extend
digital experiences
• Webkinz are stuffed animals that
come to life in the digital world.
• Players of the MMO EverQuest
could order pizza through the
game
• In Japan, food can be ordered
through the Wii
Blurring the line between the game world and reality
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 14
Mobiles: the planet’s most
popular computing platform
• 3.4 billion mobile phones on the
planet
• 40% of mobile phone users would
rather lose their wallet than phone
• PCs are a legacy platform – mobile
phones are the new platform
“World’s Worst War”
Tohato’s marketing campaign
• The Japanese snack maker created a
game of war that consumers could join
when they bought the snack
Tohato’s mobile marketing
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 15
Games in social networks: Social networks in games:
• Most brands are on social networks,
but games help set the experience
apart
• Simple can be successful
• Roshambull is
rock/paper/scissors
• Though it’s 2 years old, it still
has an active user base of over
6,000
• Microsoft uses Facebook Connect
to personalize the Prototype
video game trailer
Games and social networks
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 16
Jay-Z’s Virtual Brand
Ben Sherman virtual clothing
In-game billboards
BMW in-game advertising
Advertising in games
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 17
Game fiction crosses into reality:
• ARGs cross multiple media
• Dynamic narratives blur reality & fiction
• Hidden reality known only to participants is part
of the appeal
• Often used for one-off events and promotions
(e.g. movies or albums)
• Often used to target audiences deaf to
advertising
• Currently, success is difficult to measure
Nine Inch Nails ARG
McDonald’s sponsored
“The Lost Ring,”
an ARG that engaged
> 2.5 million people
Alternate reality games
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 18
Agenda
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 19
What’s the same?
Extending digital experiences
with physical products
Offering food or other products through
games is simply adding another order
placement channel
In-game advertising
Billboards & product placement in games is similar
to traditional billboards & TV/movie product
placement but with better targeting and improved
attention
Sponsoring a game Game sponsorship is similar to event sponsorship
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 20
What is different?
Challenges Strategies
Gaming and Social Media are
still rapidly evolving
Begin with small experiments to find the
strategy that works best for you
For in-game advertising, how
do you earn the right to join
the game?
Create value with functional benefits or by
improving realism
Many mobile and social
networks games are fads
Creating a community around the game
can help prevent this
It can be difficult to make
games relevant to a brand
Create tangential links, such as Tohato’s
rivalry between two flavours
ARGs are extremely complex
and difficult to control
Don’t aim to control. Monitor the game
closely to ensure participants don’t get
frustrated
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 21
What is different?
Extending physical products
with digital dxperiences
• Facilitating social interaction
through digital experiences can
create a community that engages
with your brand when interacting
Opportunities common to other digital marketing
Social games on mobiles and social
networking sites
• Facilitates viral spread of marketing
• Easy to target individuals
• Allows you to be a part of the “in
between” moments of each day –
sitting on the train, between tasks at
work, waiting in line, etc.
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 22
What is different?
Alternate reality game marketing
• Great engagement - mystery and intrigue
keeps the game close to top of the mind
• Can reach an audience that actively
ignores mainstream media
Opportunities unique to social games
Extending digital experiences with physical products
• Can reach an audience that values convenience because they are
captivated by the game, particularly for traditional core gamers
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 23
What is different?
In-game advertising:
• Better metrics due to the digital
footprint and perfect information
• Consumers interact with products &
learn their features
• Dynamic advertising allows for time-
sensitive campaigns
• In the digital world, you can define the
functionality of your product, thus
creating inferences about the quality
of your brand
• Emotional investment in character
Opportunities unique to social games
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 24
What is possible?
Future developments in social game marketing
Location-based gaming:
• Applications that track your location and connect you
with people in the area that frequent similar places
already exist for the iPhone
• Geo-Caching, a high tech version of scavenger hunt, is
surprisingly popular
(Over 800,000 geocaches are active worldwide)
• Location-based gaming can lead consumers to your store,
provide you with location information, & provide
consumers with a fun experience
BrightKite Friends Map
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 25
What is possible?
Future developments in social game marketing
Better in-game metrics:
• With the technology in Natal, it will be possible
to gauge emotional response using the expression
on a players’ face
• Biometrics are starting to be captured during
game play:
Bunnyfoot provides eyetracking
and bio-physical measurements
(such as heart rate )
Wii created the Vitality Sensor
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 26
Agenda
Applying learning from social games to marketing
Implications: What is different, the same, and possible?
Marketing through social games case studies
Social gaming examples
The marketing challenge
Why social gaming could be the answer
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 27
Developments in social games applied to marketing
Personalized marketing
• Games & game trailers are tailoring
the experience to each player
• Marketers can similarly take
advantage of rich profile data and
reality mining
Enabling prosumerism
• Mods – games that are modified by
users
• Partial open sourcing & enabling non-
experts to co-create can provide
value to consumers and the
enterprise
Lego Mindstorms
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 28
Augmented reality applied to marketing
My.IKEA concept
GE uses AR to promote
renewable energy sources
Layar and FoodTracer
overlay information
onto real world
objects
© 2011 Moxie Insight. All Rights Reserved. 29
Catherine Thorn MoxieInsight.com
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