Promoting brands with mobile games

Salil Bhargava, CEO, Jumpgames
Welcome to the world of brand promotion – perhaps the world’s oldest sport. Right from the days of town criers, entrepreneurs realised the importance of attracting their audiences’ attention. Brand, by its very definition, is ‘the space in consumer’s mind’. How you get that space is what promotion is all about. However, why are we talking about brand promotion in a space dedicated to gaming? A million-dollar question!

Gaming is the newest vehicle riding which the advertisers will explore that valuable space in your mind – the brand. Come to think of it, entertainment and advertising have always worked hand in hand. If the consumers can have fun with the brand, they’re more likely to recall it. It is this concept on which brand promotion through games, or ‘advergaming’, as it is more commonly known as, works. Having begun as an experiment with computer games, advergaming is now expanding its wings to mobile games, which are fast emerging as the most potential media for brand promotion.

The global gaming market was estimated at $19 billion in 2005, and was expected to grow to $36 billion by 2009 according to Nasscom. Nasscom also projects that most of the game development being undertaken in India is on mobile platforms and that’s expected to become more prominent as the share of mobile gaming rises from 53 percent in 2005 to 68 percent in 2009.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that even the traditional market bigwigs have already begun to explore this new medium.

Studied closely, the very methodology of creating a mobile game for advertising purposes would demonstrate its effectiveness. Branding and products are incorporated into the game itself; the game can be used either to demonstrate the use of a product or to associate the product with an activity or lifestyle. The advertising message therefore becomes an integral part of playing the game.

One of the prominent examples of this is the game created for Nike's Shox basketball footwear. The game was distributed via email to a select audience. It began by asking players to choose the shoe colour of the basketball player they controlled in the game, a classic information gathering process. After playing the slam-dunk game, recipients could then click to buy the shoes. To make the campaign viral, Nike enabled players to email the game to their friends with their high score and a snapshot of their best dunk. The forwarded email encouraged the player's friend to beat the score. The game blended well with Nike’s brand image.

There are a number of benefits in producing such a game, particularly for branding purposes. Games, being an engaging medium, lead to higher consumer affinity as opposed to other advertising media. The interactive nature of a game ensures that the consumer interacts with the brand and therefore brand-identity can be readily established. This interaction, in the case of mobile games is much longer since their casual nature is such that gamers tend to play them repeatedly. Users carry their mobile devices with them almost everywhere and consequently spend more time with the brand, facilitating a higher recall value.

Currently, mobile devices have relatively higher market penetration rates than other electronic devices; staying connected seems to be the need of the hour, personally as well as professionally. This, from the point of view of brand promotion, is like hitting the jackpot since it directly translates to a higher rate of consumer reach for the brand.

Contests, one of the simplest types of mobile games, can successfully double as a market research tool for polling a considerable number of consumers, even on short notice. This helps provide that all-crucial data that could enable manufacturers to build new products around trends they see in their market segments.

Mobile advergaming is a perfect fusion of non-intrusive advertising, marketing and branding. India too, is now waking up to the concept as a market. With gaming now taking the centre stage of entertainment, and mobiles having established their roots firmly here, advertisers are realising the potential mobile games hold for brand promotion.

Given enough room for experimentation, mobile advergaming could be the next big alliance of communication, advertising, and entertainment.