Bringing Brands into the World of Social Gaming
by Feng ~ February 3rd, 2011. Filed under: Social Gaming, Social Media.
Recent years have seen the rise in social gaming, in particular, facebook games such as Farmville or CityVille. As seen from the chart above, social gamers among internet users have increased steadily in the past year and have been forecasted to increase further in 2012.
Marketers could leverage on this to brand their products/services on this entirely new platform. This can be done through branded virtual goods, lead-generation offers, in-game ads and hybrid campaigns that combine these approaches.
Quoting from the article, “Social Gaming: Marketers Make Their Move”, the opportunities include:
Integrate your brand into an existing game through virtual goods
Use display ads or sponsorships in an existing game
Create a hybrid campaign that combines elements of these branding approaches
Develop your own game
Participate in an offer wall
In fact, Coca-Cola managed to successfully pull off one of such strategies by integrating its brand into Zynga’s Café World. Being a brand that emphasizes lifestyle and social interaction, this actually helped to reinforce the company’s brand message.
Will this then perhaps lead to the ‘Shiny Object Syndrome”, as other brands start to jump on the bandwagon and start investing blindly on this novel branding technique?
I feel that in the context of social gaming, not all products would be able to pull off something like what Coca-Cola did. I guess marketers should analyse how their brand would have a right fit with social media gaming. Do their brand associations include fun, social, friends, sharing, etc.? Besides, social gamers also fall primary under specific age groups (i.e. Generation Y). Hence brand integration into social games may see more relevance to only certain product categories targeting this age group.
Another implication which came across my mind would be the effects of novelty wearing off. People tend to pay more attention to things that are new. Having played a few games on the social network, I realised how soon it took me to get excited over a game, only to get bored of it in a couple of months at the most.
I’m curious to find out the next brand to be integrated into CityVille, my current boredom chaser!