Why gaming matters to every brand

When we think of gaming, hardware like the Xbox, video games like Grand Theft Auto IV or role-playing games World of Warcraft often come to mind.

So often our first impression of computer games is just young kids killing time - or killing aliens or pedestrians - which seems to have little to do with most of our customers or marketing plans.

But maybe it’s time for a rethink. Gaming can be as relevant to our campaigns as social media or mobile marketing – we perhaps just need to broaden our perspective.

First let’s re-think 'who' is actually gaming. The global video game and interactive market has grown dramatically to become a $47 billion market globally this year, and this growth is not just driven by kids. While we know most kids spend more time online then watching TV – it's worth noting that 60% of all game users are over 18, and that women make up 40% of gamers.

The point is that as people grow up they don't give up gaming. Their tastes just evolve to things like civilization building in Spore or to family fun with the wii Fit. And Asia is again leading at the forefront with some of the biggest participants globally, and young Thais are Asia's biggets gamers.

But realising that gaming has a broad audience is just the tip of the iceberg. The true impact of gaming is in how it's infiltrated our marketing campaigns:

- Online Advertising: The new online advertising is about interactivity and engagement. If you can get people to play a video, click a mouse on a game or enter their email - then they are more involved in your message and brand. The move from clicks to interactivity has revolutionized online advertising. They are some great examples of this here.

- Social Networks: Most online social sites are driven by applications that are fun and get other people playing along too. So whether it's a simple poke, buying them a virtual beer or playing Little Farm - games are what drive activity on social sites.

- Widgets: The rise of the desktop widget is driven by our need for fun distraction - relevant distraction of course! Thousands of widgets have been developed to give us tools that are both useful and entertaining, whether it's the weather, your Nike+ running schedule, the latest hit song.

- Viral Campaigns: The most popular viral campaigns are sometimes simple games. Check out this year's version of Elf Yourself for a great example.

- Main Campaign Ideas: With the success of the brilliant Get the Glass campaign for Milk, people are realising a game can be at the heart of their campaign efforts.

- Smart Phone Applications: Do people buy iPhones for 3G capabilities (still coming to Thailand soon...) or for all the great iPhone applications? My personal favourite would be the iBeer or pocket guitar :)

- Retail: People love incentives, and what could be a better draw then a branded video game such as this incredibly successful campaign from Burger King.

So if you are on Facebook, use an iPhone, have visited a campaign web site, passed on a funny email, clicked on an e-card for Xmas, interacted with an online ad or downloaded a widget – chances are you’ve been gaming, and so have our customers.

And why do we do it? Because since we were kids we've known play is a wonderful way to explore and learn. And it doesn’t stop as we grow up, it just changes to suit our different needs. So if you're a brand that wants to really interact with an audience online – gaming is often a simpler, more entertaining and more successful way to go about it.

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

Evolution of websites

What are your favourite websites?

At the moment mine include Slideshare and http://www.digg.com/, and the movie review site http://www.rottentomatoes.com/. Looking at the most popular ones in this list, it's clear most of our top choices tend to be sites that are online destinations only, rather than online sites of major real-world brands.

So what about corporate web sites? What makes a great company site, and how do we develop these to become as interesting and useful as our other online favourites? Below are some of the evolutions that have been happening in corporate web site development, changes worth thinking about when looking at your next web project:

- Transaction sites become a journey not just a sales destination: In the early years when the Web first took off, over 10 years ago, most companies wanted transactional e-commerce sites. Many of these didn't survive, but the ones that did like http://www.ebay.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/ did so by realising they had to do more than include a product listing, sales engine and payment system. By providing everything that different types of customers wanted on their sales journey - from personalised recommendations, real product reviews and places just to hang out and have fun - these sites changed the idea that to sell hard, you had to hard-sell.

These days traditional industries like banks and airlines, as well as many B2B business sites, are learning these lessons and radically transforming the purpose and architecture of their company sites. Check out http://www.easyjet.com/ for a good example of how corporate transactional sites are taking a different approach.

- Consumer content and engagement rule: For years companies have said 'customer first', but have done the opposite online. Trying to navigate through these brochure ware sites was a nightmare, so bogged down were they in product and sales information. Truth is, many still are. But a few years ago this started to change, as sites began to include blogs, web boards, reviews and places for customers to share with other users. Marketers realised that unless they made sites more accessible and relevant and engaging - people would simply go elsewhere.

The title of this article says it all - the future of the corporate site involves people. That means every industry is transforming their approach and including the user and communities in their plans, and making the sites a rich and interactive experience. For example travel sites like this one in New York, financial sites like Mint, iconic brand sites like http://www.apple.com/, insurance sites like YouCovered and agency sites like this from http://www.leoburnett.com/ (Sorry, couldn't help the plug!)

- Company sites get a micro-focus: One of the biggest changes in the last few years has been the shift from the all-purpose corporate site to the product + campaign specific micro-site. People don't have time to wander around your big corporate site trying to find what they're looking for. These new sites allow companies to focus on the needs of a particular audience and drive traffic directly from the relevant campaigns.

Micro-sites such as these from Audi, Coke and this slightly naughty one from Lynx Effect show just how much you can give customers, when you focus on a single idea. Interestingly, this has also made for better corporate sites as well, allowing them to communicate with less clutter and more customer value.

- The web site gets personal and mobile: The future of digital is to go where customers are, not build it and expect them to come. And the experience will be different for every user. This quote from the future of corporate websites says it all: "A webpage will not start with the assumption anymore: I don’t know who is coming and therefore try to solve everybody’s needs, but that it will work with a lot of technologies to provide everybody a very personal real-time user experience, to deliver him what he needs." And it will do this as much on your mobile device, as anywhere else.

The growth of WAP mobile internet sites along with introduction of 3G and broadband internet services in Thailand will start to see the transformation of people's internet habits to more mobile computing. In Japan, since 2006 more people have been accessing the web through cell phones than through PCs. Pretty soon we'll all need to be developing exciting mobile web solutions, like this one for Nike.

These developments are transforming the company web site, with some truly fantastic work, and much of it from Asia. If you have a chance, spend a few minutes looking at the latest and greatest sites from your industry via the Webby Awards for 2008 . Seeya next week.

Welcome + Best Of Contagious

Hi there

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year.

This year I'm starting something different. Every Monday I'll be sending around an email with my blog regarding something new & digital that's happening in the marketing world. It's called Digital Monday, and the idea is to stimulate your knowledge and interest about what's possible, for us as an agency and for our clients.

There is a lot of exciting things going on and hopefully this will provide you with some guidance on what's new and interesting and relevant out there. I will try and keep it short and simple, with links so you can explore more on your own.

This week to kick off, I wanted to look back at the last 12 months in digital marketing, so I am attaching a PDF (see at www.contagiousmagazine.com/pdf/MostContagious2008.pdf ) of Most Contagious 2008. It shows the best digital work of 2008 from around the world. There is a lot to enjoy here from technology, social media, mobile, viral, outdoor, gaming...you name it.

Read it by section, or just skip to what interests you. And follow all the links to see what they are talking about. It's a great, interactive, way to learn.

Our aim is to have ARC Bangkok appear in here next year!

Talk to you next Monday...