Games in Marketing: Use of games to achieve your marketing goals!

17th of November B2B event Bashers in Business: Games in Marketing will take place. Every week, one of the speakers of the event will post an article with interesting insights and practical tips. The second article is by Bart Hufen, author of the book ‘Laat met je merk spelen’ and founder of BrandNewGame.

Are you kidding me? Do you really think games can improve my turnover!? Are you serious, could games also improve our consumer’s brand preference? Do you really think games can bring our brand values to life? Well surely this cannot be true!

However, it IS actually true. I am Bart Hufen and in 2010 I wrote a book (Laat met je merk spelen) that describes how games are being used to achieve a company’s marketing goals. The book will be released in English in 2011 under the name A Brand New Playground. While writing I became surprised by the vast amount and variety of game-applications already in existence within the organizational and marketing fields.

While compiling an historical overview of the industry, the gaming platforms and genres I gained an insight into the past thirty years of game-development. I found it remarkable to find Coca-Cola was one of the first companies to develop an advergame based on Space Invaders. Of course they called it Pepsi invaders. It appears Advergames nowadays are becoming more and more a standard part of the promotional mix. In my book I analysed all the cases that stunned me. I then structured these cases into the five Ps of marketing:  Production, Price, Personnel, Place and Promotional.

Coming back to the questions I pose in the first lines of this introduction, Nielsen seems to answer them in a recently published article on their research commissioned by Gatorade and Electronic Arts. One of their conclusions is that Gatorade actually increased their sales by 24% thanks to in-game advertising. Another source, being a graduation essay, shows that, depending on the type of advert, between 20 and 60% of subjects spontaneously recollect brand names used in games.

I am currently involved in the development of a game for the aviation’s industry’s logistic chain. The objective of the game is to improve cooperation between all parties involved (from shipper to airline) by supporting the change-management process. The game will be launched at the end of 2010 and is supported by Air Cargo Netherlands, Schiphol Airport and the Dutch Customs.

It has been proven that games are an excellent tool to invoke behavioural changes. This is due to the fact that games are multisensory and combine sound, vision and interaction, which strongly increase involvement and enhance experiences.

So don’t ask yourself IF games can help to achieve marketing goals, just ask yourself HOW!

Bart Hufen
BrandNewGame
http://www.brandnewgame.nl/ | barthufen@brandnewgame.nl