This article should read as an interlude between the first five advergame model ideas and the next five, which should go up any time in the next few days. Also, as a fair warning, this article is quite a bit longer than my usual ones.
We talk about advergames on this blog and we talk about it quite alot. Why and when they work, what we like, what we sneer at. Sometimes we find advergames that we're genuinely excited about, because the execution, delivery and final purpose are so damned well thought out. And we write about them. Throughout all this though, there's one thing we often leave unsaid.
Advergames are not for everybody. In fact, despite my enthusiasm for the potential of the genre, I wouldn't recommend them to you and your company. Not if you're just looking for something hip to spend a part of your budget on.
Point: advergaming done for advergaming's sake rarely achieves good results. Simply looking at NY Times list of trends and picking a random one to pour some money into just won't cut it. If you're a marketer and you're only doing it because everybody else is, although you don't believe in it, it's time to step back and figure out what you did wrong.
Random story: a couple of months ago, I was with some friends at one of the local bars where we spend our misguided youth. We're having some beers and talking about God knows what (probably something really geeky) when this girl dressed like a walking billboard for this local cigarettes brand pops up at our table.
"Hello" she says, with as much fake excitement as she could gather, "I see that you're smokers. I represent Brand X and we'd like to give you an opportunity to try out our new product. What do you say?!"
We duly reply, expressing our moderate interest in her cause and product. I don't recall the exact words but I think our answer was something along the lines of "whee, free stuff!"
So the girl opens her overstuffed, overbranded rucksack and starts producing goodies. There's lighters and boxes and things we don't even recognize in the low bar light. Someone asks if there's gonna be a half-baked survey for us to fill and the general enthusiasm for free lighters seems to fade.
However, much to our surprise, there was no survey. Unfortunately, what came instead of it wasn't much better...
Giving us her best MTV smile, the girl drops a couple of PDAs on the table. "Well now, what you have to do is play our company's minigame. It features a few questions that you have to answer correctly. But don't worry", she says with a small twitch, "you can play it as many times as you want to, until you get it right."
By this time, I don't even remember what we were talking about before the girl showed up. I express some interest in one of the devices so the lady passes it on to me and starts reciting the rules of the game. Turns out it's some kind of hugely boring quizz about young people and what they like to do in bars. (And how brand X helps them be EXTREME). I chuckle and point out that one thing young people usually DON'T do in bars is play idiotic games on tiny low-light screens. (That's what the subway is for after all ). Giving my best guesses, I manage to complete the game in the second try and win a lighter that looks solid enough to break a small dog's back. Fifteen minutes later we're all done with it and we're now packing enough lighters for an entire concert audience.
Free lighters aside, not a single one of us could see the point for the game. Surely, somewhere in a marketing plan, it all makes sense ('play game, win lighters') but where does it all fit in? How is interrupting people's conversations with your bland game supposed to make them care more about your brand? And in the end, the main problem was how artificial it all felt. "Here's our game. It's the latest consumer-engaging experience people talk about in their presentations. See how we're moving with the times?"
And it's not only that we weren't buying it. But the promo girl wasn't buying it either. Beyond what she was reciting, her attitude read one thing. "Look, I'm sorry I have to bother you with this. I also think this is pretty pointless but I gotta make some quid and besides, you get free lighters...so uh...could you play the game anyway please?"
So I guess the big conclusion here is: stop faking it. If you're just using games as a side-gimmick, at least make sure it makes sense to do it. Otherwise it will just feel really awkward and no one will win anything out of it (well except for me, I got a free lighter I didn't need so...horray?)
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