Advergaming: The New Advertising Miracle Cure for Marketing?
Any basic marketing class begins by introducing students to the “Four P’s of Marketing”: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. Most business gurus will tell you that of these four, Product is the most important. Your product must have unique value to the consumer or it won’t sell. Today, with virtual instant communication, it could be argued that PROMOTION is fast becoming the equivalent of Product when talking about marketing principles. If you promote your product in such a way that it captures the attention and hard-earned dollars of the precious consumer before any competitor has a chance, you will have won the most important battle in the marketing war.
And marketing IS war. Companies spend millions of dollars each year on marketing research and surveys to determine their potential consumer base. Traditional marketing methods (multimedia advertising, free product samples, direct mail advertising), while proven effective to some degree, have not yet provided businesses with the answer they are looking for when it comes to getting the most out of their investment. advertising. Companies are still looking for their “penicillin,” and ad games may be just what companies are looking for to cure their problems.
Ad games, the newest niche in marketing, are quickly gaining a following at both ends of the sales spectrum. Companies like it because it provides a new and interesting way to promote products; consumers enjoy games created to promote those products. Do you remember the Nintendo game Super Mario Brothers? Pretend you’re 8 years old again, pretending to be Luigi, riding Yoshi through the Mushroom Kingdom, crossing LEGO bridges, or jumping through Play-Doh swamps as you try to free Princess Peach. How long would it take you to ask your mom for a LEGO set so you could build your own kingdom? Now, put a sample of that game on the Internet. Well, companies have recognized the value of that not-so-subliminal advertising and are latching on to it faster than you can say, “Laughter is the best medicine.”
Corporations as varied as Ford Motor Company, HBO, and Nabisco use advergaming because it has been shown to reach larger audiences, find those audiences during hours that were conventionally “down time” for advertising (e.g., business hours), and promote a greater recognition of, and loyalty to products and companies. Additionally, advergaming takes advantage of “viral marketing,” a phrase used to describe the passing of information from one person to another over the Internet, usually by email. This means that a company promotes its product for free; consumers pass it on to each other without additional advertising costs: virtual word of mouth. And, as any business man or woman will tell you, old-fashioned word of mouth is the best kind of advertising! Advergaming is just the shot in the arm that today’s marketing world needs.
Copyright 2006 Scott Heath