Brands in the game play
By Simon Fuller. Social gaming outfit We R Interactive is rolling out its I Am Playr football game on a dedicated site and on Facebook, putting consumers in the boots of a sports talent. But standing out as much as the gameplay are the brands We R Interactive has recruited to the I Am Playr team.
brand-e reported recently on how Nike had made the starting line-up, and now food brand Ginsters has entered the arena, making an appearance in the game as sponsors for I Am Playr’s imaginary football club River Park FC.
“The advantages for any advertisers [include] the reach you can get through interactive games,” says We R Interactive’s commercial director Arianne Riddell. “But in-game ads are not well used… There’s an opportunity for advertisers to be embedded in the game. But you have to be careful, you can’t just shoehorn advertisers in.”
Key to the usefulness of these kinds of games for brands is just how seamlessly they can be woven into play.
“Part of the Nike deal was depending on how you do in the game, you get offered a boot deal,” explains Riddell. “[So the brand is] embedded in the core narrative and [the product is] is a bonus for players. Our ads aren’t intrusive – unlike a TV ad which is intrusive, you don’t realise you’re consuming. In console games, advertisers have been featured on billboards in racing games and so on. But you’re on a journey in I Am Playr. We embed brands into the content, and not in an in-your-face way.
“The target age group for the game is 16-to-25s, who are hard to target through traditional media. They consume media, – they have their phone in one hand, and Facebook in the other, but they don’t watch much TV. So this is one way to get to that target group.”
And Ginsters have made its own mark. In addition to showing up on footballer’s shirts like club sponsors in the real world, the brand is running a promotion involving codes found on their food packaging. Consumers can take these codes and input them into I Am Playr, receiving rewards in-game.
“Products in the game are attributed to products in the real world,” says Riddell. “For example the Nike boots give [the player] extra speed on the pitch. Products from brands are performance enhancing in the game – they’re not just ‘strawberries’ to pick.”
With consumers getting involved in the game through Facebook, a hotbed for social gaming at present – just look at Farmville and co – We R Interactive is hopeful that I Am Playr will not only be a hit, but also become a bit of a game changer.
“Fifty percent of Facebook users log on to play games, according to recent research – so it’s become more habitual,” says Riddell. “I Am Playr will grow the market. A lot of the [social] games on the market are cartoony and cute – for a lad there’s nothing. Our game is immersive, it’s different, there’s a two way interaction with consumers. I Am Playr will change the market we think.”
Find out more about the gaming opportunity at brand-e’s The Games Brands Play event next month.
