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解析社交游戏品牌植入层次和品牌类型之第一部分

发布时间:2011-04-16 17:21:15 Tags:,,

社交游戏的品牌植入涵盖了各种方式,从贴牌游戏商品到基于知名品牌的整个游戏。越来越多品牌通过同主流社交游戏开发商和发行商签订协议踏入游戏领域,下文我们将分析不同品牌类型及不同的植入层次,以此判断何处植入更为恰当。

公司品牌植入

社交游戏通过提供更深层次(游戏邦注:这是相对印刷刊物、电视及广播广告媒介而言)的品牌植入,蕴藏品牌营销的无限潜力。通过将品牌整合到现有社交游戏当中,广告商可以充分面向有潜力的现成用户。此外,广告商可以针对特定品牌开发游戏,从而为品牌用户提供配套服务,促使品牌的病毒式传播。

品牌整合还能吸引开发商和游戏玩家的眼球,创造附加价值。通过品牌整合,开发商可以从广告商那获得丰厚资金,这反过来将协助开发商针对终端用户推出新游戏。社交游戏的典型品牌整合模式是依据品牌的植入次数或者印象互动计费。这使得社交游戏的品牌植入丝毫不亚于传统的媒体购买。

社交游戏品牌植入的成功典范之一是迪斯尼在《Nightclub City》(游戏邦注:这是一款夜生活资源管理主题的社交游戏)中宣传自己的最新电影《Tron: Legacy》。在这个为期两周的活动中,品牌植入时间共计1.2亿分钟,其中包括电影页面的嵌入时间、预告片的放映时间以及Daft Punk乐队演绎的电影主题曲在游戏自动点唱机播放的时间。分析数据显示,本次活动共有310万个Tron虚拟商品在游戏中售出。

Tron Party

Tron Party

但这存在的风险是,开发商得将部分游戏制作资源转用于品牌整合。由于开发商聘请更多设计师,更侧重开发某些物品,从而避免某些机会成本损失;此外,广告商支付的费用可以弥补最糟糕的情况。然而,由于越来越多公司通过品牌整合进军社交游戏领域,未来有望出现新的整合层次,从而改变机会成本的性质,也许还会改变广告商和游戏开发商之间付费机制。

品牌整合层次

首先,我们先将整合程度分为3个层次:初级、中级和高级。初级社交游戏品牌植入主要以出售贴牌商品和贴牌装饰物品的形式出现。中级品牌植入稍微触及游戏机制,包括主题关卡或故事剧情,以及贴牌互动人物角色。高级品牌植入最易辨识,因为在大多数情况下,品牌就是整个游戏。

初级品牌植入是Facebook游戏和手机社交游戏最普遍的植入方式。上周,丰田公司就和EA达成合作协议,将Prius(游戏邦注:普锐斯是丰田公司出产的车型)植入《Monopoly Millionaires》,而ngmoco也和Century 21携手合作,在《We City》中植入贴有Century 21品牌的建筑。

这些小规模的宣传活动相对比较容易实现,开发商只需添加1、2张插入就可完成。然而,贴牌插图可能会给开发商带来机会成本损失,公司设计师之前设计的某些永久性道具如果和贴牌物品背道而驰就只能短暂出现。初级整合并非推动品牌植入的最佳方式;初级整合并不具备点击机会或者推动玩家互动的现实奖励。

虽然可能在过去6个月的开发过程,品牌公司积极同游戏公司合作,努力创造更加精细的用户体验,从而促进较高水平品牌植入的形成,但中级品牌植入相对而言并不那么普遍。最近,电影《宠物大冒险》借助《FrontierVille》展开品牌宣传活动,电影化身能够获得特别奖品的贴牌关卡。中级整合为开发商造成更多的机会成本,因为它要求游戏设计团队针对新角色设计关卡或者编写对话;然而这是更具组织性的宣传活动,因为这种模式的植入通常只维持很短的时间,就像现实世界中的电影剧场或DVD预告片。

FrontierVille

FrontierVille

高级品牌整合对于Facebook游戏和手机社交游戏来说司空见惯,但目前来看,这种模式的植入并非始终富有见效。迄今为止最成功的植入模式要数将品牌融入整个游戏,就像基于游戏节目《幸运之轮》(Wheel of Fortune)或者《Family Feud》的游戏。然而,不难发现National Football League和FIFA之类的运动品牌在社交游戏也表现很好,即便是在没有融入运动体验要素的情况下。此外,我们还可以发现像《Jersey Shore》或者CrowdStar《Old Navy》和《It Girl》之类的社交游戏也取得很大反响,即使品牌公司并没有将品牌添加到游戏机制当中。这对开发商来说无疑是最具挑战性的整合模式,但这品牌宣传者来说,风险也很大,因为他们无法确保玩家会体验游戏,无论他们玩家对于品牌多么熟悉。

 

Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore

品牌类型:个例分析

三种层次的品牌植入导出了这样一个有趣的观点:在社交游戏中,品牌并非处于平等地位。《超级大坏蛋》和《Tron》都是电影,但它们都适合初级整合模式吗?或者对社交游戏玩家来说,其中一部电影更适合中级整合模式?

随着透过社交游戏平台嵌入品牌的公司越来越多,弄清这些问题就显得尤为重要。目前,我们可以在社交游戏中发现大量来自食品和服装行业的消费品牌,以及来自电视节目或者棋牌游戏甚至是其他电子游戏的娱乐媒介品牌。

如果有些品牌适合高级整合,而有些品牌适合初级整合,那么分析品牌类型,了解各种类型和各整合层次的匹配程度就显得颇为有益。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

The Maturing Market For Brand Integration With Social Games: Part One

Brand engagement through social games covers a wide range of efforts from labeled in-game items to entire games built around a recognizable name. As we see more brands entering the space by signing partnerships with major social game developers and publishers, we break down the different types of brand and levels of engagement to see where successful brand engagement is more likely.

WHY BRAND?

Social games represent a number of potential opportunities for marketing brands by offering a deeper level of engagement than any print, television, or radio ad medium. By integrating a brand with an existing social game, advertisers can have exposure to a ready-made audience that potentially represents a new set of consumers. By creating a game specifically for an existing brand, an advertiser can provide support and viral growth to existing brand customers.

Brand integration can also bring game developers and their customers and added value. Through brand integration, a developer can receive significant funding from the advertiser, which in turn fuels development of new content for end users. The typical model for brand integration in a social games comes from a cost-per-engagement or impression interaction within the game. This makes the cost of brand integration in social games comparable to traditional media buys.

To give you an idea of how successful a brand campaign can be through a social game, consider our findings on a promotion for Disney’s recent film, Tron: Legacy within nightlife resource management social game, Nightclub City. This two-week event is credited with 120 million minutes of brand engagement between the number of times the film’s page was Liked, the number of times the trailer was viewed and the number of times the film’s Daft Punk theme song played in-game on a jukebox item. According to our analysis of the campaign in The Facebook Marketing Bible, over 3.1 million Tron virtual goods were consumed in-game during the campaign.

The catch is, developers must divert production resources from their games to make the brand integration happen. As developers hire more artists and become more agile in their development of specific objects, some of this opportunity cost dissolves; additionally, the payment from the advertiser can offset the worst of it. However, as more brands enter social games through integration, we are beginning to see new layers of integration develop that may change the nature of the opportunity cost and perhaps the payment dynamic between advertiser and game developer.

LAYERS OF INTEGRATION

To begin, we break out degrees of integration into three tiers: light, medium, and deep. Light brand engagement in a social game takes the form of branded items for sale or in-game decorations featuring company logos. Medium brand engagement is a little more involved on the game mechanic level, usually involving a themed quest or storyline or a special character with whom players can interact that clearly bears an association to a brand. Deep brand engagement is the easiest to identify because in most cases the brand is the entire game.

Light brand integration is the most common form of engagement across both Facebook and mobile social games. In just the last week, we’ve heard of partnerships between Toyota and EA to bring a branded Prius item to Monopoly Millionaires and between ngmoco and Century 21 to feature branded buildings in We City.

These small-scale promotions are relatively easy to pull off because, at their most basic, they only require one or two pieces of artwork. We observe, however, that crafting branded artwork represents an opportunity cost to the developer whose artists probably have a list of permanent in-game items they could be working on as opposed to a branded item that only appears in the game for a limited time. We also observe that light integration may not be the best way to encourage brand engagement; light integration presents no click-through opportunities or real world rewards to kick-start player interaction.

Medium brand integration is less common, although notably developing over the last six months as brands have worked with games to build a more detailed player experience that fosters a higher level of engagement. Most recently, we saw the Rango film promotion in FrontierVille in the form of a branded quest with special item rewards. Medium integration represents more of an opportunity cost to developers because of its higher demands on the game design team to build a quest or write dialogue for a new character; however, it also seems to be a more structured campaign because this type of engagement usually only lasts for a short amount of time leading up to a real world even, like a film’s theatrical or DVD release.

Deep brand integration is familiar to Facebook and mobile social games, but so far not consistently successful. The most successful ones we can name are properties where the brand is somehow a game in itself, like game show games based on Wheel of Fortune or Family Feud. However, we also see sports brands like the National Football League and FIFA performing well in social games, even without a playable sport component. Additionally, we also see some social games like Jersey Shore or CrowdStar’s Old Navy game, It Girl, finding success even though the brands don’t exactly lend themselves to game mechanics. This is easily the most demanding form of integration on the game developer, but it also represents the biggest risk to the brand promoter because there’s no way to guarantee that people will actually come and play a new game no matter how familiar the brand might be to them.

BRAND TYPES: A Case Study

Sorting brand integration into these three levels presents us with an interesting idea: not all brands are equal in social games. True, both Megamind and Tron are films — but are they both equally served by light integration into social games? Or does one property lend itself better to medium integration given the social game’s audience?

These questions will become increasingly important as more brands seek out integration through social games. For the moment, we see a large volume of brands coming from consumer products like the food and fashion industries as well as a significant portion of entertainment media brands like TV shows or board games and even other video games.

If there are some brands that lend themselves better to deep integration and some that can only use social games at the light level, then it’s useful to segment brand types to better understand which ones fit within which layers of integration. We’ll be addressing this part of the discussion through case study analysis within each of the three layers of integration in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.(Source:Inside Social Games


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