作者：Neil Davey

据Nielsen调查所示，目前在线游戏已成为美国网民的第二大流行活动，仅次于社交网络，所以营销人员开始利用这个飞速发展的领域也就不足为怪了。事实上，根据eMarketer的预测，2011年各大品牌花在社交网络游戏上的广告费用接近2亿美元。

早期的发现显示，营销人员花这笔钱是值得的。Interpret调查了RockYou旗下的2000名社交游戏玩家，发现他们能够接受游戏中的广告。研究发现，高达24%的休闲游戏用户会点击社交游戏中的广告并在线购买产品（游戏邦注：本文所涉数据及事件均以2011年为准）。

但是，Capgemini Consulting的Scott Sinclair认为，社交游戏对营销人员来说还有更大的价值。他解释道：“营销人员可以利用社交游戏来创造以品牌为中心的体验，相对比展示广告或Google AdWords而言，这样呈现品牌能够更容易被用户记住。将品牌纳入游戏体验并与之互动，这几乎是营销的最佳手段。”

mcdonalds-en-farmville(from designyoutrust.com)

比如，麦当劳让《Farmville》玩家有机会获得麦当劳品牌冠名的热气球，这个热气球可以漂浮在玩家游戏中农场的上空，玩家帮忙打理麦当劳的在线番茄和芥末菜地还能够获得提升技能的虚拟饮料。微软也同《Farmville》合同，希望能够通过奖励用户虚拟货币的形式提升旗下搜索引擎Bing的流量，结果不到4个小时的时间内就获得了2万的点击量。

本田在社交游戏《Car Town》中推广其混合动力汽车CR-Z，游戏在玩家车库旁添加带有可点击广告的新车型广告牌。丰田也在《Car Town》中推广Prius车型，鼓励玩家为Prius投票来换取虚拟T恤。

eModeration首席执行官Tamara Littleton补充道：“其他公司正围绕其品牌制作社交游戏，比如迪士尼将于2012年在Facebook上发布新品牌社交游戏，这将成为终极广告形式。”

品牌不只借助于现有的社交游戏平台，有些也开始尝试自行开发游戏。Sinclair说道：“Innocent刚刚发布了一款主要针对5到11岁儿童的新应用，公司已经制作了许多与健康饮食有关的游戏，向年轻一代推广他们的食品和饮料。Innocent想通过自己的游戏来带动品牌参与度和忠诚度，构建品牌粉丝群体。这体现市场正发生巨大的转变，我们从努力向消费者出售商品转变到努力提升用户对品牌的忠诚度。借用一个游戏化的术语，各公司的目标是围绕特定品牌或特定体验创建‘超级粉丝’群体。”

但是，这对品牌和营销人员来说是个全新的领域，尽管创建新式超级粉丝群体听起来极具吸引力，但真正做起来并非简单的事情。那么，品牌如何才能最大化自己的成功机率呢？

选择合适的游戏

Sinclair说道：“游戏和品牌之间需要相互配合协作。你未曾看到有品牌在《Mafia Wars》中植入广告，尽管它是Facebook上颇为盛行的游戏，但是其营销空间极为有限。”

Littleton补充道：“广告应当保持与品牌有所关联。比如，Top Shop在《Car City》中做广告就显得毫无意义。”

识别目标用户

Amaze未来趋势及创新顾问Andrew Dean解释道：“思考品牌的目标用户和游戏的用户类型、兴趣类型和态度类型。不要浪费时间和金钱在不恰当的时机同不恰当的人交流，比如你销售的是汽车，那么你就不能选择14岁的孩子或刚刚购买新车的用户作为营销对象。”

Sinclair认为，社交游戏确实给期望以特定用户群体为目标的营销人员带来新的挑战。“这些游戏的用户范围很广。统计数据显示，这些游戏玩家的岁数从12到60岁不等，所以锁定特定用户群体是件很困难的事情。因此，我们不再将注意力放在玩家的年龄上，而是以有着特定兴趣爱好的玩家群体作为营销目标。所以，营销人员要选择合适的游戏，确保游戏中的用户会对品牌和产品感兴趣。”

重视“粘性”和互动性

Sinclair说道：“吸引用户频繁回到游戏中与品牌互动是成功的关键。”

Littleton说道：“社交游戏中的广告不只是让游戏玩家看到广告。优秀的营销活动能够通过创意摆设或游戏内置区域驱动玩家与品牌互动。营销应当具有社交性，品牌拥有者可以了解到消费者对营销活动的想法，并根据反馈做出行动。想想看，你的品牌要如何在游戏中与玩家互动，互动的方式与品牌相关却不会显得唐突。然后，给玩家在现实世界中与你互动的理由，比如通过优惠券或参加特别活动的形式。”

提供对用户有价值的奖励

Sinclair说道：“活动需要提供对用户有价值的奖励。麦当劳奖励给用户的是带有麦当劳商标的农场，这块农场有特殊的功能，其收获奖励是普通玩家的1.5倍。所以，这是对玩家游戏有意义的奖励。”

farmville_bing(from farmvillefreak)

Sinclair将此与微软的Bing推广相比较。“再看看Bing的营销互动，单单向我提供带有‘Bing’文字的农场并没有实际的价值。这样的奖励并没有提升我在游戏中获得进展的能力。如果他们的目标只是为了提升流量，那么关键词‘Farmville tips’确实给他们的搜索引擎带来了22万的点击量，或许可以说他们已经实现了目标。但是就利用社交游戏作为平台来提升品牌参与度和忠诚度这个方面来说，我觉得他们的做法尚有欠缺。”

Littleton认为，品牌应当进一步扩展游戏中的奖励和价值，使延伸到线下领域。“麦当劳并没有彻底开发它的Farmville咖啡，没有让用户产生将其带到生活中的想法。这个虚拟咖啡能够让农夫的工作速度提升1倍，这似乎并不是项巨大的福利。反之，如果能够提供可让用户购买真正咖啡的优惠券，那么这个项目便能够带动咖啡的销售，麦当劳也能够跟踪社交游戏对消费者购买欲望的影响。”

鼓励病毒性推广

Sinclair说道：“让现有玩家邀请好友一起玩游戏，这样的推广方式用户更容易接受。”

保持内容简单化

Sinclair强调道：“简单化是关键。内容应当相当直观，不可制作得过于复杂。”

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年10月17日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How to make social gaming a marketing success

Neil Davey

Toyota is giving away free cars. McDonald’s is offering free hot air balloons. What fresh madness is this!? It can only be the world of online gaming, where web users in the US alone are estimated to spend 407 million hours a month immersed in the likes of Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars – and where marketers are now making a play of their own.

According to recent research from Nielsen, online gaming is now the second-most popular activity among US web surfers, behind social networking, and so it is no surprise to learn that marketers are looking to capitalise on this booming hobby. In fact, according to forecasts by eMarketer, almost $200 million will be spent advertising on social networking games by brands this year.

And early findings indicate that this is money well spent by marketers, with research of 2,000 social gamers commissioned by RockYou and conducted by Interpret revealing that they are receptive to ads. The study found that a surprisingly high 24% of users who played casual games clicked on an ad in a social game and made an online purchase.

But social gaming can offer even more value to marketers, explains Scott Sinclair of Capgemini Consulting. “One of the things that social gaming allows marketers to create is an experience around the brand which is inherently more memorable than simply showing an advert or popping something up on Google AdWords,” he explains. “To actually interact and involve the brand with an experience is almost the ultimate when it comes to marketing.”

McDonald’s, for instance, recently offered Farmville players the chance to acquire a McDonald’s branded hot air balloon that floats above their farms, and a digital drink that gives them enhanced skills, in return for tending the restaurant’s online tomato and mustard seed fields. Microsoft is another brand that has tapped into Farmville as it looked to generate traffic to its search engine Bing by rewarding users with virtual currency, notching up 20,000 clickthroughs in under four hours.

Elsewhere, Honda promoted the launch of its Honda CR-Z sport hybrid coupe in social game Car Town, positioning billboards with clickable adverts of the new vehicle next to every player’s garage. And fellow auto giant Toyota similarly promoted its Prius model on Car Town by encouraging players to vote on a term for the plural of Prius in return for a virtual t-shirt.

Tamara Littleton, CEO of eModeration adds: “Other brands are creating social games around their own brand – such as Disney, which is launching new branded social games on Facebook in 2012 – which is the ultimate in advertising.”

And brands aren’t only piggybacking on existing social gaming platforms either – some are also taking tentative steps towards developing their own games. “Innocent has just launched a new app which is aimed at 5-11 year olds and has got a bunch of games that are related to healthy food and promote their eating pots and smoothie drinks to the younger generation,” says Sinclair. “Innocent is an example of a company that is venturing off to create its own games to establish brand engagement and loyalty and start building up fans of their brand. That is the big shift that this has shown – we are moving from a generation of trying to sell us something, to trying to engage us with the brand so that we become loyal. And to borrow a term from gamification, it’s to create that core of ‘superfans’ around a particular brand or around a particular experience.”

This is very much a new field for brands and marketers, however, so while the goal of creating a new legion of superfans sounds attractive, it is of course far easier said than done. So how can brands give themselves the best chance of success?

Choose the right game

“There definitely has to be a level of synergy between the game and the brand itself,” says Sinclair. “You couldn’t imagine a particular brand advertising on Mafia Wars, which isn’t seen as a shining light in the media at the moment given some of their recent adverts across Facebook. While it is the second most popular game on Facebook, in terms of a marketing opportunity, I think it is very limited.”

Littleton adds: “Ads should always be hyper-relevant to the brand. There’s no sense in Top Shop advertising in Car City, for example.”

Identify the audience you are going after

Andrew Dean, future trends and innovation consultant at Amaze, explains: “Think about your audience and if it helps, think about a game as you would a social website: connected people, audience types, demographic types, interest types and attitudinal types. Do not waste your time and money talking to the wrong people at the wrong time, for example if you were selling cars you would not be talking to 14 year olds nor should you be talking to only people who have just purchased a new car.”

Sinclair believes that social gaming does open up new challenges for marketers who are keen to target specific demographics. “In terms of the people that are playing these games, it is a vast array. There are statistics that say there are people that are 12 years old playing these games right through to 60+, so it is very difficult to target a specific audience, and given the way that segmentation has moved, we’re no longer interested in those who are young and those who are old – we’re interested more in those who follow a particular interest. So it is a case of picking the right game and making sure that the audience within hat game is the right audience as well.”

Ensure the campaign has ‘stickiness’ and is interactive

“Making users frequently return to play is the key,” says Sinclair.

Littleton adds: “There should be more to advertising in a social game than just getting gamers to see an ad. A good campaign could drive interaction with the brand through creative placement, or a built-in area of the game. It should be social, so the brand can see what consumers think of the ad, and act on feedback. And it could drive offline sales through incentives. Think about how your brand can interact with players within the game in a way that is relevant and not obtrusive. Then give them a reason to interact with you in the real world – redeemable coupons, or access to exclusive events, for example.”

Ensure the reward for the user has value

“There needs to be value to the player,” explains Sinclair. “McDonald’s rewarded users with a farm that had the McDonald’s logo on it but that also opened up special powers in the game play so that they got 1.5 times the reward as a normal player. So it has to be meaningful to the player.”

Sinclair contrasts this to Microsoft’s Bing promotion. “If you take the Bing example, there was no value from giving me a farm with the word ‘Bing’ on it. There was no reward in terms of my ability to progress within the game. If their objective was just to drive traffic then they got 220,000 hits through the search engine just based on the search term ‘Farmville tips’ so perhaps they achieved it. But in terms of what the platform of social gaming gives you around brand engagement and loyalty, I think they missed a trick.”

Littleton believes brands should take rewards and value even further, into the offline space. “McDonalds got a bit of stick for its Farmville café, for not giving users enough incentive to take part – a virtual coffee made farmers work at twice the speed, which wasn’t seen as a great benefit. If users had been rewarded with a coupon for a real coffee on the other hand, the project might have led to real sales, with McDonalds able to track the impact of social gaming on consumer visits.”

Encourage viral promotion

“Get existing players to invite their friends to come and play,” says Sinclair. “This also means you don’t appear to be spamming users.”

Keep it simple

“Simplicity is key,” emphasises Sinclair. “It needs to be fairly straightforward to get it. You can’t make it complicated.” (Source: My Customer)