In-game - Out-of-game

Brand engagement with Wii

It seems that every day we read about the declining effectiveness of advertising. How viewers skip through the adverts, can switch off to the marketing noise, no longer respond to our messages.

Thus i was highly interested when i read an article in e-consultancy about how brands should be using the Wii to interact with consumers. Brands are increasingly looking at more diverse ways to engage consumers in their products, and the Wii could be a great way to do this!

The Wii, for those who haven’t become addicted to this little white box, is a games console but one that is very different to what we have seen before.Instead of sitting fixated to screen with a confusing 76-buttoned controller, the Wii detects your body movement to control an on-screen character in a variety of scenarios.

The number of games that can be played on the Wii is now huge! And it has taken the country by storm! With such huge popularity and powerful technology, there is great potential for brands. Allowing the user to test products in a virtual world would certainly be a highly engaging experience.

You could do this with hundreds of brands -

Center Parcs could build a virtual experience of its holiday park. You could choose a room, take a dip in the pool, explore the restaurants and entertainment.
Diesel could showcase its new season range. The Wii could measure your dimensions and weight, building a virtual model of yourself onscreen.

Smirnoff could enable users to mix cocktails and play bartender cocktail style

The list could go on! And due to its link to the internet all of these applications could be downloadable! I wonder who will be the first to get their hands on this cool idea!??!

In-Game ads rule

Most video-gamers react positively to in-game ads - some 82% say the games are just as enjoyable with such ads as without them - according to a study conducted by Nielsen BASES and Nielsen Games on behalf of in-game advertising network IGA Worldwide.

Moreover, integrating dynamic advertisements into videogame environments provides brands a measured lift in consumer awareness and opinion of the products players are exposed to during gameplay, the Nielsen study found (via Wired).

There was, post-play, a 61% increase on average in consumers’ favorable opinions of products advertised in-game, according to the “Consumers’ Experience with In-Game Content & Brand Impact of In-Game Advertising Study.”

“With young adults now spending on average six hours a week gaming, advertisers should be excited at how well their messages were embraced and the brands positively perceived,” said Justin Townsend, CEO of IGA Worldwide.

Select findings from the study:

There is an average 44% increase in post-game aided recall from pre-awareness.
Positive brand attribute association increased 33% across all brands.
Of consumers with the strongest opinion about in-game ads, both positive and negative, over 70% felt the ads made them feel better about the brand, feel more favorable toward the brand, make them more interested in the brand, and believe the ads are for innovative/cutting edge brands.
Over 60% of these most opinionated consumers feel the ads catch their attention, make games more realistic, do not interrupt the game experience, and are promoting relevant products.
In-game ad exposures with a duration over two seconds, as they are measured in IGA’s in-game ad methodology, generates on average an almost 30% increase in key ad metrics, including ad noticeability (100%), recall (42%), and fit (27%), vs. ad exposures with a duration of less than one second.
Videogame advertising is poised to grow to a $2B global industry by 2012, according to eMarketer, making games the fastest-growing major advertising medium.