SXSW live: Stories, Games, and Your Brand

After a quick cheeseburger, wings and fries on sixth, we're bloated and ready for more thought-provoking paneling.

Adam and I ditched the Zukerberg keynote hoping we could catch some good gaming information here at a panel that will hopefully be a little more sparse, and a bit more informative. Besides, I'm sure Zuckerberg will seek me out at the Facebook-sponsored party tonight (hopefully less lines and more fun than Frog).

The Panel is moderated by Dan Heaff, the director of digital ventures for BBC worldwide.

How games, stories and puzzles can help build brands. These tactics have been really successful with TV and film vehicles. But outside of these, can we use these tactics for good effect?

Rachael Clark - digital strategist, Dan Hon, CEO SFX to start, Roo Reynolds, Metaverse evangelist, and Jeremy Ettinghausen, digital publisher, Penguin books.

Hon's working on a major project for channel 4, another for BBC all ARG.

All British panel. That's not going to make it any easier on my blog translating...

IBM is working on virtual worlds in Intranets, uses for corporate cultures and learning.

At Penguin, they're looking at a future with lots of digital, and how stories are going to be told through the medium.

Examples where games are being used well...

Cloverfield -- There's a way that stories can be used to extend the brand over multiple platforms. Like JJ Abrams, you can extend the universe. These are the people that are the most passionate members of your audience -- the easiest brands that have had this connection and the ones with the most realized and deep experiences.

Honda -- just using straightforward puzzles is the rubiks cube and across all the media are games that help depict the idea of solving problems in a fun way.

Reynolds is disappointed that these games are largely about eyeballs, not participation. He thinks that virtual worlds are the next wave of gaming and storytelling.

Why brands might be interested in games and stories? It used to be that marketing was about interruption. TV ads, posters, all about that moment of distraction.

Now games are all about the deeper relationship, talking to and interacting with consumers over a longer period of time.

Clarke mentions that these don't have to be online, they can be in print, like the game book in our schwag bag (must not have gotten to that depth yet).

At Aleve, they put a campaign that includes puzzles, everything is controlled, and it's just a series of trails across a series of fake websites, and it rings hollow.

At penguin, they made a game for a book, and it was too easy, but it didn't sell any books. What did work was stocking the shelves with books at eye level.

What happened with Cloverfield, there was an audience that was already into playing these kinds of ARG games. Here it wasn't a game at all, more like easily finding Easter eggs. There wasn't a conversation with the audience. There is an expectation by the audience whether you acknowledge it or not.

They added more ARG content to react. And this is key -- you must listen and react to your audience, otherwise, you're rolling into a train wreck.

Another idea to know is that there are so many serious gamers out there -- far more than you -- that they will find everything, break everything. So you have to be ready to listen and react.

And the biggest train wreck has yet to happen. But it will as more interest and money start to enter this casual gaming area.

It's a challenge to move beyond ARGs, trying different techniques to try to broaden appeal. Making sure you satisfy the masses, as well as the hardcore players -- who are ultimately your evangelists.

What they're building for Penguin is much different that something built for Cloverfield.

Guiness made a game last year where the breadth was large enough to accommodate.

You have this hard-core group online, and think of them as teens -- but they're probably twelve with foul mouths.

But no one ever talks about the hardcore TV audience. The people who are into Lost, or into a soap opera. There is a difference between casual TV watchers and hardcore watchers. This is an important distinction to note.

Another thing people can do is introduce games to audiences who are new to gaming. Like people who follow bands. We can try to introduce games and interactive marketing by bringing games in new places. The book market for example.

The money for these kinds of games is currently held within the marketing budget. How do you convince marketing traditionalists to spend in games.

The money haven't come from marketing at penguin, it comes from an innovation funds. And they're looking at it as an experiment. To see if authors can extend their stories into different media, and how that affects the way the story is told.

This is a bit unique --

Marketing departments aren't necessarily looking for metrics and eyeballs, and not as much for engagement. If you have 100 deeply immersed people who's lives have changed, that's more valuable than engagement.

The guy that made the bees campaign talked about a metric of people who have gotten married as a result of his campaigns.

But it just opens the idea that there are different metrics out there worth tracking for this purpose.

Clarke asks the same about Honda, and it came down to the fact that concept of solving problems in the product, and the meaning of the brand tied right into the games.

With TV, they still have reach/frequency, and they still believe in it. But there's still the qualitative: what do you remember? How much do you value the brand as a result of the experience you've gained?

With reach like TV, you don't know what people have learned. But when you measure people's ability to complete tasks, then each can be mapped and measured to understand what amount of the message has been understood -- what learning objectives have been gained.

What takes penguin's budget beyond R&D? Ettinghausen thinks that Penguin's brand value can be helped just by being talked about. Certainly it's about selling books. But they're thinking about what happens after this project. Do they product-ize it? What can you learn to help the future of the brand? Go to a phone manufacturer and maybe get sponsored to do mobile because you've proven an audience.

Games have been around forever. Games on the back of cereal boxes. What are the key characteristics that makes games better?

Collaboration: masquerade was published in 1979. Treasure hunt across Europe took two years to be solved. Now it might takes two weeks with the technology available.

It's the social Web, and it can be powerful. On a cereal box, two-way communication is a letter. Here online, the interaction is immediate.

ARGs -- the time to produce is much shorter. Someone really loves a character, and you can step up that character in the storyline. Having that feedback and taking part in the channel is much more satisfying and compelling.

From a brand perspective, if you have a game that does hit home -- like OfficeMax -- the long-term results were great. In year one, only one game stood out as a winner. So they refined the winner, brought it back, and the results were tenfold in terms of audience.

Because of everything being campaign-driven, a lot of brands simply aren't letting their games sit out there and have a life.

What's a humane way to kill an ARG? No one's done it yet.

Episodic content is a great way to expand and build games out over time.

ARG's are the deepest, most extreme form of interaction. Marketers see it as cutting-edge, which makes it hard to dedicate budget to it. But truly, many have been largely successful. But it doesn't have to be a massive hit. It just has to be a hit with some people.

It must tie into the brand. Wrigley does this with candystand.com. It's all about the brand and 30 second bits of fun on the Web.

USA Networks just started a gaming area as well.

On the broader level, games and stories have always had a big part in education and culture. There's a school in NYC that teaches through game play.

They have always been around, they will always be around. It may not be as ARGs, but people will always be encouraged to play games and share stories.

Do games contribute value to all brands? No.

Hon's turned down people because they don't have a good hook for creating a game. You tailor a game to the brand.

Last year at SXSW, second life was the rage. CEOs came back and asked, "What's our SL strategy." The same may be said this year about casual gaming.

But consumers aren't stupid, so the brand has to find a way to make it integrated with the brand message, not just for the sake of taking part in the marketplace.

Like Coke in second life. They could have spent the money to just stick branding up on billboards and "paint the town red." But they didn't. They extended the emotion of the brand.

Q&A

Q: the problem you're identifying is one of weeding out many down to good concepts. Do you think that it's about being clever.

A -- It's not one over the other. Some come for puzzles, some come for games, some for stories. There was a wide age range, wide gender range.

Q:
I'm interested in the intersection of virtual worlds and casual gaming. Have you seen corporate backlash in the gaming world.

a:
There's always a danger in making it seem fun but not educational. Now people are calling some "Serious games"

I don't know the answer. There is scope for fun and learning, and you have to find a way to do this and not scare off people.

A big hurdle clearing on the Web is more dynamic gaming without downloading or delays.

Middle aged women are the largest audience for casual online games right now.

Penguin is competing with games right now trying to sell books, and that needs to be looked at.

Q: Maplevine is rolling out a game that looks like it will be popular. How can you scale big and fast with servers, security, risk management.

A:
None of this is any different from the Web, how applications got big quickly and needed resources.

I suggest going to the velocity conference -- it's all about the technology of scaling.

Q:
guy from Mixer -- a part time writer. He got a book published in 2009. He has time now to build for the audience with games. Any advice on creating a game that you can make on no budget and satisfy the fan base.

A:

It's a young area, but ask your fans for help. Go to a forum and say, "Hey, I want to make this game, can anyone help?"

It's so easy now to publish and produce content. So the tools are out there, and they're free. Players won't judge the xperience by how many servers are on the back end, but by the experience, the narrative, and the gameplay.

Q:
guy from gaming and learning in second life. a second-grade teacher, he trying to get education and gaming to come together. How have you solved this issue in the past?

A:
Find other people doing what you're doing. Seek those out. At IBM, they're doing a lot of education initiatives. They may not look like games, but there's a point, an outcome, and a goal in mind. You are going to have measurable outputs, just different delivery models.

You can know that someone has learned something because they came to a certain point in the game.

Q:
Do you think that male gamers are more hungry for brand stories in casual gaming?

A:
Yes, that's a bit of wasted breath. Do boys like 24 more than girls? Do boys like TV more than girls? The long story arc and the social relationships meant that they got more women. A lot of girls are more content-heavy.

Comments

[Dan Hon]

Thanks for the writeup and coming over to our panel!

Dan