How many apps on your phone are games?
Statistics show that 62% of smartphone owners install a game within a week of getting a new phone, and I’m apart of those statistics… I’ve only had my new phone for a month and I already have a games folder. Us everyday people apparently spend 43% of our total time on our smartphones playing games as of 2017.
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So, it comes to no surprise that there are several benefits for brands to use gaming as a marketing strategy. The obvious ones include high engagement, social-media friendly, fun, affordable, permission-based, high conversion rates, and it’s multi platform-based.
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So what brands have implemented these?
Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups introduced a Pac-Man themed Snapchat game recently, and the GIF shows it all. The game has been played more than 450,000 times, with a new player every 1.5 minutes. That’s serious advertising, free shares and happy user experience.
Image by Digiday
Another brand app that made me want to join was the Scooby Doo mobile UK shopping mall app which is being released for Halloween. This shopping app introduces augmented reality technology to help consumers find products in-store using a fun and interactive Scooby method.
Personally though, my favourite brand game still goes to Boost for their game, Free the Fruit. In this game, we played games to collect fruit, blended them up and got vouchers out of it. Not only did consumers enjoy the game as most of my friends and I had the game and were always playing and sharing our coupons around, but the brand could also bring their brand assets to life and grab our attention. Boost was therefore able to achieve increases in foot traffic and sales in stores.
Screenshot of Free the Fruit
So what do you think? Can you identify any consequences branded gaming apps can have? Do you have any examples, and do you think there should be more of these apps?
Jay's Weekly Digital Marketing 
Great post! I love a good game app! However I think if I was playing a Reese’s game I’d make myself too hungry, I have poor self control haha. The main thing that puts me off playing game apps is when they are full of ads for other products that are difficult to click away from. If playing a branded app means I can play a game without being bombarded with ads, then I’m all for it!
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Thanks for your comment! Maybe that’s the whole point Reese’s was trying to make, it makes us crave it while we play and some probably even go out of their way to buy it. I agree with you though, rather than getting ads, we can play freely or even earn vouchers!
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Hey, I’m also apart of that statistics you inform us at the begging. I don’t have any one mobile game on my iPhone. However, I totally agree that the market for mobile game is getting bigger and bigger. I think the idea that company offers branded gaming apps is quite great as we are now living with smartphones in hands.
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lol. Sorry for the word begging..it should be beginning
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Thanks for your comment Manjae!
You are definitely right, everyone basically has a smartphone in their hands 24/7, and as I said before most people play games on it. It’s definitely a really good marketplace for brands to create their own adfree games rather than putting ads onto other free games.
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Interesting read! I think the Hershey snapchat game is such a great idea – I think they are really smart for thinking of that
I think that when people are producing apps I think they need to be careful of the number of ads they put in them because if there are too many it is off putting and makes me quit the game
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Thanks for your comment, I agree that Hershey’s made a really smart move that many other brands can implement really easily and quite affordably depending on their reach. You’re right, when creating free games, the aim is usually to gain a profit through ads. Although, with branded games I think the aim is different, it’s more to create something that can potentially grow viral and help the brands, so technically it’s already an ad. In that case, branded games shouldn’t have any ads in them and I haven’t seen any that do.
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Advertising through producing games is smart, especially when it comes with extra incentives. This reminds me of McDonalds Monopoly App to instantly redeem food prizes, and if it means you’ll get more customers or even more loyal customers out of the app then I’m all for it too.
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Thanks for your comment and for sharing your perspective on this topic!
That’s right, McDonald’s Monopoly game comes around every once in a while and it definitely generates enough attention from most consumers to go there more often during that period. Not only does it make us want to go more, I definitely have upsized my orders in order to get more chances. I’m not sure if they did this previously with that app, but I noticed that they’ve introduced AI components to the app.
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I remember free the fruit. Absolutely loved that game because of all the coupons they gave away. Ads in games are definitely an increasing trend but I feel that the ad should somewhat be related. I wouldn’t want something completely unrelated and something I have zero interest in, popping up on my screen. However, marketers shouldn’t bombard games with ads as it will then get annoying and make users switch to other gaming apps.
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Thanks for commenting!
I’m glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one addicted to the game. I agree with you though, if games were to introduce ads, I think they should definitely be relevant as that would also ensure its advertising to the right group of people. However, I think businesses making their own games is definitely way better as they wouldn’t really need to advertise on it because its already theirs.
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