John O'Green, CEO of BOSSdev, has written a great article on advergaming entitled Top Things NOT to do in Advergaming. One of the most important things he talks about is keeping the game simple, at the right level for the target audience to maximize audience touch, and to meet the expectations of people today who are used to high end graphics and highly engaging media. Advergaming is about having fun with the brand, interacting and becoming involved in it. So never loose site of the purpose of the game.
One advergame I particularly like is a fully immersive on created by the Brand Experience Lab. With Carlton Screen Advertising, the BELab created an interactive advertising experience for the Volvo brand. Linking theaters across England, they had cinema goers competing against one another across a connected network in real time. Notice how quickly the audience "gets" what they have to do and interacts with the game. This AudienceGames program was named one of the 10 Best Marketing Ideas in the World [scroll down to "Wag the Car"], in Brandweek's December 10th 2007 publication. According to Carlton, this program lead to 33M impressions across all media. To see the audience experience, visit the BeLab Blog and scroll down on this page to the You Tube link.
