Whatever business you are into, you’re into games
Volkswagen have created a wonderful piece of what they call “social marketing” but which anybody familiar with gaming for the past thirty years would just call “gaming”.
At Head First we pursue work where we can make a difference; where we know that our ideas would be appropriate. Sometimes this takes us outside the games industry and the usual response is “where’s your relevance?”. I never struggle to find an answer.
I say something like games brings everybody together. To which I am told that the client isn’t a gamer.
I don’t believe them.
Everybody is a gamer.
They might not consider buying Modern Warfare 2 or Bioshock 2; they might not even own a “games machine”; but they are gamers.
The rise in what is commonly called social media has gaming built in as standard. Look at your friend’s Facebook updates and a game won’t be far away, clearly VW understand this.
Games unite people. Games teach people and games blaze the trail in terms of user experiences and technical accomplishments.
And if everybody is a gamer then it follows that there are certain elements they have in common; certain elements that can be used to reach them.
VW’s boast centres around the fact that their promotion had been downloaded over four million times. The “revelation” of their claim is supposed to be that all this was achieved without spending a penny on media. However, when you understand the power of gaming the revelation, however brilliant, isn’t surprising.