WATGame was at the India Gaming Summit and Session 4 was on Marketing The Gaming Industry.
Session Chairman – Arun Mehra, Zapak
Panelists –
+ Shantanu Sirohi, Interactive Avenues
+ Madan Sanglikar, Mindshare
+ Saurabh Kanwar, Channel [V]
The session was focused on marketing the games themselves and marketing done through the games.
Shantanu started his session first. Being from an Interactive agency, he started off by saying that there are three things which are important for a game marketer to reach a consumer – contact, location and propagation. He further gave the examples of two case studies that he his company did. For Colgate Maxfresh and for Intel. With Intel, they integrated the brand well within a brand. The screenshots they he displayed clearly showed the brand telling the player how much energy is left and does he want Intel to boost the energy further?
Madan’s examples were also focused on examples of how consumer can now be reached through various games.
What came as refreshing were, however, Saurabh’s presentation. Actually, he did not had any presentation. He just started speaking about various trends that he saw along with the work that he had done. He spoke of Raghu Dixit and how with the power of collaboration, he is become important.
Saurabh then went on to state how their research shows that kids don’t have a problem with ads, given the ads are interesting. He then showed a clip of a video that his channel created titled the “Lola Game”. They created a caller tune out of this and sold this off to Reliance Mobile. And it was s huge success. One interesting remark that he made and got a lot of laughs from the audience was – “They are Reliance . . . right . . . they screwed us”.
He further goes on to talk about a band called Nine Inch Nails. He explained how they employed a very unique way of marketing by putting in clues for a treasure hunt at various places. Both online and offline. And the 200 winners to the final clue were treated to an exclusive concert by the Nine Inch Nails. Saurabh’s point was what Nine Inch Nails played was actually a game. The game had elements from online and offline world. And the consumer was engaged actively with the game. That’s what needs to be done now. Games should guarantee engagement.
He later showed a video where an entire building was used to play Tetris. The video made for an interesting watch. Another example of how simple games like Tetris can be made engaging.
The session concluded with a Question & Answer session where someone asked a question about how do the media acknowledge achievers of the gaming community and make them stars. As an example he spoke of a friend of him sitting besides him who is a national champion in gaming, but still unknown. Saurabh said the first step is to acknowledge these people in forums like this (the Zapak Summit). So he invited the guy on the stage to sit with him. He said its important that a proper recognition be given to achievers like this. Everybody hoped that with time, this will happen and the kids like him will be known not just in their own college but the entire gaming community at large.
(Via WATGame)
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