Any basic marketing class begins by introducing its students to the ?Four Ps of Marketing?--Product, Place, Price, Promotion. Most business gurus will tell you that of these four, Product is the most important. Your product must have a unique value to the consumer or it won't sell. Today, with virtual instant communication, it could be argued that PROMOTION is fast becoming Product's equal when discussing marketing principles. If you promote your product in such a way as to capture the attention and hard-earned dollars of the prized consumer before any competitor has the chance, you've won the biggest battle in the marketing war.
And marketing IS a war. Companies spend millions of dollars every year on marketing studies and surveys to determine their potential consumer base. Traditional methods of marketing (multimedia advertising, free product samples, direct mail advertising), while proven to be effective to some degree, still have not provided Business with the answer it is looking for when it comes to getting the most for its advertising dollar. Business is still looking for its ?penicillin?--and advergaming may just be what Business is looking for to cure its blahs.
Advergaming, the newest niche in marketing, is quickly gaining fans at both ends of the sales spectrum. Businesses like it because it provides a new and interesting way to promote products; consumers enjoy playing the games created to push those products. Remember the Nintendo game Super Mario Brothers? Imagine you are 8 years old again, pretending to be Luigi, riding Yoshi through Mushroom Kingdom, crossing LEGO bridges, or jumping through Play-Doh swamps as you attempt to free Princess Peach. How long would it take you to ask your mom for a set of LEGOs so you could build your own kingdom? Now, put a sample of that game on the Internet. Well, companies have recognized the value of that not-so-subliminal advertising and are latching onto it faster than you can say, ?Laughter is the best medicine.? Corporations as varied as Ford Motor Company, HBO, and Nabisco use advergaming because it has been proven to reach bigger audiences, find those audiences during hours that were conventionally ?dead time? for advertising (e.g. work hours), and promote stronger recognition of, and loyalty to products and companies. Additionally, advergaming takes advantage of ?viral marketing?, a phrase that is used to describe passage of information from one person to another over the internet, generally via email. This means that a company is getting its product promoted for free; consumers pass it to one another without additional advertising costs--virtual word-of-mouth. And, as any business man or woman will tell you, old-fashioned word-of-mouth is the best kind of advertising! Advergaming is just the shot in the arm today's marketing world needs.