Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The True Gamification Of Advertising.


This multiple award-winning advertisement from the 1980s indicates that it's promoting Silk Cut cigarettes solely by use of packaging colours and the visual metaphor of slashed material.

It left the reader/viewer to work out the rest and thereby engaged them with a form of extrinsic gamification at a time before any marketers had heard that word.

That's quite a contrast with yesterday's unsubtle approach that scans as poorly as the ubiquitous obtrusive QR codes which are flavour of the month right now.

You can have engagement or you can have a shotgun wedding - we all know which is most likely to develop into a lengthy, meaningful relationship.

3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Talking about QR Codes my impression in Australia is that QR codes are still being used very poorly. Examples are seeing them squashed in the bottom right corner of your tv screen whilst a 15 second spot is cramming enough call to actions and selling propositions as they can.

Another example has been on the side of public transport. very rarely can you get a tram/train or bus to stop with enough time so that you can get your phone out and get the qr app out and take a picture.

One close to the mark example would have to be on the rear label of a beer I had never drunk. I enjoyed the beer, noticed the QR and proceeded to snap it. Much to the impressive efforts of the marketers there, they failed to test this concept as my camera failed to lock on multiple times to a curved QR code, or maybe its because the bottle was ice cold, who knows.

5:06 PM, November 30, 2011  
Blogger john dodds said...

And even when they're made easy to access, the success rate is very low.

Adam Greenfield did an ad hoc survey with his ITP students in NY a couple of weeks ago and, if I recall correctly, even those technical mavens only got about 30% of them to activate.

Regardless of that, my point is that clicking on a QR code is not engaging, it's a chore.

1:24 AM, December 01, 2011  
Blogger Unknown said...

Only 30% got them to activate? that is crazy. Would you invest any time in a lead generation or brand activation metric that promises around 30% of your conversions will be able to get through? QR codes are a chore, 100% agree with you. Fact is, you could probably execute NFC chips, better these days where QR codes tried and failed. The next gen smart phones will see to that come to fruition!

1:55 AM, December 01, 2011  

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