Social media strategy and branding: creating a brand through video games
Powerful brands can be created through a creative video game. Branding on social media should be attractive, fun, visual. Video games are a medium that does this. On social media, customers want to get involved with your brand. They want to take content prepared or created by themselves and then share it with their friends. A video game is an incredible medium to do this.
The creation and exchange of a brand by a customer is an interesting phenomenon. It is one of the most interesting observations that can be made on the subject of social networks. Human beings have an intrinsic need to interact with each other. When people find a product that they like, they have a need to tell everyone how good it is. This is why social media is so viral. To create a world-class brand, a marketer must allow customers to do this. Modern brands are really created and developed by customers. Customers take over the brand. The material must be attractive, interesting and visual. If a marketer can do this, a world-class brand will be created.
The strongest brands are created through user-generated content. The two benchmarks in social media campaigns are the Fiesta Movement, which involves the Ford Fiesta, and Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. In both cases, it was customers and followers who created and shared content with their friends. This exchange created the touchpoints that created the brand. The clients took over these two brands and created the brand for the directors. It is an amazing observation, but it is an observation that a modern marketer must make. In the case of Ford, 700 videos of the Fiesta were made. These videos generated 6.5 million views. In the case of the Obama campaign video, there were 442,000 user-generated videos, viewed more than 80 million times. No wonder strong brands were created.
Social media is powerful because it is so virile.
One powerful metric that a marketer should be aware of is that according to Reed’s Law, a network of 2 quickly becomes a 1,092 network. That’s why a video game strategy can be a powerful branding method. Video games are visual, immersive, collaborative, and obsessive. If you can motivate a follower to create a video game around your brand, this can be a powerful means of branding.
The creation of the video game can take two methods. Either the game can be created as a standalone game, or the game can be turned into a “mod.” Your brand’s video game can become a modification of a marketed game. Mods are an important part of the video game industry. A video game is created and players take the game and modify it according to their interests. Many video games are created with open source software for this very purpose. Game makers have found mods to be a great way to expand their brand.
A reference game could be “Civilization”. In this game, players are encouraged to take a civilization and guide it from the Bronze Age to the present day. A game like this could be built around a brand. Players could give their opinion on how the brand should develop. If done this way, customers would own the brand. This game would be helpful for both customers and the brand itself. There would be a large group involved in the game. There is wisdom in crowds. The crowd would discover an infinite number of branding strategies. Marketers could see how this game plays out and adjust their branding strategies based on the information in the game. By using an interesting game, which really attracts customers, a marketer could score in real time.
Dean hambleton
