The Persuasive Power of Advergames: Exploring Procedural Rhetoric in Advertising

1. Advertising and Games

2. Means of Persuasion • Procedurality • Procedural rhetoric = rhetoric of a system • The use of unit operations, systems, rules, and procedures to persuade or express. • Visuals • Graphics, editing • Audio • Music, sound effects • Words • Print, spoken

3. Games are systems • Games are systems—they are a combination of rules and units—they embody procedural rhetoric. • Games have persuasive qualities, and some games are designed to be persuasive. • What makes procedural rhetoric better/worse/different at persuasion than static or linear forms?

4. Advertising

5. Types of in-game advertising Commercial off-the-shelf games have advertising • Licensing and Product Placement. This perpetuates a recursive network—deepened relationship with product. Game increases exposure to product, exposure increases game sales. • Licensing – sponsoring producer or representative product within game. Illustrative and associative • Product Placement – placement of product in game. A soda machine, baseball bat, or clothing line. Also, static/linear advertisement in game.

6. HOWEVER… We are focusing on advergames: An Advergame is a game whose sole purpose is to promote a service, product, or brand. Any game created specifically to host a procedural rhetoric about the claims a company wants to make about its service, products or its brand.

7. Three modes in advertising 1. Demonstrative– communicate tangibles about the nature of a product • Demonstrations, simulations, and/or descriptions of product • “Let me show or tell you how it works” • http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/customizer/ • Advergames: Use of product in game; descriptions in game. 2. Illustrative– indirect information through presentation of product in social or cultural context • Object used or referred to in context, but sometimes incidental to gameplay or used in novel way. • “Play hockey using a lifesaver as a puck” • Advergames: Communicate existence of the product through gameplay • http://crazysquares.com/games.html 3. Associative – indirect; focusing on the context/social and intangibles. • Lifestyle marketing; associating product with who buyer wants to be. • “Play pool on this cool Jack Daniel’s Pool Table.” • Advergames: Relate product with game/lifestyle • http://www.happymeal.com

8. Ads can use multiple strategies • Not mutually exclusive • Sometimes an ad can be demonstrative, illustrative, and associative. • Rarely is an ad equal parts demonstrative, illustrative and associative. • We look at the focus of the ad—what is its primary means of communicating.

9. Advertising Strategies • Demonstrative, Illustrative, Associative? • Slap Chop • Camel Cigarettes • Heineken

10. Great games… …but are they great advergames? • The Coke Zero Game • Get the Glass!

11. Who created whom? • “Mass media allowed companies to manufacture wants rather than satisfy needs” (Bogost 150). • “Advertisers focus on the procedural rhetoric of the frames themselves—integrating ads into rules of consumers’ perceived cultural station” (Bogost 152).

12. Advergame: $10,000 – $400,000 Primetime commercial: $100,000 – $200,000 30 second spot 30 commercials run during an hour long TV program Playing food advergames led to children eating more (Folkvord et al., 2012) Dorito’s Hotel 626 won 8 awards, and videos on YouTube of people playing have reached over 1 million hits

13. Advergames • Focus on advergames for this assignment because they (can/should) are based on procedural rhetoric. • They are “persuasive” games. Persuasive games foreground a product, lesson, or ideology.