Buy, Redeem, Play – Brands Test Social Gaming Offers as Motivators
By Jason Hornik | Senior Director, Product Marketing
This summer several brand marketers and retailers are testing cross-promotions to tap into social gaming for motivating their target consumers to buy their products, redeem, play, and repeat. 7-Eleven, typically known for running promotions with movie and TV studios, branched out with a 6-week promotion involving product codes that are redeemable for virtual gifts across several of Zynga’s games on Facebook (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille). Green Giant Fresh tested and is expanding their cross-promotion with FarmVille to drive retail sales through on-package offer codes for gifts of Free Farm Cash. And just this week Cascadian Farm announced that they will also be partnering with FarmVille on an in-game promotion next week involving their organic blueberries plus a traditional coupon for in-store purchase (NYTimes.com article).
These marketers are all bold to explore new territory in a test and learn environment using social gaming tie-ins and unique offers as active motivators. And how will success be measured? The brands cite various metrics for effectiveness including incremental lift in product sales, site visits, customer acquisition rates, blog posts, brand and product category awareness. But the one commonality is that these brands are all taking an initial step to determine the value of social gaming offers and no doubt capturing their own consumer data and preferences along the way for re-marketing.
