Are you game for

Two years ago, when a student logged in to Reliance mobile service to check his exam results, he received a cheeky SMS with the result display ?Pappu pass ho gaya!?

This was followed by a call to action?an invitation to celebrate the moment with a Cadbury Dairy Milk!

The execution made brilliant use of an end user?s experience (happiness at clearing an exam) to integrate it with a brand and later went on to pick a bronze at the Cannes Advertising Festival 2006 for ?Best use of Internet and new media?.

For years, marketers have been foxed by a problem: how to sneak in a message, without the prospect smelling the rat. Now they have an answer in something called ?adver-games.? Even serious categories like financial institutions are opting for the new media, reflecting a broadening of the profile of an average Indian gamer, from 14 something to 35 or above. Add to this, the medium?s potential to be applied across TV, Internet and mobile platforms, and you gradually begin to understand its potential.

Just as films, soaps and other entertainment channels are being exploited for clever or dumb product placements, games, especially single player formats on handsets are becoming a medium of choice for big spenders, simply because of easy portability of a handset and a game?s potential to actively engage the target consumer.

The logic goes: since a consumer elects to engage with a game, she is more receptive to the ad that has been surreptitiously woven into the plot; than if she were to watch it passively on a TV screen. In the latter case, she can easily skip it altogether with a flip of the channel.

?Advergames engage a consumer for two to three minutes, against a 15 second TV commercial,? explains Salil Bhargava, CEO of Jump Games, a Reliance Entertainment venture, that has tied-up with Manchester United and recently acquired licences from Deepak Chopra promoted Virgin Comics, besides Fido Dido for developing advergaming content for their brands.

?Nearly 50% of the gaming revenue now comes from advergame/ingame promotions,? admits Leroy Alvares, country head, Tribal DDB India, the digital arm of Mudra Group. ?With MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) coming in, we can hope to see 100% growth in the industry,? he remarks.

Hemant Jain, senior vice-president, domestic business for Hungama Mobile, that has developed an advergame for Yash Raj?s forthcoming release, Tashan, says, ?There is so much micro transaction going on through this medium that the next gaming destination would be the handsets. Big brands are concentrating 20-25% of their ad budgets on below the line activities, mainly aimed at this gaming group.?

In Jain?s estimate there are roughly two million casual gamers in India, a small proportion of whom are regular visitors to Internet gaming cafes at Reliance World and Satyam where they are addicted to multi-player editions like Counter Strike 2×2, or 4×4 or popular strategy games such as the Age of the Empire.

?Even though bandwidth is an issue, with cable and PTV coming in, things would improve,? he enthuses.

?If content developers were to localise the game features, instead of copying from the West, the games would be more popular,? he adds. Right now, most games are a straight rip-off from popular Western versions. Customisation in the sense of featuring a racing track that stretches from India Gate to Chandigarh, if tied to CRM programmes, can be used to unlock gamers? psychographic profiles for lead generation.

One, big advantage with advergames is that once downloaded, the games stay on the handset for as long as the gamer is interested in it. In other words, the shelf life of a game is longer than that of any other media. One international study reveals that a mobile game is typically played for 28 minutes abroad; but in India, a session sometimes averages 38.9 minutes.

The end application can be used in a variety of ways, in cyber cafes, on merchandise, digital TVs, shop in shops; console game kiosks, time-based subscriptions (surfing hours), external fa?ade branding, desktop branding, furniture branding or on other promotional material inside cafes such as on trans-lites, posters etc.

Indeed, the choices for an ?out-of-the-box? brand manager could be many in the form of an in-game placement; ad flash while the game is being downloaded, the use of a brand jingle or the call to action with the sending of an SMS.

?If portals like Zapak.com launch MMOG, the subscription model could also become popular,? asserts Alvares, who has worked with a host of clients, including MTV India, Singapore Tourism, LIC, Reliance ADAG, Times Business Solutions, UTV Bindass and Citibank, to name a few.

A big attraction is the low pricing. An advergame can be downloaded for as little as Re 1, or even free from the company website, so the main source of revenue (almost 90%) is in advertising. Films, FMCG, consumer durables, education, youth lifestyle products, automobiles and technology companies are the ones that use this medium the most.

Cost wise, the spend for a brand can be anything between Rs 15 lakh and 1 crore, with 30% going into distribution and updation. The distribution cost goes to the network operator that hosts the game.

?Cost of in-game placement could be anything between Rs 6 lakh to Rs 8 lakh compared to Rs 7 to Rs 10 lakh for an advergame (where the ad is more intricately woven into the script), while a high level of detailing can even cost as much as Rs 20 lakh,? reveals Alvares.

?The cost in India is often discounted to create a differentiated product from a import product,? explains Alvares, adding, ?We believe micro-payments is the place to be for gaming in India. As of now, we have games priced from Rs 99 to Rs 249.

Take for instance, the Thumbs Up Everest Challenge: Hai Dum, a mobile game developed by Jump Games that featured a mountain climber negotiating a difficult terrain. It showed him dodging boulders, icy patches; and defending himself against ferocious bird attacks. The company claimed it was downloaded 3,50,000 times and went on to win the best integrated marketing campaign award for 2005!

Other examples are of a game released during FIFA 2006 Football World Cup, called Coke Super Footer and Coca-Cola?s summer campaign Sabka Thanda Ek, that also generated considerable buzz in the youth market.

When Marico?s Parachute Advanced coconut hair oil had to be launched, the company came out with a Gorgeous Hamesha campaign that used Reliance Mobile World?s voice application to give subscribers an opportunity to dedicate a song to their partners. Interestingly, in all these cases, the game was not just a medium for lead generation but it also became a tool for brand-branding.

For this, ?we would have to counter lack of awareness about the mobile media and take general perception away from bulk messaging,? says Manoj Dawane, CEO, People Infocom (Mauj Mobile) a company that has developed mobile gaming content for a host of brands in the apparel, auto, FMCG and services sectors.

?Advergames work best as end-to-end solutions,? says Bhargava. ?TV ads and PR tools can also be used to prod customers to download advergame via a short code. Sometimes, brands themselves decide to promote their game via popular media.?

Thus, if you are planning to spend on this media, ensure that you also have a comprehensive game promotion plan. ?Its no use putting money in an advergame that no one is going to notice or play,? says Alvares.

ITC, for instance, has often commissioned an entire gamut of content, from advergames to social networking applications.

The media promises great reach through viral distribution. Studies done abroad reveal that advergames give repeat customers (66%) and ten times more information retention than a 30 second TV commercial. The active reward system?in the form of bonuses, scoring etc,?is so gratifying, it builds positive association with the brand.

Already, mobile gaming is the fastest growing segment of the gaming industry, expected to grow to $9.34 billion globally by the end of 2008 (Frost & Sullivan). Within that, Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market and India is pegged to grow to $150 million by 2009. Small wonder that over $350 million venture capital funding flew into this space last year, of which $50 million came direct to India (Source: Private Equity Week).

However despite the reach (there are 116 mobile users against 3.6 million desktop or notebook users in India) the one, big drawback with the media is that early 80% handsets in India do not support games with average graphics, with the result that the playing experience is not as good as with the online version.

Yet, with the way the market is going, the ultimate destination for brands would be the handsets.