Branded Game Success: It’s All in the Briefs

Posted by Professor Peek on 02.07.2020

Branded Game Budget Planning and Briefing

We walk you through some of the questions we'll ask when you get in touch to discuss a branded game campaign.

A good brief gets you the best output. It’s true of any creative campaign or digital project, the clearer the brief to your agency or designer the better the output.

When you’re creating a game campaign it’s no different. Having an understanding of your wider marketing objectives and ideals will help your developers deliver a game that is not only on brand but meets your expectations too.

Some of these questions might be difficult to answer. We’re not asking them to be awkward, we just want to make sure we can create you the best game possible.

Tell us about you

It’s always helpful to understand your company background, your sector, your company values and any guidelines to be aware of.

It also helps to understand if you’ve ever worked on a game campaign in the past, so it can inform our language and gain insights from your past experiences.

Now, more importantly, tell us about your audience

See, it’s not really about you. What we really want to know and understand is who the audience for the game is.

Who are you marketing to? We’re keen to understand your wider audience as a business but also; who is the audience for this game specifically?

Any information on age, gender or any penned personas you can provide will help us to scope the best solution. Some games or features might work better for some audiences than others, so the more you can tell us the better.

For example, if you’re a B2C brand targeting mums on Facebook, a mobile friendly casual puzzle game with free prize draw might be the best way forward.

Or if your target audience are a B2B sales team known to be competitive bunch, you’ll want a game that will allow them to compete against their peers with plenty of opportunities for bragging rights!

What do you want to achieve with the game?

What are your campaign objectives? What would you like your audience to do after playing the game?

Do you want to generate leads for your sales funnel? Encourage sales with special offer vouchers or increase app downloads? Increase footfall at your trade show stand? Perhaps you’re simply looking to boost brand engagement or employee engagement within your own organisation?

Understanding the wider objectives of your campaign will help us scope the most appropriate features that will help you achieve your campaign goals.

Don’t forget to tell us how you’ll measure success too. Engagement figures, time spent in-game, entries on the leaderboard, number of voucher codes sent out or marketing opt-ins?

Whatever your KPIs, let us know so we can tailor our approach to your campaign.

Game promotion and reach

If you’ve seen any of our other blogs or talks you might have already heard us say that games aren’t a marketing magic bullet. Like anything else in your marketing arsenal, you can’t expect something to offer huge returns in a silo.

We’ll be asking you how you are planning to promote your game? Are you planning on creating a social media campaign? Or putting some PPC spend behind it?

If it’s an internal employee engagement project, will you be sending it out via email, how many times? Or is it part of seasonal advent calendar with daily prize giveaways?

It’s worth thinking about this and having a plan for the campaign and prizes ahead of time, not only for reach numbers and its implications on hosting, but more importantly to make sure you’re getting the best out of your investment in a game.

One of the most common pitfalls we’d like to avoid is to createe a game campaign, and then only send out one social post and a quick mention in a newsletter before moving on to the next campaign.

Make sure you give your audience ample opportunity to play and encourage interaction.

The BIG ONE… What’s your budget?

We can cater to a wide range of budgets so having a rough idea of how far your purse strings stretch helps make sure we propose a game with the appropriate scope of features.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing more disappointing than being presented with an awesome game, customised with loads of extra features to nail your objectives only to find out it’s wildly over budget. 😭

To get you started, here’s a rough guide to the budgets required for different levels of customisation:

Under £2,000 – Minimal customisation / Quick turnaround
£2,000 to £8,000 – Tailored / Partially customised
£8,000 to £15,000 – Part to fully customised / Few bespoke features
£15,000 to £30,000 – Heavily customised / Many bespoke features
£30,000 and upwards – Heavily customised / Multiple languages or territories

We can always work it out together

These questions are intended as a starting point to delivering a game campaign that will meet your objectives and allow you to connect with your audience in a fun and engaging way.

If you don’t know the answers to these questions right now, that’s fine too, we’re always happy to talk it through and work everything out together.

If you’d like us to send your briefing document, or you’d like to discuss how games can work for you, get in touch today.

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