Creative Technologists: Not An Oxymoron

The AdAge.com March 22, 2004 article "Video Games: The New Reality Of Youth Marketing" by T.L. Stanley opens a welcome conversation on the influence of video games in marketing to U.S. audiences. Simply reading AdAge.com every month allows one to see how interactive markets are expanding extremely fast.

Adding a helmet isn't going to make gamers think fashion shows are suddenly cool.

The article, however, falls far short of the true "writing on the wall" for interactive markets. Stanley joins just about every major agency in missing the whole point of what doors have been opened by these markets. Instead of using the fertile grounds these new markets have created, agencies are trying to tailor older, less influential media to cater to these groups.

If studies show that men ages 16-30 are spending more time playing online games and using Internet-related technologies than most anything else, why create television shows, and use game-related themes at fashion shows? We know where this audience is - they're playing video games. Don't try to make them go somewhere else, rather, go to where they already are.

Hello? Fashion shows?!?

As my good friend and interactive creative genius Jim Marcus once told me, "With interactive, content is everything." Email blasts and pop-up Flash banners aren't content, and they surely aren't going to attract the attention of this audience - many of which already have pop-up blockers and spam filters. Content is when you give them what they want, and tie your message around it, or better, in it.

If Volkswagen can't make the spaceship that kills Bugs best, nobody can.

Forget placing virtual ads around the track in a NASCAR game. Have your automobile manufacturing client sponsor or even build a new car that can be "unlocked" only by completing certain game levels, visiting the client's web site, or some other traffic-building exercise. Who better to sponsor a new "Bug Killing" starship for "Earth & Beyond" (Electronic Arts) than Volkswagen?

How cool would it be if you could visit the Sprint web site to set up your fantasy baseball team's information for your cell phone? Better yet, what if you could then download your team's current statistics into your X-Box?

What the gamers will respond to in droves is the content they appreciate. This requires synergies and new skill sets inside creative departments that are unfortunately, in many large agencies, shunned. The traditional Bernbach pairing of an art director and copywriter lacks the partnership of key creative interactive insights, such as those from programmers, game designers, and other technologists.

Google and MapQuest aren't popular because they're pretty or eloquent. The back-end creativity that is misunderstood by many agencies is proving to be the catalyst and lifeblood for many others. The first agencies to hire creative technolgists as part of their creative departments are going to be the ones that gather the lion's share of these new markets.

I can understand why many agencies cannot see this. After all, the writing isn't on the wall for interactive markets. These audiences don't write on walls. They share their messages and desires in chat groups, instant messaging, online gaming environments, and other places traditionally-focused agencies continue to not look. Print and television won't completely go away, but then again, neither did horse-drawn carriages. You just don't see them on the highways as much as you used to.