Social entertainment encompasses digital and social forms of entertainment media like social games, social music, and social television. Social games are multiplayer, goal-oriented activities played online that connect players. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are intensive social games that use multiple media to tell an interactive fictional story. Brands can market through social entertainment by advertising within games and other content, sponsoring games, or creating "advergames". Evaluating an ARG's effectiveness includes metrics like active players, traffic, and media impressions generated.

1. SOCIAL
ENTERTAINMENT
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2. Social Entertainment Zone
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3. Social Entertainment
 Social entertainment encompasses the digital and
social forms of entertainment media.
 Social games
 Casual, social games
 Socially-enabled video games
 Alternate reality games (ARGs)
 Social music
 Social television
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4. What is Social Branded
Entertainment?
When brands create owned vehicles of
branded content, in the form of games,
music, or film, which is participatory and
shareable via digital connections, that is
social branded entertainment.
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5. Social Entertainment as Play
 Play as power
 Play as identity
 Play as fantasy
 Play as frivolity
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6. 7-6
Social Games
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7. What is a Social Game?
Social games are multiplayer, competitive,
goal-oriented activities with defined rules
of engagement and online connectivity
among players.
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8. Typical Elements of Social Games
Leaderboards
Achievement badges
Friend lists
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9. Gamer Segments
Casual Hardcore
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10. How Can We Characterize
Social Games?
Platform (Hardware systems)
Mode (way the game world is experienced)
Milieu (visual nature of the game
(Scifi/Horror/fantasy)
Genre (method of play (simulation/action/FPS/platform
etc)
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11. Options for Game-Based Marketing
 In-game advertising
 Display ads (in the game’s environment)
 Static ads (hard coded into the game)
 Dynamic ads (change based on specified
criteria)
 Product placement
 Screen placements
 Script placements
 Transactional advertising
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12. Options for Game-Based Marketing
 Brand integration
 In game immersive advertising (for e.g, game
integration between the game and the brand)
 Plot placements (brand is actually incorporated
into the story itself in a substantive manner)
 Advergames
 The game itself is a form of branded
entertainment
 Designed by the brand to reflect the brand’s
positioning statement
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13. Why Do Social Games Work
For Marketers?
 Gamers are open to advertising content in games.
 When players love a game, some of these positive
feelings rub off on the brands they encounter within it;
we call this spillover a transference effect.
 Internalization occurs when members of the target
market accept the beliefs of an endorser as their own.
 Brands benefit when they associate with a successful
game.
 Players identify with the brands their characters use,
increasing brand involvement.
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14. Why Do Social Games Work
For Marketers?
 When spectators become actors, they are less likely to sit
back and think of reasons why the advertising message on
the screen doesn’t apply to them (psychologists call this
common process counterarguing).
 Narrative transportation theory explains how even
imagined interactivity can build positive brand attitudes.
 Branding within a game’s story is an unobtrusive way to
share a brand’s core message.
 Targeting to specific groups is possible.
 Marketers can measure a game’s promotional value.
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15. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs):
An Intensive Form
of Social Game
 An ARG is a cross-media genre of interactive
fiction using multiple delivery and
communications media, which may include
traditional media such as television, radio,
newspapers, and postal service and digital
media.
 Because they involve two or more different
media, they are transmedia social games
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16. The Marketing Value of ARGs
 Although an ARG benefits from a sponsor’s deep
pockets, many of the games do not identify who
is behind the effort. Instead, players play until the
mystery is solved (or the sponsorship is
inadvertently discovered and leaked to the
community) and the brand sponsor is revealed.
This type of branded ARG is known as a dark play
ARG.
 Dark marketing refers to a promotion that
disguises the sponsoring brand.
 The term “collective detective” acknowledges the
need for a team approach to solve the mystery.
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17. The Vocabulary of ARGs
 Puppet master:The authors, architects, and managers of
the story and its scenarios and puzzles.
 Curtain:The invisible line separating the players from the
puppet masters.
 Rabbit hole:The clue or site that initiates the game.
 Collective detective: A term that captures the notion of
collaboration among a team of geographically dispersed
players who work together to flesh out the story.
 Lurkers and rubberneckers: Lurkers follow the game but
do not actively participate; rubberneckers participate in
forums but do not actively play.
 Steganography:The tactic of hiding messages within
another medium so that the message is undetectable for
those who do not know to look for it.
 Trail: A reference index of the game including relevant
sites, puzzles, in-game characters, and other information.
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18. How Can We Evaluate the
Effectiveness of an ARG?
 Number of active players
 Number of lurkers and rubberneckers
 Rate of player registration
 Number of player messages generated
 Traffic at sites affiliated with the ARG
 Number of forum postings
 Average play time
 Media impressions made throughARG-generated
publicity
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19. Other Forms of
Social Entertainment
Social Music
SocialTelevision
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20. Options for Marketing with
Social Music
 In-Network Advertising
 Social music is primarily based around cloud
services providing streamed sound.
 Brands can include many types of ads on social
music sites including audio ads, display ads,
billboard ads (which serve as a screensaver which
appears if a listener has gone inactive), and
homepage takeovers (which ensure all site visitors
are exposed to the ad)
 Immersive Branding
 Brands that want a more integrated option need to
find ways that the brand itself can add value to the
content that the target audience values
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21. Social TV
 SocialTV is technology that supports
communication and social interaction in
either the context of watching television
or related toTV content.
 The experience of watchingTV is
enhanced by social media.
 The phenomenon relates to social
celebrity and the rise of
“microcelebrities”.
 •TV Genome is technology that identifies
content in television and ties that content
to social media conversations
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22. Field Exercise 2
 Due: March 11, 2015
 Form: email
 “Visit unfiction.com or argn.com to see what
ARGs are playing now. Explore one of the current
games. Is it associated with a brand (or is it a dark
play ARG, with the brand yet to be identified)?
Make a list of non-entertainment brands that
could use an ARG to tell their story and immerse
their brand fans”
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