Trendsurfing: In-game advertising (The Times)
By David Rowan
For the world's bravest anti-terrorist crusader, secret agent Sam Fisher is awfully prissy about his brands. Each new assignment has to be spelled out on a Palm handheld computer. He will drink nothing but SoBe Adrenaline Rush. And forget about using a Nokia phone in his presence - anything but a Sony Ericsson he will shoot straight from your hand.
Fisher is no fool. As the star of Ubisoft's bestselling computer game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, his carefully negotiated product loyalties place him in the vanguard of a powerful new industry. Desperate to reach the young, high-spending crowd that is switching off television for consoles, advertisers are clamouring to have their products written into the virtual action. "Things started going crazy a few months ago, when a Nielsen study blamed games for a TV ratings slump among young men," recalls Michael Oxman, once a mere adman but now what's called a "brand in-game integration" agent. "That woke up the ad industry overnight," Oxman reflects. "When we started two years ago, there were an awful lot of sceptics. Suddenly this is the fashionable medium to be in."
From offices in London, New York and Chicago, Oxman's agency, JAM International, represents big-name games producers and the advertisers who want to be part of their plots. It costs from £50,000 to well over £500,000 for Oxman, 44, to have your product written into the next blockbuster. But for that, he points out, its brand values will be active in players' minds for literally millions of hours. Last year, for instance, his team had a Suunto hi-tech wristwatch placed within Microsoft's golfing game, Links 2004. "Suunto makes a GPS golf watch that measures the distance a ball has gone, so we made sure that every time the player's golf character hit the ball, the watch's distance meter would come on screen," Oxman says excitedly. "That made it a meaningful part of the game play." He has just been negotiating Ubisoft's latest deal for the Splinter Cell franchise. Its script was rewritten to give a starring role to a well-known make of gum.
In-game advertising has been around for a while. But what is new is the number of household names diverting marketing money from TV ads. McDonald's is paying to include Happy Meals in storylines; Procter & Gamble's Mr Clean character changes tyres in a Nascar race game. Sensing a long-term shift, traditional ad agencies such as Starcom and Young & Rubicam have launched dedicated games units. Even Viacom, which owns MTV, wants to start selling in-game placements. Not that Oxman cares for the phrase. "'Product placement' gets a bad rap with consumers," he says. Besides, today's cash buys far more than static Coke machines or Nike posters.
Evidence of the medium's effectiveness remains largely anecdotal. DaimlerChrysler, for instance, credits a custom-built game as having influenced one in three buyers of its Rubicon Jeep. But now technology is promising accountability. New systems can track the number of brands a player encounters. Advertisers can even update a character's clothing or dialogue automatically via the internet.
Not everyone is happy. The campaign group Commercial Alert denounces paid-for props as deceptive. Games purists also fear for developers' creative integrity. But Charlie Barrett, who puts together deals for Ubisoft, insists that the writers can always veto sales pitches they find too intrusive. "Sure, we can rescript a game if there's six figures at stake, but you always need to retain credibility," Barrett says. "Sam Fisher is a very rugged, moody guy. He's just not going to start drinking Babycham."
(The Times, London, September 18 2004)
For the world's bravest anti-terrorist crusader, secret agent Sam Fisher is awfully prissy about his brands. Each new assignment has to be spelled out on a Palm handheld computer. He will drink nothing but SoBe Adrenaline Rush. And forget about using a Nokia phone in his presence - anything but a Sony Ericsson he will shoot straight from your hand.
Fisher is no fool. As the star of Ubisoft's bestselling computer game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, his carefully negotiated product loyalties place him in the vanguard of a powerful new industry. Desperate to reach the young, high-spending crowd that is switching off television for consoles, advertisers are clamouring to have their products written into the virtual action. "Things started going crazy a few months ago, when a Nielsen study blamed games for a TV ratings slump among young men," recalls Michael Oxman, once a mere adman but now what's called a "brand in-game integration" agent. "That woke up the ad industry overnight," Oxman reflects. "When we started two years ago, there were an awful lot of sceptics. Suddenly this is the fashionable medium to be in."
From offices in London, New York and Chicago, Oxman's agency, JAM International, represents big-name games producers and the advertisers who want to be part of their plots. It costs from £50,000 to well over £500,000 for Oxman, 44, to have your product written into the next blockbuster. But for that, he points out, its brand values will be active in players' minds for literally millions of hours. Last year, for instance, his team had a Suunto hi-tech wristwatch placed within Microsoft's golfing game, Links 2004. "Suunto makes a GPS golf watch that measures the distance a ball has gone, so we made sure that every time the player's golf character hit the ball, the watch's distance meter would come on screen," Oxman says excitedly. "That made it a meaningful part of the game play." He has just been negotiating Ubisoft's latest deal for the Splinter Cell franchise. Its script was rewritten to give a starring role to a well-known make of gum.
In-game advertising has been around for a while. But what is new is the number of household names diverting marketing money from TV ads. McDonald's is paying to include Happy Meals in storylines; Procter & Gamble's Mr Clean character changes tyres in a Nascar race game. Sensing a long-term shift, traditional ad agencies such as Starcom and Young & Rubicam have launched dedicated games units. Even Viacom, which owns MTV, wants to start selling in-game placements. Not that Oxman cares for the phrase. "'Product placement' gets a bad rap with consumers," he says. Besides, today's cash buys far more than static Coke machines or Nike posters.
Evidence of the medium's effectiveness remains largely anecdotal. DaimlerChrysler, for instance, credits a custom-built game as having influenced one in three buyers of its Rubicon Jeep. But now technology is promising accountability. New systems can track the number of brands a player encounters. Advertisers can even update a character's clothing or dialogue automatically via the internet.
Not everyone is happy. The campaign group Commercial Alert denounces paid-for props as deceptive. Games purists also fear for developers' creative integrity. But Charlie Barrett, who puts together deals for Ubisoft, insists that the writers can always veto sales pitches they find too intrusive. "Sure, we can rescript a game if there's six figures at stake, but you always need to retain credibility," Barrett says. "Sam Fisher is a very rugged, moody guy. He's just not going to start drinking Babycham."
(The Times, London, September 18 2004)
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