The opportunity for brand marketing in gaming right now.
A brand is nothing more than an idea. Branding is the process of being associated with an idea. Culture is a marketplace of ideas, with the value of any given idea determined by where it lives in the thought pile. Businesses protect their investment in an idea by using marketing to maintain its relevance in culture, but when something as unpredictable and significant as this pandemic happens, they have to start planning for a future created outside their control.
Nike is branding resilience, Coca-Cola is branding togetherness, and Netflix is branding storytelling, but gaming and streaming has become a more important part of people’s lives for these things during the pandemic than sneakers, sugar water, or even TV. Gaming has long been a scapegoat for the moral corruption of our youth, when in reality, it’s given young people a way to stay off the streets and avoid some of the worst civil unrest in recent history. Rather than polarizing us further, gaming and streaming have given people a way to play together without the risk of spreading COVID. As for its impact on storytelling, it’s hard not to see video games as the most significant development since motion picture, and the written word before that.
Studios, publishers, and gaming hardware manufacturers are missing a big-picture opportunity to brand the significance of gaming’s role in culture today. Studios and publishers underestimate the influence their brands have on whether gamers decide to buy their games, and console, component, and peripheral manufacturers seem more focused on the short-term sales benefits of product marketing than the long-term benefits of being associated with the future of how we deal with hardship, spend time together, and tell stories.
