Yesterday I wrote about how next-generation gaming consoles are allowing for meaningful marketing by brands that figure out how to add value to the gaming experience. Over the weekend I discovered a current-generation advertising platform that hosts an added-value game for readers.

While enjoying my Saturday ritual of coffee, bagels, and The Week magazine, my eyes stopped at a crossword puzzle in the middle of the issue. A crossword puzzle is fairly unusual in this magazine, and while I’m not really a crossword guy, seeing it here with the headline “Recharge Your Brain!” certainly earned my attention. I soon discovered that this puzzle was actually a paid advertisement by Sanyo in support of its new line of ready-to-use rechargeable batteries under the sub-brand “eneloop.” Far from being a gimmick, this was a legitimate crossword puzzle that sent readers to theweekdaily.com/eneloop for answers.

Overall, I think it’s a pretty clever marketing idea for a new product coming into a crowded category. The idea of a free crossword puzzle as a way to recharge your brain certainly opens people’s minds to learn about a new type of rechargeable battery. It got my attention and made me respect the brand in a way that “just another battery print ad” could never do. There’s also a nice tie to positioning Sanyo rechargeable batteries as “smarter” than the existing competition.

I do wish Sanyo would have gone farther with its “recharge your brain” idea. A trip to its website leads the interested consumer to just a regular piece of brochureware. For very little cost, Sanyo could have invited readers to participate in other mental challenges or to sign up for something like a daily trivia contest. The brand could have invited people to challenge their friends–thereby spurring word-of-mouth.

But at the end of the day it took a lot of guts for Sanyo to launch its new battery with a national print ad that gives more than 90% of its space to consumer enjoyment.

I’m not too ashamed that I have become a fairly serious gamer in the past couple of years. I was raised on Atari 2600, spent college with Sega Genesis, and recently jumped headlong into the Xbox 360. You could say I have a relationship with games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Call of Duty 4. I find these games to keep my mind sharp while providing me a disconnection from what went on at the office all day. Of course, I cannot completely disconnect from my day job in advertising, which means I have been a close observer of how these games have tried to inject advertising into my field of vision.

The marketing world is becoming extremely interested in the rising amount of time people are spending with video games. “Interested” in this case means both: (1) worried about the fact that eyeballs are moving away from ad-supported media (e.g., young men are watching less Monday Night Football and playing more Madden ‘08); and (2) excited by the chance to put a marketing message into a gaming space where people are extremely passionate and paying close attention. Video games join new media options such as mobile and podcasts as a place where different marketing strategies are playing out quickly. I believe these approaches are breaking down broadly into interruptive vs. meaningful marketing.  Today I share two examples of companies that are taking these different routes, and show us that the meaningful path makes more sense to both players and brands.

The first example comes from Guitar Hero 3.  In case you just landed on the planet a few days ago, Guitar Hero and its close follower, Rock Band, have become the biggest brands in the gaming universe over the past few years. They have given millions of players the chance to take a tiny taste of what it feels like to rock, and they now have a channel directly into the home through Internet connections that provide a way to play with friends or download additional songs. This is a very, very tempting target for marketers. Since its beginning, Guitar Hero used real musical equipment brands such as Gibson in the game. It’s a modest type of product placement marketing that makes sense. But a few months ago I noticed something different in my field of vision - an advertisement. See if you can find it in the screen shot below:

It’s hard to find in this shot in the upper left corner, but it doesn’t look that much clearer on my 50″ HD plasma either. This is an ad for Microsoft’s Sync in-car audio system. The brand has bought ad space in the display monitor at a concert venue where your Guitar Hero song is being played. I saw another ad for the new Fox TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The ads are barely visible on screen, and even less so when you’re concentrating on hitting notes that are coming down your screen (i.e., playing the game).

This in-game ad approach is hardly offensive and barely interruptive, but it sure isn’t meaningful, and I cannot see how it drives sales. These ad examples are likely targeted perfectly, but they are unrelated to the game itself.  Just as experts are saying with mobile marketing, I believe in-game marketing must add value to the experience in order to be tolerated by players and drive sales. This is no fun for the advertiser, the game producer, or (especially) the consumer.  At best, it’s ignored wallpaper.  At worst, the game owner feels that he needs a refund on the $60 he paid for the product.

On the other hand, a friend pointed me to another compelling approach where the in-game marketing adds value to the customer’s experience. Paramount Pictures has partnered with Ubisoft to “inject” a scavenger hunt into the game Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 in support of the release of its movie Tropic Thunder. In this game-within-the-game, players are invited to search for a series of nine branded clues. Those who complete the mission get a chance to win prizes such as a VIP game map and other Ubisoft games. Here’s a screen shots from the game:

Unlike the Guitar Hero example, Ubisoft and Paramount have created an experience that adds value to their customers’ lives. They understand the insight that many first-person-shooter gamers love the chance to try new missions and maps. And they know that word of such freebies travels fast among the connected game communities. Of course, they’ve also nailed the demographic targeting for the movie, and timed the promotion perfectly to start the critical release weekend buzz.

Leapfrogging Interruption into Meaning

The term “leapfrog technology” is increasingly used to show that developing nations may skip intermediate steps of technology use and go straight for the best-in-class standard. In Africa, for example, villages are going straight from no phones to mobile phones, not bothering to put up telephone lines. In Brazil, consumers shifted straight to debit cards. In Pakistan, rural villages are going straight to solar. In these and other cases, it simply makes sense to go straight to the most advanced technology.

Perhaps new media will similarly represent “leapfrog technology” for marketers. Instead of going to the old way of interruptive advertising when these new media options arise, we will “leapfrog” straight to meaningful marketing because it simply makes too much sense for consumers and companies.

(Side note: Look me up on Xbox 360, screen name: Barbobus.)

Over the past few weeks, my team has been speaking with publishers about our plans to develop a book around meaningful marketing. I’ve had the chance to chat with some of the top business-book publishers in the world. One of the topics we have hit on a few times is how meaningful marketing is not just for the large, traditional marketing companies such as P&G and GM. Instead, we believe that any business size or type has an opportunity to grow sales by uniquely adding value to its customers’ lives.

In speaking with publishers, we end up introducing our own meaningful marketing plan for the book, and we discuss how each publishing house can similarly add value to its bookstore customers. Ironically, I recently discovered an interesting campaign from Penguin that shows how even publishers are thinking differently and meaningfully.

I learned from one of our employees (and a good link from PSFK) that Penguin launched a digital marketing campaign in April ‘08 called We Tell Stories. Over six weeks Penguin launched participatory stories by six of its fiction authors across a range of genres to create an entirely new form of literature. One story, The (Former) General in his Labrynth, is “an unholy cross between a text adventure, choose your own adventure, and dungeon map.” Some stories unfold as the “reader” answers clues by searching the Net and using Google Maps, for example. Another story was written and posted “live” during the week. There is a hidden seventh story that brings together clues from the other six, and offers a prize of more than $25,000 in books from the Penguin Complete Classics Library.

I believe this campaign has a lot of potential to deliver for Penguin and its target readers. The free online game is a chance to connect people with the works of authors they may not have heard about before. In a way, it is a free sample that gets readers’/players’ blood pumping and makes them ready for more. While the grand prize is available for a limited time, this online game experience can stay online for years. It is impossible to judge the actual business impact, but a look at site traffic on Compete.com shows that traffic spiked to 35,000 visitors in April. I’d like to see higher, but it’s not bad based on campaigns I’ve seen of this type.

There is room for improvement, of course. I would have loved to see Penguin keep this site going for the long-haul versus just a six-week promotion. The stories could have been released once per month to spread the impact out further and allow for the gradual build from word-of-mouth.

We’ll have to wait and see if this meaningful marketing paid off for Penguin and whether it and other book publishers continue in this direction. For now, please try one of the stories for yourself - and let me know what you think in the comments section.