It’s time to get playful: The fun-filled trend shaping the future of content marketing
At Brazen, we frequently attend industry events to hear about the latest technologies and tactics to better connect with customers. We’ve noticed a key trend emerging in 2018: playful is the new powerful.
Whether it’s through immersive virtual reality technology or addictive branded mobile games, it takes a strong sense of fun to appeal to today’s easily-distracted consumers.
Alternate reality
With inexpensive technology like Google Cardboard making virtual reality more accessible to anyone with a smartphone, the novelty value of this technology has begun to wear off. This means brands need to leverage AR or VR in an innovative way that truly creates joy in order to stand out from the crowd.
At a recent industry workshop, Ben Atha of Milk Lab explained that brands need to focus on mixing virtual and real-world experiences, such as combining tactile, scent or movement-based experiences with virtual visuals. Imagine riding a mechanical surfboard at the same time as wearing a headset showing visuals of 50ft waves, for example.
Taking this idea a step further, Atha also urges brands to learn from Disney, which uses data to create a personalised augmented reality experience for each visitor to its parks, ensuring their favourite cartoon character greets them when they step in line to queue.
Game on
Gaming offers another huge opportunity for content marketing, since mobile apps have opened up gaming beyond the stereotypical audience and into society as a whole. In fact, you might be surprised to hear that there are now more adult women playing games than teenage boys, and half of all gamers are over 40.
Not only has the industry grown massively, but Cari Kirby of Team Cooper points out that gaming creates an intensely-engaged emotional connection which can easily be transferred to brands featured within games. That’s not to say that brands can pump gaming apps full of adverts without prioritising enjoyable gameplay first and foremost, but if brands can come up with a compelling game design, the results can be impressive. In fact, Kirby cited the example of a ferry company’s game which was played 270 thousand times during a 40 day campaign, generating 600% return on investment and earning multiple organic reviews from prominent YouTubers.
Want to put the fun back into your PR & content marketing? Then give Brazen a shout.
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