What is play and how can it benefit brands?
With so many news headlines seemingly focusing on what AI can do better than people, it’s almost a relief to come across an area where we are undeniably the experts – the world of play. The word play brings up thoughts of fun, happiness, and childlike enjoyment. But play also promotes exploration, experimentation, imagination, creativity, all of which activate the brain’s reward centers. So, what better space for brands to consider playing in? A move away from simply talking to your consumers, it means involving and immersing them in your brand by initiating fun, playful ways for them to interact with you, and with each other, in digital environments or in real life.
To dig further into the benefits of having a playful and fun brand, we looked at Kantar’s industry-renowned BrandZ dataset - the world’s most extensive brand equity study. Kantar BrandZ characterizes individual brands across many attributes including emotional associations. Brands disproportionately described as fun and playful had a stronger ability to build future demand for the brand, +24 points above average.
During the pandemic, when many had more leisure time and fewer places to go, we turned to play. Jigsaw puzzles were dusted off and the true benefits of play were rediscovered. And more recently, for example, The New York Times’ acquisition of Wordle, and their creation of other online games, means that people can play daily, and satisfy the urge in ‘snackable’ form.
Play is mood-altering, energizing, often highly memorable, and can be social and collaborative. When we play, we switch between exploring and experimentation. This ability to switch from one to the other through spontaneous play is one of the things humans (and animals) are better at than AI. Play is not logical – it is random, chaotic, and variable, and requires frequent improvisation and adaption.
And the benefit to brands? Well, there is a new and growing space where your brand can become the reward. The joy that comes from play can be an enhanced way to bond and build trust with your consumers.
NeedScope is Kantar’s framework, used by marketers to develop and differentiate their brand positioning. It is a psychology-based framework that helps marketers understand consumers’ emotive needs. It reveals that it is the outcome of play that makes for emotional distinctiveness. This example uses boardgames, to represent which brands fit into the different emotive spaces of fun and playfulness.
How board game brands fit into different emotive spaces of fun and playfulness
Humor is a significant part of play
We cannot address the issue of playfulness without also looking at the role humor has in play. In our previous articles, the most recent being ‘Time to get serious about humor in advertising’, Kantar data showed how after many years of decline in the use of humor in advertising, we are starting to see its return.
Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards, where consumers are the judges, have consistently awarded funny ads every year, much more so than jury-led awards. This is a sign of the disparity between what people want and what the ad industry thinks. Ads that marketers intend to be funny do have above-average distinctiveness, emotional connection, and engagement; and those we identified in our LINK databases as making consumers truly laugh out loud had these traits but importantly were more persuasive and well-branded. LOL ads genuinely have it all.
Humor done well and appropriately has the potential to cross generations and continents. Even the most serious of messages can be conveyed with humor, in fact this can be exactly the approach needed to lighten a weighty subject. A fast and flexible LINK+ study can be a quick way to put your mind at rest to ensure your ads humor has landed well and appropriately.
So, with ‘play’ being an opportunity for amusement and entertainment, and humor an integral part of that, brands using the ‘Joker’ strategy have the potential to build brand memories in the most distinctive and unique ways.
How have brands been adopting play?
Playfulness for brands comes in different shapes and sizes. We have seen stunts, rituals and fully immersive experiences adopted to bring an element of fun. From search engines to sandwich cookies, category is no barrier. Google, has been using dynamic and playful approaches to their search bar, taking this further into the actual working environment as early adopters of office bean bags and Lego stations; even the brand name itself has a playful tone.
Lego, have recent opened their doors to an immersive installation in Paris. Their Superpower Studio is a playable art gallery experience supporting their 'Play is Your Superpower' campaign. And Oreo, introduced their playful ritual of ‘twist, lick, dunk,’ a tradition now fully associated with the brand, transcending cultural barriers to create a shared experience of collaborative play. In the same way Google celebrates different local customs via its Google Doodle each day, Oreo brought out playful new flavors such as hot chicken wing flavor for Chinese New Year and wasabi flavor to celebrate Diwali neither were around for long but showed the brand has a fun-loving sense of humor.
Finding fun ways to connect with consumers can be another route to play. With its ‘love it or hate it’ positioning, Marmite, a British savory food spread evolved its image to playfulness; few brands are prepared to admit that people may hate them. The brand encouraged Marmite lovers to join a Victorian-style secret society, with members becoming known as ‘The Marmarati’. Marmariti got to trial a new extra-strong brand variant, a clever product-testing initiative with a fun element.
Walkers also took a fun approach to creating controversy amongst consumers with its campaign about crisps in a sandwich (or not) furthering brand awareness by building the debate on social media.
The fully immersive playful experience was also used by Jaffa Cakes, who have their own loyal group of consumers known as ‘Jaffanatics.’ To launch their Jaffa Jonut (a Jaffa Cake doughnut mix), they hid giant Jonut sculptures in UK cities with clues to their locations on Jaffa Cake social media sites. The brand continues to branch out with playful variants, such as Jaffa Cola variant.
A more technical example of playful treasure hunting was McDonalds’ ‘Deals Stuck in Time’ campaign in Sweden. Rising inflation led McDonalds to challenge its consumers to use a recent update of Google Street-View, showing locations through time. McDonalds ran its ‘stuck in time’ billboard ads in the same locations that older ads had existed, encouraging consumers to find the original promotions in the same location on historical Google Street View, and use them when ordering in the McDonalds app.
How to become a playful brand
Deciphering which emotive space your brand sits in will help determine your brand’s distinctive route to playfulness, what your brand means, and how a playful role might work.
Think about the diverse ways play can work. Scientific research has shown that stimuli that invokes discovery or makes our brains work harder can in fact be pleasurable and energizing. The stimuli your brand presents – be it a tricky wordplay in your advertising, a problem-solving game, or a #challenge (such as the #icebucketchallenge that went viral) – can be the key to unlocking that pleasure, resulting in a true and potentially lasting consumer-brand connection.
Using the right celebrity/actor/character to promote your brand can be another route to a playful brand image. Playful personalities have a unique ability to transform an environment making it more stimulating, enjoyable, and entertaining.
The big question that also no doubt plays on the minds of brand managers is whether in the current climate of unrest around the world, is play, humor, fun even appropriate? We know that in recent recessions, when asked, 84% of people didn’t think ads needed to avoid using humor, in fact they wanted it more than ever to help bring back normality to their lives. Similarly, it’s possible that the need for play could in fact be even more pronounced in times of trouble, with play as a distraction and a focus. Brands do need to carefully consider the context of the situation, including consumer perceptions, to ensure they make the right choice for their brand.
Get in touch to discuss what this means for your brand and how you can leverage play in your next campaign.