Graphically Misleading Ads

[kleinluka]

A lot of people wonder why the burgers at McDonals don't look the way they do in the ads and in pictures that McDonald's marketing releases.

In reality,...it is just how marketing works.

[-Stratesiz-]

truths:

marketers will never stop lying to you. they dont care about the product at all, they care that you buy it.

consumers will never stop bitching. it's in their nature.

As a future marketer I can say that's not true. That might have been the general view a few decades ago.

Never underestimate the power of negative word-of-mouth.

The Axe commercial is exaggerated enough for consumers to perceive it as unrealistic just like Red Bull commercials. They use a comical approach, the strongest method for building brand awareness and brand recall if done right.

[Section_Ei8ht]

Strat has a point. The exageration of those commercials makes them different from the cod ad. The average person can tell that the COD ads are rendered images, but they dont know the difference between pre-rendered and in game, and since the 360 is a new console that has nothing but "life-like" graphics hype all around it, its not that suprising this is an issue with the general public.

[mikezilla]

yeah okay.

my opinions are based on years and years of dealing with marketing people in the industry.

they don't care about the game or the quality and never will.

[von*ferret]

Id think it would depend on market to market. Maybe marketing people in game industry DONT care about the quality of the game and will do what is nesc. to sell the game, thus pre-rendered scenes. I think that this will become less and less of a problem as more games try to achieve almost cinematic CG quality and wont rely on other factors to help boost their image.

[Izuno]

well...there are marketers who do care. but for a long time in the industry most marketers haven't cared and focus mostly on financial results over a time period. it's a tough, complex issue to tackle and i really don't want to spend the time on it now cause my brain hurts today.

anyway, marketing is full of questionable representations of products. the validity and acceptability of such marketing is really a function of the industry and precedent. Until their are laws (as related to what's going on in the UK) or established industry norms that prevent such ads, they won't go away.

I would like to say that some of the best video game ads i've seen don't feature rendered movies: GTA SA got me very excited about that game...maybe it was the GnR playing. I think Lusas Arts ads, though not always the most innovative in general, have been effective at selling under the radar games like Mercenaries which became a great success.

bah...marketing is second to product quality anyway. Is the game fun? Does it have a wide appeal? those are the most important questions to answer to determine game success. "is the marketing good" is only a valid question if you have a good enough game. History of game sales shows that.

[jfas]

As an advertising major I speak for myself when saying: I do not care about things.

[IR]

In the end you can always ask yourself,

how much faith does a company has in their own product, if they believe they need flashy render movies to sell it.

[cdxx]

I've noticed a few movies even doing this (not with renders) with scenes that are in the trailers but majically removed from the movie. That's also is false advertising if you ask me.

The gaming industry should really stop doing this. It's just not good business. especially durring a next gen system release. Im not sure I should generalize here but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there's a large percentage of people that see these renders in commercials and actually believe that gameplay will really look like that.

I'd say 99.9% of us on Mapcore can tell when it's BS. But my bro who doesn't keep up with gaming and technology in general cannot distiguish the difference. So yes you're right we are the minority which is why I belive this is such a bad business practice.

EDIT: here's several comments of what some people on gametrailers.com thought of the Zillzone 2 trailer. So sad really.

http://www.gametrailers.com/mediacommen ... ype=movies

[-Stratesiz-]

bah...marketing is second to product quality anyway. Is the game fun? Does it have a wide appeal? those are the most important questions to answer to determine game success. "is the marketing good" is only a valid question if you have a good enough game. History of game sales shows that.

Not necessarily true either. Games based on films tend to be shitty. Nevertheless, some of them have been fairly big hits.

About the fake in-game content, you wouldn't be discussing about it here unless it had an impact on you. Negative critical incidents tend to lead to stronger emotions, more mind processing, and are stored in your memory for a longer time period. People do not tend to give feedback when they are satisified with something, unless their perception of the quality significantly exceeds their expectations. Negative incidents still lead to stronger reactions like taking the initiative to complain here and creating negative word-of-mouth. Of course, all this depends on your previous exposures to the product/service/brand (positive/negative), number of exposures, relationship length with the brand, values, etc...

What if bigger information sources would spread this negative word-of-mouth. Could there be a snowball effect? Would that affect sales? Perhaps in some age groups or social groups. Perhaps not. It might if the people who first played it would have felt as if they had been betrayed, spreading the word to others. What if game reviewers would take this matter in their hands?

bleh... I'll shut up now.

[Izuno]

bah...marketing is second to product quality anyway. Is the game fun? Does it have a wide appeal? those are the most important questions to answer to determine game success. "is the marketing good" is only a valid question if you have a good enough game. History of game sales shows that.

Not necessarily true either. Games based on films tend to be shitty. Nevertheless, some of them have been fairly big hits.

About the fake in-game content, you wouldn't be discussing about it here unless it had an impact on you. Negative critical incidents tend to lead to stronger emotions, more mind processing, and are stored in your memory for a longer time period. People do not tend to give feedback when they are satisified with something, unless their perception of the quality significantly exceeds their expectations. Negative incidents still lead to stronger reactions like taking the initiative to complain here and creating negative word-of-mouth. Of course, all this depends on your previous exposures to the product/service/brand (positive/negative), number of exposures, relationship length with the brand, values, etc...

bleh... I'll shut up now.

yes I get your point. All I'm saying is think about flashy marketing on mediocre or crappy games, like Enter the Matrix. There is a property that is ripe for gamers, but in the end, the game quality actually hampered the sales of the product. Sure, they marketed the hell out of it (and no, I don't think they used flashy pre rendered footage but i can't recall) but it never lived up to expectations. It sold a lot of units, but before it was released many people were predicting GTA like numbers because the hype was so high. In the end, product quality limited the appeal.

Everything you say about branding makes sense...that's all marketing 101 so there is no disagreement. In fact, that argues the point that slick marketing is often very effective.

I think the issue here is, should marketers do that? In truth, most of those slick pre rendered things capture the "brand essense" which is important. They usually excite the mass market gamer. They are sometimes included somewhere within the game or on the disc somehow. Does that mean false advertising? No. Sure don't....until someone raises a lawsuit, it gets argued in court and some new ruling comes out if it.

I feel like we've been around the pole on this enough.

[-Stratesiz-]

My opinion is no. I expect such marketing to backfire in the long run. Neither does such marketing represent my values or my view of effective advertising. It's still a very very generic commercial which is something that should be avoided in a world where the amount of commercial clutter is still increasing.