Marketing your brand may be beneficial to you – but can it also be entertaining for the people you’re advertising to? If the latest mobile app games are any indication, the answer is a clear “yes.”
This year, one of the hottest new phone-based games in Apple’s App Store is called Logos Quiz Game. In mid-2012, it was already topping the charts for iPhone and iPad downloads. It’s a free download that tests players’ knowledge of familiar brands. For example, the words are omitted (the brand name), while the coloring and shape of the familiar logo remain the same. Then, players have to guess the company within a limited time frame. Some are easier – like UPS – while others are surprisingly difficult to guess, like Levi’s. It’s a great way for advertisers to learn how familiar their brands are to their audiences, without any helpful acronyms, slogans or jingles to help jar users’ memory.
Players can also accept clues to help them figure out the correct response. Hints might include a brand’s mascot, slogan, year of origin, field of business or lyrics to the brand’s commercial tune. Players can both see how many clues it might take for them to figure out the brand – even those they see every day! Companies can also gauge how many of these elements are helpful or familiar or recognizable to figure out which are worth investing in for the future.
Rival games with the same concept, like TT Logos Trivia, have also cropped up due to the trivia game’s increased popularity with smartphone users. Some games are broken down by category, like car brand logos or corporate logos.
Some powerful brands have recently chosen to omit their names, relying on common knowledge for people to associate an image alone with their distinctive companies. A few examples are Starbucks, Nike and Apple itself.
So what do you think? Would your logo withstand the test of Logos Quiz Game? Would strangers in your industry or community know your logo by its context alone? This might be a fun game to introduce at a convention or industry event to see where your logo stands among your competition – and if maybe it’s time to add some targeted brand-building or logo redesign to your marketing plans for 2013.