El advergame como branded content en el contexto de la comunicación integradauna fundamentación estratégica, formal y evolutiva

Résumé

Advergame as Branded Content in the Integrated Communication Context: A Strategic, Formal and Evolutionary Foundation This thesis analyzes the use of games in the marketing ecosystem. Especially, it focuses on the concept of advergame as a sub-genre of branded content. Although there are several studies related to the content in advergames, they usually focus the objectives on the efficacy of brand placement in games. In this work, the objective is to analyze the game content through the lens of specific attributes extracted from the observation of the advergame ecosystem. This exploratory and descriptive research uses three different methodologies that are interrelated and follow the same main purpose: to set a heuristic strategy for a better understanding of the advergames in their context. First of all, the literature review allows the study to create a concept map for studying advergames from a broader perspective. This analysis sets the foundations for a model of analysis, which is applied to specific case studies. Finally, from all of the conclusions and premises built from the former methods, the study reflects on specific questions related to the current use of advergames. These questions are formulated to an expert panel for knowing how the advergame is used and understood nowadays. As a result, this thesis provides a tool for gathering the game information; and a methodological proposal for a content analysis, that is done by taking into account different attributes that are sorted in three levels. The form for analyzing games is created by gathering the information in three models: the inclusive model gathers the relations that are always present when analyzing advergames; the intersection model shows specific links that are all always present in advergames, but in different levels depending on each case. Finally, the tangential model shows relations that advergames have with concepts that can or cannot occur, depending on each game. After using this form, the content is analyzed and quantified by applying the methodological proposal for analyzing digital games, built and explained in this work. This provides a new way of studying advergames that allows analyzing characteristics that are often forgotten. For that, the analysis uses specific criteria selected after an understanding and visualization of the context of the subject. The methodology presents a three-level content analysis: a descriptive level for showing the relevance of basic attributes as advergame (brand, game, participation or device). Secondly, the relational level applies the variables extracted from the study of the context of advergames as a marketing strategy. Finally, the contextualization level allows measuring the importance of the interaction of the player with the game and its environment. After analyzing 10 case studies with the proposed method, and after studying the results of the opinions given by 20 experts in games, marketing and advergames, this thesis shows that there are different ways of understanding and using advergames. This creates troubles when identifying, delimiting and setting a classification of games with marketing purposes. By using the proposed variables, this work finds attributes extracted from the marketing ecosystem that seem to be crucial for delimiting the concept. As a conclusion, this thesis shows that advergame has a big potential that is not exploited totally, because its understanding is commonly focused on a sales-centred perspective (brand recall purposes). The richest way of understanding advergame is to use it as an organic communicative tool that adapts itself to the changes in the environment.