Chapter 8: Social entertainment
Chapter overview
Chapter 8 explains the options available to marketers using the third zone of social media. It will
be important to explain to students that there are crossovers between social publishing and social
entertainment. However, social publishing is meant to inform while social entertainment is meant
to entertain. The primary areas of social entertainment include social games, social video
Teaching tips and resources
To add to the coverage on social games:
• Instructors may want to ask students to play a social game and note the branding
messages in the game. This can then be used in class discussions.
To add depth to the coverage of social TV:
• Ask students to follow hashtags related to their favourite programming on social
media networks. Use their experiences in class discussions.
Learning objectives
When students finish reading this chapter, they will be able to answer these questions:
1. What is social entertainment? What is branded entertainment? How is it
distinguished from content marketing used in social publishing?
2. How can social media marketers use social entertainment to meet branding
objectives?
3. Why is social entertainment an effective approach for engaging target
audiences?
social celebrity to share brand messaging?
Chapter outline
I. The Social Entertainment Zone
• Figure 8.1 illustrates the social entertainment zone.
• Social entertainment encompasses events, performances and activities,
which are experienced and shared using social media, and designed to provide
the audience with pleasure and enjoyment.
• With branded entertainment the content seeks to capture attention and retain
that attention for a prolonged period of time (at least compared to the standard
30-second advert) and to do so by entertaining the audience.
A. Social Entertainment as Play
1. Entertainment can be thought of in the context of play and brands that
utilise entertainment as a channel (whether via paid or owned media) are
ingratiating themselves into the consumers’ realm of play.
II. Social Games
• Social games make up the largest active area of social entertainment. At their core,
they are games but, importantly they are social – that is to say they are digital,
interactive and shareable online with one’s network.
A. Gamer Segments
1. Gamers have historically been categorised as either casual or hard-core
gamers.
2. Casual games are distinguished by low barriers to entry.
B. How We Categorise Social Games
Game design is built upon several layers, including platform, mode, milieu and
genre.
• Game Platform
a. A game platform refers to the hardware systems on which the game is
played.
b. Game consoles are interactive, electronic devices used to display video
games such as Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s Wii.
• Mode and Milieu
a. Mode refers to the way the game world is experienced.
b. Milieu describes the visual nature of the game such as science fiction,
fantasy, horror and retro.
role-playing games – are a type of RPG that truly encompasses the
social aspects of gaming.
e. Strategy games are those that involve expert play to organise and
value variables in the game system.
f. Puzzle games, a common variant in the realm of social games, are also
a type of strategy game.
C. Game-Based Marketing
1. In-game advertising is promotion within a game that another company
develops and sells.
• There are four general methods for in-game advertising:
a. Display ads are integrated in a game’s environment as billboards,
movie posters and storefronts (depending of course on the game’s
context), or simply as ad space within the game screen.
2. Value-exchange offers are perceived as a form of currency among game
players.
• Players are incentivised with an offer in exchange for interacting
with the in-game ad. Value-exchange offers are a form of
transactional advertising.
D. Product Placement
1. A product placement is simply the placement of a branded item in an
entertainment property such as a television program, movie, or game.
2. Screen placements that visually incorporate the brand into the scenery are
the most common form of product placement.
3. Script placements take the process one step farther: they include verbal
mentions of the brand’s name and attributes in the plot.
E. Brand Integration
1. In-game immersive advertising opportunities include interactive product
placements, branded in-game experiences and game integration between the
game and the brand.
F. Advergames
1. With advergaming, the game itself is a form of branded entertainment.
2. It is designed by the brand to reflect the brand’s positioning statement.
3. Brand recall is best when the brand is in harmony with the game story.
G. The Bottom Line: Why Does Social Media Work for Marketers
1. Game clutter means that there are way too many games out there that
compete for players’ attention.
2. Gamers are open to advertising content in games.
III. Alternative Reality Games: A Transmedia Genre
• An alternate reality game is a cross-media genre of interactive fiction using
multiple delivery and communications media, including television, radio,
newspapers, Internet, email, SMS, telephone, voicemail and the postal service.
• Because ARGs involve two or more different media, they are transmedia social
games.
A. The Marketing Value of ARGs
1. Although an ARG benefits from a sponsor’s deep pockets, many of the
games do not identify who is behind the effort. Instead, players play until
the mystery is solved (or the sponsorship is inadvertently discovered and
leaked to the community) and the brand sponsor is revealed. This type of
branded ARG is known as a dark play ARG.
2. Dark marketing refers to a promotion that disguises the sponsoring brand.
3. The term ‘collective detective’ acknowledges the need for a team approach
to solve the mystery.
B. Basic Characteristics of ARGs
1. ARGs are based on a fictional story. Game characters, events, places and
plot are imagined and explored by the game writers, known as puppet
masters.
4. The story is fictional as are the game characters, but the game space is not.
The players are real people and the clues are revealed in real time.
Consequently, real life is itself a medium. This characteristic has led to the
ARG ‘TINAG’ credo – ‘This is not a game!’
C. The Vocabulary of ARGs
1. There is a basic lexicon of alternate reality gamers:
• Puppet master: The authors, architects and managers of the story
and its scenarios and puzzles.
• Curtain: The invisible line separating the players from the puppet
masters.
• Rabbit hole: The clue or site that initiates the game.
• Collective detective: A term that captures the notion of collaboration
among a team of geographically dispersed players who work together
to flesh out the story.
D. Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Brand-Sponsored ARG
1. The most common indicators for ARGs include:
• Number of active players
• Number of lurkers and rubberneckers
• Rate of player registration from launch or from specific game event
• Number of player messages generated
2. Table 8.2 illustrates pros and cons of using an ARG as a social entertainment
branding channel.
IV. Original Digital Video
As with the other forms of social entertainment, opportunities for marketing with social
video and film follow the same continuum of low to high brand presence, ranging from
around and in-video advertising to product placements and brand integrations to original,
branded video content.
Competitive gaming, also called eSports, is the fastest growing genre in the gaming
category. Following the culture of professional sports teams, it has iconic players, fans,
team uniforms, playoffs and more.
A. Branded Video Entertainment
Brands can create their own original digital video content. The stories provide an
opportunity to feature the brand less obtrusively than an advertisement while
providing value to the viewer in the form of entertainment.
Figure 8.2 illustrates the top YouTube categories with brand-sponsored content.
2. Immersive Branding
• Brands that want a more integrated option need to find ways that the
brand itself can add value to the content that the target audience
values.
Chapter summary
1. How can social media marketers use social entertainment to meet branding objectives?
What are the types of social entertainment? Why is social entertainment an effective
approach for engaging target audiences?
Social entertainment provides opportunities for marketers to reach people with content that is
2. What is branded entertainment? How is it distinguished from content marketing used in
social publishing?
Branded entertainment is entertaining content that is produced by a brand rather than by a third
party. The Chipotle-developed Hulu series, Farmed and Dangerous, is an example. It is a type of
content marketing. Content marketing is also used in social publishing strategies for social media
3. What are the characteristics of social games and gamer segments? How can marketers
effectively use social games? How are alternate reality games different from other social
games?
A social game is a multiplayer, competitive, goal-oriented activity with defined rules of
engagement and online connectivity among a community of players. Most social games include a
few key elements such as leaderboards, achievement badges, or buddy lists that allow players to
compare their progress with other players. Traditionally we distinguished gamers as either casual
or hardcore, depending on how much time they spent playing and how important the games were
4. How are brands using social music, social television and social celebrity for brand
messaging?
Brands add value by curating content for fans, engaging content around conversations about social
television and affiliating with social celebrities. The brand is not the main focus in these activities