Video Game Taglines from Next-Gen
One of our main practice areas at 360 is video games and virtual worlds. I’m a bit of a gamer myself and happen to be in very good company. According to NPD, US video game sales hit $17.9 billion in 2007 (which is up 43% year-over-year). With such growth, it makes sense that there is a video game conference dedicated solely to the marketing of games. In its third year, the MI6 Conference was held last week in San Francisco. We’ve been following the game marketing and conference coverage over the past week and one headline in particular caught my attention yesterday - Blake Snow of Next-Gen.biz posted a list of the Top 10 Game Industry Taglines.
After reading through the list, I recognized some - like “Wii Would Like to Play” for the Nintendo Wii (loved those TV ads!), “It’s in the Game” for EA Sports, and “Live in your World, Play in Ours,” for the PlayStation 2. I noticed that Next-Gen’s list includes mostly video game system taglines and few game-specific taglines. I understand why systems made it to the list - a system launch is a bigger marketing deal than one individual game launch, in most cases.
Separate from Next-Gen’s list, there are some great examples of taglines for individual games. Off the top of my head, Turbine (big surprise - one of our clients) is a great example. Last year they launched their award-winning game The Lord of the Rings Online with the tagline “one game to rule them all” playing off of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “one ring to rule them all” from his literary works, on which Turbine’s game is based. Pretty clever! The tagline was used in an integrated campaign that included online, PR, retail events, and advertising. It was so compelling that the headline for the MSNBC.com review we worked on was the tagline verbatim.
So, whether you’re a gamer or a marketer (or both), the Next-Gen list is worth a look. Some of these taglines may take you back a few years (or decades)!
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