Metersbonwe meaningless ‘magic cube’ game.

The more I read about popular yet meaningless brand experiences created online I am beginning to feel it’s all just a strategy to seize young peoples down time or ‘time killing’ as we might call it. The majority of these campaigns actually miss the opportunity to create something relevant, engaging and potentially ever lasting – and it’s more about just filling time.

Creatively it’s fantastic, I’m sure the creative department gets a real kick developing these tactical campaigns; but surely, given the current economic conditions, what we know about Social Media and even more importantly the plethora of alternative entertainment options online why bother creating these types of programs. What value does it really drive for the brand and how is it being measured?

Metersbonwe, a very successful local youth brand created the ‘Magic cube’ puzzle which I’ll review today. It’s really creative and it looks pretty cool but I have to ask ‘what does it have to do with either fashion or the brand itself?’ I’m beginning to feel the agencies responsible for production like this are simply creating entertainment tools or opportunities to ‘fill’ their targets consumers time (is that what they call engagement?). But offering little value for product engagement, which would be at the heart of an ideal digital investment.

Metersbonwe’s new campaign on renren.com looks pretty interesting at first. The objective is to solve the 3-level cube puzzle, resulting in a ‘magic card’ which offers a number of prizes. To go deeper with this (as if we couldn’t) upon completing your magic cube puzzle you are encouraged to connect with other matching card members. But to do this you must invite friends!

The campaign duration was one month, from Aug 10^th to Sep 10^th.

Unfortunately we couldn’t find any number to represent the number of users.

For more info see http://metersbonwe.renren.com/index.jsp

THE GAME

1. Register and enter the site. (first which is odd as this can often be a road block to many users who are unwilling to give information before seeing something of value)
2. Experience the Magic Cube interaction game. You’ll get a Magic Card after passing the second level (the advanced class). You may send your card to your friends so as to find the magic partner of your kind (kind of like match making). Simultaneously you may receive magic cards from your friends who have also completed the game.
3. A successful pair of users could take part in the lucky draw prize. You then would have an opportunity to win gifts, for example clothes from Metersbonwe.

So pretty basic – the idea was play a game, get a card, and see if you can find a match (asking you to send on) if you located a match you were then asked to play the lucky draw to win a prize.

To actually play the game – the respondents were asked to find the matching cubes on a 2*2*2, 3*3*3, or 4*4 cube with hidden pictures behind each square. We’ve all played these games where you must remember the all the images on a map and match them up. In fact recently I saw a similar game featured in the back of taxi media in Shanghai (Tennis Master I believe it was). The design elements of the cube were pretty cool –it was 3D so you could explore the entire cube as you moved the cube around (picture it spinning). Looked great, but sadly it didn’t make for a greater game experience, only leaving you frustrated and annoyed at the trouble you had endure to solve a simple puzzle.

COMMENTS ON GAME

Neil, our resident researcher reported to have found the game difficult to play and also difficult to see any real benefit in playing the game. To quote the young man ‘there are plenty of other cool games to play, so why would anyone play this?’ Fair point as he sits right on the core demographic this brand would want to sell too.

Statement’s like this one made me think – are we really that smart? Is it just these agencies getting it wrong? But that would just be foolish. The agencies responsible for these campaigns are building games, interaction pieces and forms of ‘engagement’ (regardless of the value) as a direction from the client. It must be pretty challenging to create a game as the centerpiece of your branded experience when there are literally 1000′s of gaming companies building these at a much more advanced level. Tough to compete I would imagine.

And finally when you solve the puzzle, it simply congratulates you. No prize. You have qualified for the ‘Magic society’. We’re still working it out the social value of that one.

The image here features an item that is sold in the stores – has product features and price. So it did have relevant product information but lacked any real interactivity.

INVITING FRIENDS

So the idea of inviting friends is pretty smart. Invite more friends after you play and have more opportunity to find your magic card paid. It was the only way to win a prize. To bad we cannot report the numbers but I’m curious to know the success if anyone can locate it.

INTEGRATION

No integration across other SNS sites.

Image features the home back to start page after completing the game. No link of to the commerce site or an opportunity to learn more about other products.

Main page of the brand: http://www.metersbonwe.com/

THOUGHTS

It’s important to speak with your target audience before launching into a brand endorsed campaign like this. It would be wise to actually consider what it is you are trying to achieve with the experience. If it is simply a game, well you may want to make it a good one – with a nice reward at the end.

I wish our team here could speak with you directly so you could hear the resentment towards this game. To quote ‘Once you experience the Magic Cube, you won’t try a second time’. Words direct from the targets mouth. Why so strong? Ultimately they were let down. For a young man the expectation was to be rewarded in line with what he felt he should receive as a result of participating.

Effort = Reward? Right. It must match. Or else you will find customers begin to feel like they wasted their time and worse, YOU wasted their time. They do not want to be played as dummies and they will not spread your brand message without feeling appreciated. The game was a ploy to create a bunch of brand ambassadors, and it was obvious. A feeling of insincerity surfaced at the conclusion of the game with unclear rewards and a basic dissatisfaction with the return on effort.

This is an important case as many brands consider using a game as a tool for direct brand engagement. This is not to say it’s not a viable tool to do so. But be sure to keep it relevant (meaning it relates to the product or attitude of the brand), make everyone a winner (give them something they will be happy with for their effort) and if you can keep the conversation going because If you get it right and the game is a hit – you have a solid base to grow a dedicated Social Media platform.

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Tagged as: Brand, Game, Mass media, Mechanical, Puzzle, Rubiks Cube, Shanghai, social media, Social network service, Video game, Video Games