Fake brand gamification. Gamification of visual brands as an advertainment strategy

Abstract

Visual brands are progressively and increasingly involved in playful environments, changing their logotype countenance in a metamorphic way. The evolution of public tastes and technologies have added a variety of iconic possibilities that allow logos to create games of different kinds, or to participate in seemingly playful activities. For this, the visual identities have enhanced their creativity when producing games, competitions and exhibitions of symbols of the game. Technological evolution has allowed brands to become multi platform entertainment tools, losing their characteristic monolithic structure typical of classic visual identities. Its multiform and flexible aspect guarantees them greater possibilities of integration into current communication strategies, increasingly based on transmedia storytelling. Graphic brands enter videogames, create their own game systems or associate with other brands to turn their target audiences into gamers. These different variants of combinations between digital recreational activities and visual languages ​​of branding have been generating processes that we have defined as fake brand gamification. We will explore this universe trying to clarify the terms used in these contexts to define the variants of gamification applied to brands. At the same time, we intend to define a basic map of the possibilities of relationship between games and brands, drawing a taxonomy that can propose future research developments.