Case Study - Branded Mini-Game for Toyota Tundra Event

Toyota is known for its quality, reliability, and cost. This is the same image that the world-famous automaker brought into their branded mini-game for the launching of the new Tundra truck models.

We helped Toyota develop a HTML5 game that not only acts as a product launch announcement but also conveys its commitment to reliability for its customers. We built the mini-game “Tundra Towing Challenge” to demonstrate the new model’s 10,000-lb towing capacity.

Classic Game Mechanics

Tundra Towing Challenge uses the classic Snake game concept where a player controls a snakehead on a bordered plane. In Toyota's branded game, instead of a snake, the player controls a Tundra truck which grows longer every time it tows a payload. The Tundra truck must gather payloads between 100 to 2000 lbs. The goal of this game is to tow a total of 10,000 lbs before the vehicle runs out of fuel.

The game also has a French version to target French-speaking buyers. Here’s a quick preview of how the game looks like.

3 Reasons for Branding Games in Product Launch

From our previous case studies, we’ve discussed the different benefits of game reskinning/rebranding. This time, we take a closer look at why branded games are perfect for a product launch scenario.

1. Resonate better with audience

Experience, experience, experience—that is the most important thing to remember in capturing customer attention as well as improving brand retention. When someone sees a nice-looking illustration or a stunning video of a brand, it immediately catches his/her attention. This action creates a brief brand experience for the viewer.

Games for marketing follow this principle. However, instead of just letting their viewers go through a one-way experience, they take this experience to a whole new level. Games make their viewers in control of the experience.

Tundra Towing Challenge puts the player into the “driver’s seat”, to commandeer the towing of payloads. This customer-centric approach lets players experience and have fun with the new model’s feature, which is its towing capacity. In short, the game teaches its players all about the new product.

Interestingly, players don’t realize that the gratification of the game doesn’t end with playing the game. People will remember the pleasure they had with the game, along with the knowledge of the new Tundra truck. That’s why we always say, any positive experience from a branded game is often associated with the brand.

2. Easily adapt to any marketing event or campaign

We build branded games using our proprietary HTML5 technology. Aside from the cost savings you get from HTML5, this technology is supported on any modern computing devices, the Internet, operating systems, and many more. If you want a game for an upcoming or an on-going marketing event, we recommend opting for a HTML5 game solution.

Whether it's a tradeshow, exhibition, or product announcement, HTML5 games fit well with any marketing event. They could easily be transformed and deployed to any medium, such as landing pages, social networks, native apps, and even offline kiosks.

Tundra Towing Challenge was built using a popular game mechanic and a ready-made game template. We made sure that the game’s appearance and audio are appropriate to Toyota’s brand. The game was also localized to appeal to its French audience since a car show event was going to be held in this market segment.

Most importantly, this game was developed in a timely fashion since not everything was built from scratch. From game assets to mechanics, we already had a template to begin developing this game.

3. More options for insights and customer information gathering

HTML5 games offer insights, such as game difficulty, no. of sessions, etc., that are often unavailable in other forms of ads. With more options for tracking performance, brands can make the necessary improvements to their advergames during any part of their campaign cycle.

On top of that, customer information gathering functions from branded games are also excellent. They can offer registration forms and leaderboards to players for lead generation without taking too many resources, including budget. Check out this white label game, Spin the Wheel, to learn more about how brands generate leads with games.

Discover the Right Game for Your Brand

Let us help you find the right game for your product launch. We offer a wide variety of games, spanning multiple genres including action, puzzles, and many more. Contact us today.