Allen & Gerritsen made us a video game for growing our email list

In which situation would you be more likely to give a brand your email address at an event: one where there’s someone sitting behind a booth when you walk in, or one where you play a video game zapping aliens who are after your good name?

Well, if you’re Allen & Gerritsen, a Philadelphia and Boston-based marketing firm, the answer is definitely video games.
“If we can get something that draws people in rather than chasing them around, I think that’s a much better interaction with the consumer,” said Allen & Gerritsen SVP of Innovation George Ward.
The video game is a take off of Space Invaders, one of the earliest computer games created in 1978. The game will debut in partnership with Technical.ly on Friday night at the Arcade @ Dilworth, which runs from 6-9 p.m. at Dilworth Park.
In the game, players must zap aliens who’ve landed in Philadelphia and are trying to steal the letters of their name. When you zap the alien, it disappears and drops your letter. If you don’t zap it in time, it will take your letter up out of the screen, and you lose that letter from your name. If you aren’t able to keep all your letters, you lose. But don’t worry, your name will end up on the email list anyway, Ward said.
The game is emblematic of where the marketing industry is heading, Ward thinks.

“It’s not ‘Mad Men’ anymore,” he said. “It’s not just copy and art. It’s copy, art, tech and user experience. There are a lot of different ways now to engage audiences with brands.”

Marketers are exploring new possibilities for grabbing attention. Last year’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised $115 million for the organization entirely through the power of a viral social media campaign. The analyses of why the ice bucket challenge was so successful are varied, but everyone can agree that people actually got something out of the experience, rather than just being asked for money.
Creating more engaging experiences is what Allen & Gerritsen does, not only with the Space Invaders-style email game, but with many other projects. Recently they created a futuristic vending machine for Camden’s Campbell Soup Co., where employees are tasked with answering trivia correctly to get their food. In 2012, they rigged together a Nerf gun and combed Twitter’s API for a specific hashtag that would automatically cause the Nerf gun to fire. Then, they hooked that up to an old version of Duck Hunt. Over 2,800 people from more than 50 countries ended up participating.
“What I think you see is even the largest brands try to create something that adds value or utility or joy to a person’s day,” Ward said about the state of the industry. “I think that’s the trend in marketing.”