Game Ads or WTF?

I play games. Usually on the elliptical at the gym to make the time go faster. Most of these games have in-app purchases, but a player can sometimes watch an ad instead.

I've noticed something. Nearly every ad features our heroine of the game being cruelly cheated on by her husband/SO/boyfriend. Frequently, she has a child or she's pregnant with the cad's baby, but his new side piece is pregnant too and he's all gooey eyed over her. Our heroine then leaves town and starts a new life wherever the game takes place.

The first couple of times, I figured it was just how the game was set up, but as months went by and ad after ad after ad featured the same setup, it made me go huh?

There's one app--I hesitate to call it a game--where it's like an online coloring book. I have this game and I played it at the start of the pandemic because it was calming. They had an ad where the heroine's SO has his eyes straying to a new woman.

Only I have this game. I still login to it regularly to get the daily bonus. My version of the game still has these two together and there's no sign there's ever been an other woman drama.

Then another game shows our heroine pregnant, she tells the father, and he puts her on a raft and pushes her out to sea. The name of the game? Family Island. That's right, this is a couple with two other children and the previous ads for this game featured the entire family fleeing an exploding volcano, the father doing what he could to protect his wife and children.

This makes me ask what changed the advertising strategy for these games? Did one game have an abandoned woman setup, advertise it, and do really well? Is that why all these other games are following the same ad strategy even though their games do not have an abandoned woman?

I'd love to discover why this is a trend and what other casual game players think of it. I'm invested with my coloring book couple and it pissed me off when the ad broke them up. And Family Island? Isn't the whole point of the game that they're a family?

The strategy makes me wonder what sort of demographics and market research they have. Or if one person posted on a forum somewhere and all these other game companies went, Eureka!

Salute

I wish I'd seen this earlier because it would have been more appropriate for the 4th of July, but I'm sharing it now anyway. I'll confess that this made me tear up. It's also a reminder that there can still be good commercials made.

"Stop LOLing Everything"

I talked about some of the commercials I don't like, but I haven't mentioned a campaign that I do enjoy. The latest Barbasol ads have been a lot of fun.

The first ad I saw pictured a World War II soldier in the middle of battle, talking through time to his great grand son. Some of the great lines are: "Listen hashtag" and "Stop LOLing everything."

The tag line for the campaign is also clever, IMO. "Shave like a man." As an example, in the WW2 ad, the great grandfather says: "If you're not going to fight like a man, at least shave like one."

The second ad wasn't quite as strong, but the third one redeemed itself. This time it's set in the 1920s and features a baseball player. This time the player talks about pitching 17 innings while the current day guy needed a nap after watching a game.

While there's a lot to like in these ads, I think the main part that resonates is that old "I used to walk up hill to school both ways in the dark with snow up to my waist." You know, the old generation had it so much tougher than the current day. 

This, BTW, is also being used in the AT&T commercials where the slightly older kids are talking about how hard they had it and how much easier their younger siblings have it now. I think this is a very effective campaign, too.

Back to the Barbasol, though. The other part that's clever is how the writers take current day things, like Twitter or channel surfing and use it as contrast. These ads are entertaining and amusing and they have me looking forward to the next in the series.