Gaming in the Media Blog

Advertising Age (hat tip to AdRants) has recently announced that GameStop will begin a nationwide campaign targeted to gamers:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Gamers, the power is in your hands.

GameStop’s ads from Richards Group were produced using the ‘machinima’ technique.

That’s the message behind the first national campaign from GameStop Corp., breaking Oct. 1. The multimillion dollar push — which sees the video-game and software retailer adopting a new tagline, “Power to the Players” — is the work of the retailer’s first agency of record, Richards Group, Dallas, which was appointed to the account earlier this year.

‘Machinima’ technique
Components of the campaign include print and TV (to appear in Maxim, Rolling Stone and ESPN magazines, and Comedy Central, Spike, and MTV networks, among others) as well as online and viral. The TV spots were produced using the “machinima” technique — a production style that blends computer-generated imagery with filmmaking — and feature video-game characters who promote unique aspects of the brand, such as the store’s trade-in policy and the inside information available through GameStop’s magazine, Game Informer.

“For us, it’s really a brand now that comes under one umbrella,” said Thomas A. DeNapoli, VP-marketing for GameStop. The message “will have an impact in every functional area within our company. … It’s not just an ad campaign.”

Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop operates nearly 5,000 stores in 16 countries, and last year posted $5.3 billion in revenue.

Looks like I will not get a chance to see the ads, since the campaign for gamers is hard slanted to capture the male gaming market.  Hopefully, this is the first run of a multi-prong effort to advertise to gamers, and they didn’t intentionally exclude growing markets for gamers on purpose…