Playful Strategies in Print Advertising

The fact that people are increasingly eager to seek out playful experiences in their everyday lives is part of a trend known as the ludification of culture. Scholars find that, in a time characterized by information overload, consumers are open and drawn to media products that offer entertainment through playful interaction. Meanwhile, the advertising industry is faced with the quandary of how to stand out and attract consumers’ fleeting attention in a landscape that has become highly competitive. Print advertising in particular faces a budget decline and has to compete with digital advertising forms that know richer affordances to appeal to consumers’ attention. For this reason, this article explores how print advertising uses playful strategies in order to stand out from the crowd and appease the demand to provide entertaining interaction for consumers. In doing so, the article focuses on the following research question: How do advertisers make use of playful communication strategies in print advertisements to stand out in the contemporary attention economy? To gain a comprehensive answer to this research question, a qualitative approach was taken. A thematic analysis of print advertisements was conducted, going through multiple rounds of coding that eventually resulted in the emergence of three central themes of playful strategies: (1) the use of playful visual design that is meant to instill a playful mindset; (2) the use of strategies based on a pleasurable interactive experiential logic; (3) the liberation of unspoken topics of a dark, solemn, and negative nature in a playful way. This study identifies playful aesthetics and their capacity for interactivity, resembling that of games, in static media forms such as print advertising; moreover, it identifies how playfulness can be used as a mode of production (playification) for the advertising industry as part of the creative industries. The conclusions and implications drawn from this article are thus theoretically and practically impactful. Regarding the former, contributions to an understanding of aesthetic interactivity and negative pleasurable experiences are made, and a need for further inquiry in playification is identified and encouraged. Regarding the latter, the benefit for advertisers to use playful print advertising strategies in their marketing mix is illuminated and ethical concerns regarding the persuasion of the strategies are expressed. The article closes by pointing out directions for future research

A Conceptual Model for the Study of Persuasive Games

In this paper I propose a new theory for the study of persuasiveness within digital games. This theory aims to make visible how persuasiveness can be structured within digital games and to be useful to identify specific aspects of games' persuasiveness that might not be obvious to the naked eye, by giving them order and conferring them intelligibility. The theory that I propose here is based on the hypothesis that multiple persuasive dimensions can be used within digital games to convey persuasive messages. In order to defend this hypothesis I introduce the concept of 'persuasive structures', which I use to describe how persuasive communication works within digital games. The definition of this concept relies on a conceptual model that is based on the proposition that persuasiveness within digital games can be developed through three different persuasive levels and that in each of the three persuasive levels it is possible to find different persuasive dimensions

Comunicación Institucional Online: un Modelo para el Análisis de Usos de las Potencialidades de la web 2.0. El Caso de la Gripe A

Web applications are often the visible face of good or bad strategies for modernization and innovation in institutions. Typically, there is a low level of technological appropriation. It is common to find that while citizens consume and co-develop applications 2.0, institutions provide information through static websites without interaction possibilities. This paper presents a methodological tool used to analyze from the standpoint of communication, the effective use and exploitation of the potential of Web 2.0 in institutional websites. This tool is based on an to evaluate the quality and visibility of the contents and the use of potential and resources of Web 2.0. The paper also includea the results of the application of this tool to the website of the Department of Health http://www.informaciongripea.es/

Persuasive Gaming: Identifying the different types of persuasion through games

The academic study of persuasion through digital games started from a game-centric approach by trying to understand how persuasiveness can be structured within digital games. However, players' performances and the context in which games are played also have an important role in the process of persuasion. The role of these two factors has been the focus of attention in recent research on persuasive games through studies that try to find a balance between players’ preferences and needs and persuasive goals. The objective of this paper is to broaden the understanding of the potential of persuasive gaming practices by providing a theoretical framework that serves to structure previous theoretical approaches on how digital games can be used to persuade players. This theoretical framework serves to explain the different types of persuasion that can be established through digital games, which contributes to better understand how serious games should be designed to respond to different types of serious goals. The three types of persuasion proposed here are: exocentric persuasion, as a game-centric approach for persuasion; endocentric persuasion, as a player-centric approach for persuasion; and game-mediated persuasion, as a contextcentric approach for persuasion

The Persuasive Roles of Digital Games

The model was designed to explain the different ways in which digital games can be used to influence the attitude of players

Comunicación Institucional Online: un Modelo para el Análisis de Usos de las Potencialidades de la web 2.0. El Caso de la Gripe A

Web applications are often the visible face of good or bad strategies for modernization and innovation in institutions. Typically, there is a low level of technological appropriation. It is common to find that while citizens consume and co-develop applications 2.0, institutions provide information through static websites without interaction possibilities. This paper presents a methodological tool used to analyze from the standpoint of communication, the effective use and exploitation of the potential of Web 2.0 in institutional websites. This tool is based on an to evaluate the quality and visibility of the contents and the use of potential and resources of Web 2.0. The paper also includea the results of the application of this tool to the website of the Department of Health http://www.informaciongripea.es/

The Persuasive Roles of Digital Games: The Case of Cancer Games

Using behavioral scientist B. J. Fogg’s conceptual framework on the role computer technology plays for users as a starting point, this article argues that persuasion through digital games can be approached from three different perspectives: digital games as media for persuasion, digital games as tools for persuasion and digital games as social actors for persuasion. In this article, I use five cancer gaming cases to illustrate how these three different persuasive roles can be used to accomplish different persuasive goals. In this respect, I explain how each of these persuasive roles digital games can play in the process of persuasion can serve to support cancer patients to face three different challenges: (1) lack of information about the treatment or the disease itself, (2) lack of motivation to start or continue with the treatment, and (3) difficulties in coping with the treatment or the disease. The analysis of these games is theoretical in nature and is done to illustrate my arguments. The categorization proposed in this article can be used as an analytical approach for the study of persuasive gaming strategies

Persuasive Gaming in Context

The rapid developments in new communication technologies have facilitated the popularization of digital games, which has translated into an exponential growth of the game industry in recent decades. The ubiquitous presence of digital games has resulted in an expansion of the applications of these games from mere entertainment purposes to a great variety of serious purposes. In this edited volume, we narrow the scope of attention by focusing on what game theorist Ian Bogost has called 'persuasive games', that is, gaming practices that combine the dissemination of information with attempts to engage players in particular attitudes and behaviors.This volume offers a multifaceted reflection on persuasive gaming, that is, on the process of these particular games being played by players. The purpose is to better understand when and how digital games can be used for persuasion by further exploring persuasive games and some other kinds of persuasive playful interaction as well. The book critically integrates what has been accomplished in separate research traditions to offer a multidisciplinary approach to understanding persuasive gaming that is closely linked to developments in the industry by including the exploration of relevant case studies

Feather growth rate and mass in nearctic passerines with variablemigratory behavior and molt pattern

Bird species vary greatly in the duration of their annual complete feather molt. However, such variation is not well documented in birds from many biogeographic areas, which restricts our understanding of the diversification of molt strategies. Recent research has revealed that molt duration can be estimated in passerines from ptilochronology-based measurements of the growth rate of their tail feathers. We used this approach to explore how molt duration varied in 98 Nearctic species that have different migratory strategies and molt patterns. As previously documented for Palearctic species, migration was associated with a shortening of molt duration among species that molted during summer on their breeding range. However, molts of winter-molting migratory species were as long as those of summer-molting sedentary species, which suggests that winter molt also allows Nearctic migrants to avoid the temporal constraints experienced during summer. Our results also suggest that migratory species that undergo a stopover molt within the Mexican monsoon region have the shortest molt duration among all Nearctic passerines. Interestingly, and contrary to expectations from a potential tradeoff between molt duration and feather quality, observed variation in feather growth rate was positively correlated with differences in tail feather mass, which may be caused by differences among groups in the availability of resources for molting. We encourage the use of similar approaches to study the variation in molt duration in other geographic areas where knowledge of the evolution of molt is limited.