Brief:

• Estée Lauder released several web-based video games to promote its Advanced Night Repair Synchronized Multi-Recovery Complex. The four games are available on the beauty brand's ANRcade microsite, Ad Age reported.
• Each game has a different style of play and also provides more information about Estée Lauder's products. For example, "Beauty Bounce" challenges users to move a tiny globe through a series of steps to win points, while "Repair Racer" lets players move a rolling ball along a narrow track while avoiding obstacles. The microsite can be reached through the Estée Lauder website and social channels.
• Sales channels in different countries can customize the games to offer free samples or other incentives to shoppers. The games also can operate as mini programs inside other apps, such as Tencent's WeChat messaging app or Alibaba's Tmall in China, Jon Roman, Estée Lauder's senior vice president of global consumer marketing and online, told Ad Age.

Insight:

Estée Lauder aims to engage consumers with video games that provide a more immersive brand experience while educating them about its products. Video games have become a more popular form of digital entertainment worldwide, especially among people stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of people who play video games is forecast to grow to more than 3 billion by 2023, up from about 2.69 billion currently, per Newzoo research data cited by Venture Beat. While Estée Lauder's games can be played on a desktop, their format is geared for mobile devices that are the most common way for people to play games. By the end of this year, 2.5 billion people will play video games on mobile devices, Newzoo estimates.

By letting different sales channels customize the games with different offers and promotions, Estée Lauder can support a wider variety of merchants that offer its products. That kind of reinforcement helps to differentiate its brand among rivals that also seek to stand out for retailers and customers. It's also another sign of how Estée Lauder continues to innovate in its digital sales channels.

The company was among the first brands to create profile pages that Snapchat started testing last month to help marketers maintain a consistent presence on the photo-messaging app. Estée Lauder also was at the forefront of beauty brands to showcase products in a shoppable augmented reality (AR) feature Pinterest introduced in January. The feature let Pinterest users virtually try on beauty products before making a direct purchase.

Estée Lauder is the latest brand to create customized video games to connect with the growing audience for entertainment software. Fashion brand Burberry released several video games in the past year to promote different lines of clothing and accessories, most recently its "B Surf" game that let players dress up avatars in its clothing. Burger chain Wendy's last year was the first company to offer branded video games in a digital arcade launched by Giphy, the platform of shareable GIF clips.