Gaming for a Win: Obama Ads in Video Games

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By: Aaron Whitaker

If you happen to live in Ohio, Nevada, or several other key swing states in this year’s presidential election, I know you’ve been flooded with political ads. There’s no escaping them, as they are practically everywhere you look. And starting soon, they’ll be in places where you didn’t think to look…on your video games.

President Obama’s campaign has once again teamed up with Electronic Arts to deliver ads through their Electronic Art’s video games. According to GamePolitics.com, it appears that the ads will appear in Madden NFL 13 on your Xbox, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii. They will be targeted, so only the swing states will see the ads when playing Madden NFL 13. The Obama campaign will also place ads in Electronic Arts other games and game affiliates like Pogo.com and mobile games like Tetris, Scrabble, and Battleship.

It seems like a good strategy to reach out to a lot of potential voters that one might not reach through TV, radio, and other typical marketing channels. While there are a lot of teens playing Madden NFL 13, I would suspect there are also a lot of young voters that could tip the votes in the favor of Obama if the campaign is successful in getting them to register to vote and vote.

From the pictures that I’ve seen of the potential ads, they don’t seem to be too intrusive which could be end up hurting the Obama campaign. A gamer doesn’t want Jim Nantz or Phil Simms to “urge everyone in attendance to get out and vote for Obama” between downs on Madden NFL 13. It seems like the ads will be where gamers have seen other advertisements before on the games. It will be interesting to see how effective the ads will be, especially in these swing states where it could come down to a few hundred gamers putting down their game controllers and casting their vote.

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About the Author

Aaron Whitaker is a copywriter, blogger, and social media aficionado who likes watching the TV commercials more than the actual shows. He prefers reading the magazine ads over the articles. And you can learn more about him online right here.

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