From MMO guilds to livestreams, esports leagues to new release frenzies, games are truly situated at the intersection of social interaction and mass media. And there at that intersection lies an opportunity for positive impact. People like author Jane McGonigal, Ph.D., and organizations like Games For Change promote games as a tool for humanitarian action. The design of games and the communities which surround them is fertile ground for creating and encouraging positive behaviors. And it’s not just game developers who think this way.

In the same way that marketers and ad agencies have been looking to games as a brand communication tool, nonprofits and humanitarian organizations have had their eyes on how to leverage digital media for their own messaging.

“It has to be national in scope and has to be crucial. It has to be a pressing social issue. We have to be able to measure our impact. So something that’s measurable and also something that’s actionable for the individual.” Rebecca Mir, Director of Digital Product Management at the Ad Council, explains. “That means that we need to meet people where they are through whatever media channels exist.” And for much of the country, one of the big media channels is gaming.

We spoke with Rebecca about the inherent potential of technology, games, and digital media for creating social change; the differences between traditional marketing and PSA development; and how Guild Wars 2 proved to be the perfect place to Seize the Awkward.

Jamin Warren:

Having started in museums and educational program development, Rebecca currently oversees creation, maintenance, and learnings of digital products for public service campaigns. This proves to be an interesting challenge and opportunity as the Ad Council develops large scale communications to tackle social issues. We spoke with Rebecca about the potential of technology, games and digital media for creating change and how Guild Wars 2 proved to be the perfect place to Seize the Awkward. Can you tell me a little bit about what it is that you do? How did you start your career making your way to the Ad Council?

Rebecca Mir:

Yes. So at the Ad Council, I’m a director of digital product management, and that means that I am helping manage and optimize and build out digital products for our various public service campaigns. Usually, that’s websites. It also occasionally could include chatbots, apps and even games. Before I was at the Ad Council, I was working in museum education. My educational background is actually in art history and decorative arts, and it all makes sense to me.

Jamin Warren:

That’s really cool. The Ad Council is such an interesting organization in large part because they have grown into whatever new media has emerged over its very long history. It’s over 70, 80 years old at this point. So, they’ve been there for radio and for television and for the rise of the internet. And then now all of the different things that you can do on digital. Can you tell me a little bit about what the Ad Council’s approach has been to adopting new mediums as a form of communicating for public good?

Rebecca Mir:

Yeah, absolutely. We are the only organization that uses communications to solve social issues at scale, right? Our model marshals pro bono talent from creative agencies and then distributes those PSAs that we create with those agencies via our media partnerships and donated media network. Everything that we do is non-partisan. It has to be national in scope, has to be crucial. It has to be a pressing social issue. We have to be able to measure our impact, so it has to be something that’s measurable and also something that’s actionable for the individual. And that means that we need to meet people where they are through whatever media channels exist. And that’s why we continue to build relationships with new media companies and continue to innovate and try to reach audiences in new places. It isn’t always easy. I’m sure other marketers and advertisers will agree, right? When something’s brand new, you haven’t quite formulated best practices yet. You have to learn by failing and learn by trying and keep iterating.

Jamin Warren:

Your background is interesting. Also my understanding is that, I mean, this isn’t true of everyone at the Ad Council, but many people at the Ad Council have worked in advertising and marketing before joining the Ad Council. And then they’re looking for a way to use their skills in account management or creative direction or research or whatever it might be. But on behalf of campaigns for social good, you’re coming at it from more of an artistic and aesthetic background. I was curious, what were some of the things that maybe surprised you about working with other marketers or maybe things that you felt like you understood that you had to communicate in a different way to your teammates that maybe didn’t have the same background as you did?

Rebecca Mir:

What I’ve learned at the Ad Council is how to reach people with breadth. Because when you’re trying to help someone make a change, a behavioral change that will improve their life or improve society through a PSA, maybe you only have like 60 seconds or less, sometimes six seconds. For certain online videos, you have to get right to the point and you also have to be emotionally resonant in your message. And I think that’s been the biggest transition or learning for me. And something that I’ve brought to the table and to my teammates is being able to go deep on the user experience and the user’s journey and empathizing with that person from before they see our ad to when they come to our website to when they’re no longer using our website but trying to do the thing that we’ve encouraged them to do.

Rebecca Mir:

So, I think this is something that the Ad Council does very well and that companies can learn a lot from us and the work that we do, and that’s because social good messaging or really any kind of advertising requires some strong strategy research upfront. You need to have a very clear understanding of your audiences’ barriers to behavioral change and what motivates them. And then you can have a better chance of reaching them with a message that’s going to be resonant, authentic, inspiring. So, we’ve recently launched a youth vaping prevention campaign with the American Lung Association that targets parents of young children like middle school age children.

Rebecca Mir:

And what we learned in research is that parents had some preconceived notions about what types of kids vape, and that preconceived notion allowed them to sit in denial with the fact that their child probably wouldn’t vape because their child’s like a good kid. Not having trouble in school, has friends. They had this preconceived notion that if someone’s vaping, maybe there were some warning signs in terms of how their child would be acting. But what we know from research about youth vaping and how prevalent it is, is really that any kid that’s in middle school could start vaping. There’s no one vaping profile for middle school aged kids. So our creative for that campaign is actually confronting those thought patterns that allow parents to sit in denial like, “My kid would never vape.”

Jamin Warren:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Now with Guild Wars 2 and Seize the Awkward, how did that collaboration come about to be? How did that get started?

Rebecca Mir:

First of all, I love talking about this partnership. It’s really just so great and so enlivening. We knew that Guild Wars 2 had a supportive and open community of players through a colleague of ours at Allied Marketing, Julie Knap. Julie connected us with the partnership and events team at Guild Wars 2. And we immediately hit it off talking about potential campaign connections, what might make sense to collaborate on. And we ultimately decided to pursue a partnership with them for our Seize the Awkward campaign specifically because the audience and messaging match so well. Guild Wars 2 celebrates friendship month each year in February, and our Youth Suicide Prevention Seize the Awkward, the goal of that is to empower young adults to check in and have conversations with their friends about their mental health. So, this connection seemed like a no-brainer.

Rebecca Mir:

And as a part of that friendship month partnership, which was back in February, NCSOFT, created Seize the Awkward in game T-shirts that featured our speech bubble logo for the campaign. And they actively encouraged players to reach out to each other and wear the shirt as a way of inviting conversation. And that was a great success in terms of positive feedback and engagement. 61% of players that logged in during that month redeemed the T-shirt. And we saw a lot of really positive interaction on social as well. So, we actually decided to partner with them again last month in September for suicide prevention awareness month. The effort was bigger, bigger and better I’d say. NCSOFT actually produced video PSA’s, TV video PSAs out of home.

Rebecca Mir:

So billboards and bus shelters and digital banner PSAs that we distributed and are currently distributing through our donated media network. They also created a new in game item, a potion that made little speech bubbles appear above the player characters heads. And they brought back the T-shirt for an encore for players who missed it. The PSAs they created for us encouraged young adults to check in on their guild mates and learn how at seizetheawkward.org. So, we’re excited to see how their community has responded to that. We haven’t quite done our measurement work and case study work for that yet, but I’m sure it’s been grand.

Jamin Warren:

Do you think there are certain types of games that are more well suited for the work that the Ad Council does? I mean, Guild Wars is interesting and role playing games I think are interesting because they do naturally have that community cooperation, teamwork, friendship element to it. That’s not true for all games.

Rebecca Mir:

I think it depends on the type of partnership that we do together. You’re right in that a MMORPG like Guild Wars 2 has some human interaction baked into it, and it’s also the type of game that’s continuously being updated. So, it’s easier to get an end game item into an online role playing game that’s continually being updated than it is say a AAA game that has a much longer life cycle than say perhaps one of our campaigns. That said, another type of partnership we do for Game for Good is that we produce PSAs using game footage. We did that with Guild Wars 2 for our suicide prevention campaign, which I just mentioned. And we also did that with Kingdom Hearts III for our bullying prevention campaign.

Rebecca Mir:

So, Square Enix worked with us for Kingdom Hearts III for that partnership. And they used game footage and created a script and it had voiceover basically conveying this bullying prevention campaign message, and that worked really great for us. So, I think it just depends on what type of partnership it is and whether or not there’s a good fit between the game’s audience and the game itself, and a campaign message for a campaign that we currently are running. And those do change over time.

Jamin Warren:

Yeah. What kind of metrics do you use to determine success and how do those relate to other metrics that you’d use for other parts of the campaign that are not just in games?

Rebecca Mir:

The world of gaming is so different than traditional advertising and marketing. And because of that, it did take us a while actually to get established and to find our footing. Game for Good, this initiative kicked off in 2016 and our first break was having a booth at PAX West’s Diversity Lounge for Love Has No Labels campaign back in 2016. And that was a good fit because Love Has No Labels promotes the inclusion of all people across race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age ability. And since we got that break, since we were invited to be there, it has been easier to share with potential partners that we do understand and have a commitment to the gaming community.

Rebecca Mir:

And in the case of something like that, PAX West booth, the things that we like to share and the things that we think were successful included how many people we actually interacted with at that booth, how many people used the photo booth that we had at the time, how many people shared the images of themselves that they took on social. And if we got any press coverage and if so, how many general impressions to those sites get and what’s the estimated media value for that coverage as well. So, there are metrics that we use for different types of engagements. In the case of say an in game integration like the Seize the Awkward T-shirt, it was how many players used it, what was the response, what was the press pickup and how many people interacted with us on social because of that.

Rebecca Mir:

And in terms of benchmarking, every campaign is totally different because it has a different audience and each audience has different amounts of people within that audience within the United States. So, we try and contextualize any of our metrics with that kind of information, right? Thinking relative to who our audience is and what are industry standards for certain types of interactions. Some things are a little harder to quantify of course. When you think about how impactful certain events are in the long term, but that’s why all of our campaigns have continuous tracking surveys or point in time tracking surveys that are able to assess if our audience is agreeing with certain impact statements over a period of time.

Rebecca Mir:

And we like to, before campaign even starts, do that survey so we can get ghost metrics for how many people respond even before our campaign is out there. And then we continue to track people’s responses on these issues, even things as simple as I’ve talked to my doctor about getting a lung cancer screening or I have been screened for lung cancer. And seeing if, since our campaign launched, we can see trends that indicate that our campaign and all of our campaign efforts have been successful.

Jamin Warren:

What is the experience been like working with YouTube influencers, with Creators for Good, and if you do game companies, and one of the things that’s always interesting about the Ad Council is that you’re a facilitator between all of these different parties. You have the nonprofit that is funding the campaigns, and then you have the advertising agencies and marketing partners that are creating the actual assets. And then you have distribution partners to help get things out into places like the New York Times. And the Ad Council is like this hub. And now you’re adding gaming to the mix is another separate related, but is another separate effort entirely.

Rebecca Mir:

There’s definitely parallels between Creators for Good, which is our effort to partner with talent to champion pressing social issues that we’re tackling in our campaigns, and Game for Good, which specifically builds relationships with game companies and publishers to bring social good issues to their audiences and communities. So, we originally kicked off Game for Good because we knew that games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment. And as I said before, in order to reach our audiences, we need to meet them where they are. I think in the ESA’s most recent 2020 report, they shared that 75% of US households have at least one person who plays video games, which is tremendous. And our Game for Good team is interdepartmental.

Rebecca Mir:

It’s an interdepartmental group that meets monthly and we discuss current projects and potential partners we want to pitch. We really enjoy meeting, pitching, coordinating projects. But like I said before, it did take a little bit of investment and some luck to establish ourselves and start to build relationships and partners with game publishers. Game publishers are pretty unique from other media agencies that we’ve worked with. And that’s just been a learning process for us and an opportunity for us. But as I said before, definitely some overlaps with creators and talent, particularly in the live streaming space.

Jamin Warren:

What do you think other companies can learn from you and the work that you’re doing at the Ad Council?

Rebecca Mir:

I think they could learn about the power of social good messaging to be totally honest. I also mentioned earlier how strong strategy research upfront can help tremendously in whatever goals that you have and however you’re trying to reach your audience. So, that’s another area where people could learn from the Ad Council and our campaigns, but more on the point for social good messaging, people like to partner with you when you’re trying to make the world a better place. I think there’s less competition and less zero sum thinking when you can rally around like a non-partisan feel good cause, and there’s really no dearth of challenges or issues in this world. And we do all have a part to play in making the world a more inclusive and just place.

Rebecca Mir:

I think what brands need to remember though is that their audiences and communities are engaged, right? And if they are engaged, which you want, then they’re going to keep track of whether or not any kind of brand messaging that you’re putting out there about social good matches your overall policies and what you’re doing and putting out in the world. So if you do pursue social good messaging, you want to make sure that there’s substance and impact to back up that intent as well.

Jamin Warren:

That makes a lot of sense. We have this conversation with clients all the time, which is have a reason to be there, make sure that you’re adding some kind of value to the experience. It doesn’t have to be monetary value, could be like, in your case, it could be social value or you have to have some kind of through line. And I think that’s the place where for a lot of brands, whether they’re non-profits or the more traditional brands that kind of view the gaming space in a much more transactional lens where it’s like, “Oh, well, we can just like dip in, do our thing in this community and then they’ll do what we ask them to do. And then we’ll be able to say this was successful.”

Jamin Warren:

And there’s much more of a conversational approach in terms of working with gaming communities, making sure that, especially because oftentimes you’re working in fantasy environments or environments that are not real. And so there has to be a sensitivity there to make sure like, “Hey, does this makes sense for the players, their mindset for … certainly at a very base level, are these even the right people you’re talking to, the right people in the right game.” Right? Because all game communities are different. And so, yeah, it’s really interesting to be able to pull from the work that you’re doing and give some clear guidance there.

Rebecca Mir:

Absolutely.

Jamin Warren:

There’s been an increase … We’ve certainly seen more brand work in terms of focusing on social issues more broadly, certainly over the last decade. It’s interesting, because the Ad Council for so long, when you’re looking at things that were, in general, in terms of like pro social marketing, the Ad Council responsible for so much of it. And thankfully, there are lots of brands that are getting involved in causes, everything from Black Lives Matter to cancer research to obviously right now during the pandemic, there’s all kinds of things that are happening in terms of brands wanting to help small businesses or help individuals. What is your perspective on the shift in brand messaging? Because it seems like the Ad Council is now a part of this like thankfully a much broader conversation is happening where brands realize like, “Hey, there’s value in helping people live better lives, not just in terms of selling products.” So yeah, I was just curious, like, why do you think this shift has been happening and how do you see the Ad Council’s were figuring into this larger moment?

Rebecca Mir:

Yeah. I personally think it’s great. Like I said, we all have a part in making the world a better place. I think it’s really important to get feedback on your work from members of your community before you launch. And this relates to something you just said about thinking about the value that you’re bringing to your particular community and whether or not you’re actually helping them. And that is really baked into the Ad Council’s process. It’s our bread and butter. And I think if you don’t incorporate that step, you might be putting something out into the world that doesn’t resonate or worse might cause harm around the very issue that you’re trying to resolve or you might damage your community’s trust in you.

Rebecca Mir:

To answer your question about why I think this might be happening more. So, I think brands are hearing a call for it from their audiences and seeing the trend and the change in the landscape and wanting to respond to that. I think it’s also probably related to the fact that the media landscape is far more fragmented now than it was even just a few decades ago or even a decade ago. I always think, when did the iPhone come out? 2008. Okay. Because that was pretty game-changing in terms of technology and when things start to shift in our daily lives, right? Like when mobile becomes big and also when streaming services become available and people stopped using cable so frequently. And because the media landscape is far more fragmented, it means that you have to change your approach in how you reach people.

Jamin Warren:

What role do you think authenticity plays? Tell me a little bit about how the Ad Council thinks about like authentic messaging, particularly as the work that you all done on the gaming side.

Rebecca Mir:

Yeah. We think it’s key. We have this perspective, given our experience and longstanding record in public service advertising that we know that when you’re trying to change someone’s behavior or mindset, you have to give them a positive motivation. You have to give them something to believe in, a sense of efficacy, of clarity. We know if you activate their sympathetic nervous system, their fight or flight system and make them feel defensive, then you’ve lost them in that moment and maybe forever. And I think personally that influencers are excellent at understanding what’s authentic or not for their own voice and within their community of followers. And we give them the creativity, they need to speak authentically to their audiences what they need. And we provide campaign guidelines and talking points, which include like do’s and don’ts.

Rebecca Mir:

So, that’s one way that we approach authenticity within gaming communities if we’re doing say community engagement or influencer engagement for a particular campaign with a particular game publisher. Otherwise, I think we do lean on our partners at the game publisher, game companies to help us understand their audience and help us understand what issues that audience cares about and what issues they might not care about based on who their player base is. And from there, we can find a good fit and say, yes, for example, the Guild Wars 2 community would be open to talking about mental health with one another. But we do rely on our partners in the gaming field to help us understand their audience since we’re coming in with our campaign and our campaign messaging. We don’t want to just bring that to the wrong set of individuals. That’s no good for anybody. For them or for us, right?

Jamin Warren:

Yeah. No, of course. Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for making time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Rebecca Mir:

Yeah. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me.