Sure, all of us here at QLP are a bunch of marketing nerds, and most likely those of you reading this blog are marketing nerds yourselves . But is the world of marketing appealing to general audiences? Apparently.
We’ve done a couple of logo and slogan quizzes here on the QLP blog, but I was surprised to discover that there are a wide variety of board, online, and app marketing games for the general public. You can prove your marketing prowess, test your friends and family, or hold a contest within the office with one of these fun games.
Board Games
The Logo Board Game
The Logo Board Game: This game boasts over 400 game cards to challenge your brand logo, symbol, product, and slogan knowledge. A simple, but fun and challenging board game, The Logo Board Game requires players to accurately answer trivia questions. The first to make it to the “Winner’s Circle” and get all the questions correct wins.
Brandoodles: Brandoodles is similar to The Logo Board Game, but adds one part Pictionary and a timed element. There are 1,000 brands to guess, and players have to accurately identify the brands before the timer runs out. One player draws a card, and begins writing out the brand name. The other players have 10 seconds to guess the name.
Adverteasing: In this game players race to make their way to the top of the ad agency ladder by accurately identifying slogans, commercials, and jingles. Adverteasing was first popular in the 80s, but has since been updated with new, updated content. With 700 question cards, you’re sure to be a brand expert after playing this one a few times!
Brand Memory: Similar to the memory and concentration games we played as kids, this game requires players to find and match pairs of cards. Of course, it’s not as easy as locating and pairing two identical brand names. In this game players have to match logo designs with typefaces, brand colors, or witty descriptions of the brand’s identity.
Online Games
The Retail Alphabet Game
Retail Alphabet Game: In this game players have to try to guess the company name based solely on one letter taken from the logo. This one tests not only your knowledge of popular brands, but your knowledge of typography as well. As the name suggests, there is one brand name for each letter of the alphabet. Players can choose to play the most recent 5th edition, or the older 4th edition.
Guess the Logo: Guess the Logo has several different logo quizzes and games available on their site. Players can choose general or specific logo categories. Once the game starts, the player is presented with the brand name and two different logos. The object is to correctly identify the logo that goes with the name.
Corporate Logos: Sporcle provides a few different versions of this game, but the same general rules apply. The player is presented with a grid of logos and after pressing “play game” a space to type in brand names appears, then the player is given a limited amount of time to identify all of the logos.
Apps
"Sorry honey, I'm busy playing Logos Quiz!"
Logos Quiz: Similar to Guess the Logo and Corporate Logos, Logos Quiz requires players to accurately identify brand logos. New levels are unlocked once you achieve a certain percentage of correct answers from the previous level. The levels get increasingly difficult and require a higher percentage of correct answers in order to move to the next level.
Brand Master: Rather than simply identifying logos or slogans, Brand Master asks players to order a brand’s logo designs in chronological order. This app is currently only available on Apple devices, but you can play an older version online here.
Slogan Challenge: In this game players can choose to guess slogans randomly, or pick from one of six categories: cereal, fastfood, candy, car, company, and product. Each slogan has a dropdown menu for multiple choice answers, and you are scored based on points and time. If you guess correctly on the first try, you are rewarded with 5 points, and each time you guess incorrectly one point is deducted from the 5 points you could earn for that slogan.
Brand Blitzer: Unfortunately, not all apps are free. However, for just 1 dollar, this app not only provides interesting brand trivia, but also marketing tips and tricks – possibly making this game the most useful for marketers.
Is it a little scary that people are able to recognize enough corporations’ logos and slogans to warrant multiple games based around that very task? Maybe. But hey, if we’re all gonna be part of the corporate machine, we might as well make it fun, right?
What do you think? Have you played any of these games before? Which ones would you like to try?
Photos courtesy of Clipart.com, waltarrrrr, and Matt Hurst. Photo of Retail Alphabet Game is a screen shot from the Retail Alphabet Game website.
Article by Jenna Markowski
Jenna has a much easier time writing about the media and pop culture than she does writing about herself. She enjoys the simple things in life, like puns and typography. She is an avid fan of pop-punk, Halo 3, Spider-Man and origami, with a slight Taco Bell obsession. Her spirit animal is either a bulldog or a panda bear. You can also connect with Jenna on Google+ and Twitter.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m no hipster, but I’ll be the first one to admit, I’m fascinated by typography. How one style of lettering can become so iconic, so easily recognizable, and so successful. The Subway “Y” you can recognize in five seconds, tops. And – as much as I’m not a fan of social media – I will admit, kudos to Facebook for having their own, signature lettering style.
Neat post, Jenna! I’ll have to check some of these out!
I’m glad to hear there’s another typography fan here at the office! It definitely takes a stellar designer to come up with something as iconic as the Subway “Y.” If you’re into that kind of thing, then you’ll definitely love the Retail Alphabet Game!
Thanks, Eric!
And here people say there are no niches left!
I tried out the Retail Alphabet Game. I either got them right away or am still stumped. I followed a link that asked, “Need help?” I found I could either purchase a clue for $4 or buy the answer for $8.
Or I could just Google it for free… http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081223065020AAk0eN6
In the clue/answer purchase section, the guy says he just wants to discourage people from giving up, not make money off it. But it’s not like the money is going to charity here. Fun game, but a little shady section to be aware of.
I look forward to checking out the other games!
That’s how I was with that game too, Jana! Paying for the clues is a little shady…I’m glad you found that out. And I’m also glad you were able to find the answers for free. Thanks for pointing out that little sketchy tidbit.
Have fun!
This is pretty cool. I will admit that I have played the Logo Quiz app…and cheated far too many times. It’s addicting! Things get real with that game, especially when spelling counts haha. I love little games like that, and I’ll for sure be looking into the Retail Alphabet game you mentioned. More for me to get distracted with
This is awesome, Jenna!
Thanks for commenting, Bri! I love the Logo Quiz app, too! If you like that one, then I’m sure you’ll love a lot of these other ones. I’m happy to provide a distraction for you!
Thanks again, Bri!
The Logo Board Game and Brandoodles both sound really fun! I love board games as long as they’re not super complicated or take five years to finish (*cough* Monopoly *cough*) and advertising, so this is a match made in heaven for me. I would also like to try out the Slogan Challenge app, it sounds neat and I’m pretty good with slogans.
Thanks for this awesome blog Jenna, I got some really good ideas for board games and computer games I’d like to try out!
It sounds like you’d have a lot of fun with those games, Jen! I’d really love to play them as well! I downloaded the Slogan Challenge app while I was researching for this post, but I haven’t spent much time playing it yet. From what I did play it was really fun!
No problem, Jen! Enjoy!
I haven’t played any of the board games, but I’d love to! I enjoy board games of all kinds, and it might be
terrifyingfun to see how many brand names I recognize.Great round up of games, though! I’m sure that the marketing nerds love it.
I’d love to play them, too! Sounds like we’ll have to have Amy bring The Logo Board Game in! It’s definitely fun (and also terrifying) to identify all of the brands. In some of the games I played I realized that I knew the logos for some companies that I didn’t even know I knew!
Thanks, Mandy!
Marketing games are alot of fun after a few wine coolers! Big fan!
Haha, I bet!
Thanks for commenting, Ed!
I love stuff like this! I don’t believe I’ve ever played any of these, but when I was in high school we had an extra credit worksheet for a consumers ed class where we had to identify logos.
I think out of all of these options I’d enjoy the board games, that way more people can join in the fun! 
Now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure I had something similar to that in one of my classes in high school! As scary as it can be to see how much of an influence brands have on our lives, it’s also fun to put our knowledge to the test. I think I’d like the board games a lot, too! Good Point!
I’ve never considered myself a marketing nerd, but all of these games sound so fun to me! I love trying to match up the logo/slogan to the brand/company. I downloaded the Logos Quiz app this morning, LOL. And I will say, it’s really neat! Fun post Jenna! =)
I think I’ve played that Sporcle game before … I remember not being very good at it, haha. Sporcle has a lot of fun, often educational games on their website, marketing-related and otherwise. I’ll have to check the corporate logo one out again!
Fun post, Jenna; thanks for sharing.
Wow I had no idea there were this many logo based games. I thought the logo bingo we played was pretty much it. That is insane that there is even a game based on this stuff, I mean it makes sense since generally by age three children can name and recognize more brands and logos before they can even form full sentences. I think I might have actually played one of these games before.
I think this is the most clever, yet most ridiculous game concept ever, I mean logos are an essential part of a companies image to make money. Now board games are making money off of what companies identify themselves with to make money…… Maybe it is just the heat but I think I may have just broken my brain…. Great Post! But for the millionth time I feel more and more parallel to Idiocy.
I kick @$$ at ‘The Logo Board Game’. Just sayin
It’s a lot of fun, especially when you play with different generations. I was amazed at the number of answers that stumped me but my mom or grandma got right away.
Next game to buy: ‘Brandoodles’. It’s like the best of all worlds in one game! Thanks Jenna for the suggestions, and for making my wallet a whole lot lighter too!