Nancy Griffin

Last week, French Skin care company Clarins launched a Facebook game called Spa Life. A virtual world populated with avatars, Spa Life is a time management game that recreates the challenges of running an actual spa. Players must manage an ever-increasing flow of visitors in search of facials and pedicures.

The Clarins brand is not overtly promoted until later into the game, when players can opt to treat their customers to Clarins rather than generic products to make them happier. Players are incentivized to purchase upgrades using Facebook Credits (i.e. real cash) as they would be in a non-branded game like Farmville. They can eventually redeem points acquired in the game for real products and samples from Clarins.

Jonathan Zrihen, CEO and president of Clarins’s North American division, says it was the demographics of casual gamers on Facebook that first attracted him to the idea of developing a Clarins game. (The average social gamer is a 43-year-old woman.) “I was also impressed by the level of engagement these games create.” (More than 100,000 people have already installed the Spa Life app on Facebook.)

Zrihen says the company is also considering attaching game points to Clarins products to encourage sales among those who become truly hooked on the game. The goal is less about pushing online sales through the game, however, than about increasing Clarins’s fan base and engagement rate on Facebook. “We don’t want to be pushy on this,” he says. “If we have more people following Clarins [on Facebook], it will have an effect on our ecommerce sales, but the main goal is to increase awareness of the brand.”

Have any Spa Insider readers played Spa Life on Facebook? What are your thoughts on social media gaming as a form of branding and marketing?