• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, June 6, 2011

While it's no news that girls and women are diving deeper into gaming every day, a new ranking from NBCU shows that brands offering women a way to play are gaining buzz.

"Brands that allow women a chance to game are seeing a big jump in brand chatter," Melissa Lavigne-Delville, vice president/ trends and strategic insights for Woman at NBCU, the media company's female-targeted marketing division, told Marketing Daily .

MasterCard, for example, experienced a large jump on Women at NBCU's Brand Power Index in April, rising 67 spots from #295 to #228, after announcing participation in "GamesThatGive," in which the brand pledged to donate 10 cents to charity for every minute of gameplay on Facebook. "That's strategic," she said, "since we know women are more involved in cause-oriented activities, and social gaming."

And Stouffers, which moved up 60 places from #363 to #303 on the index, built on the Farmville craze with "Farmer's Harvest," which let players grow wholesome ingredients and earn exclusive items. Xbox 360 also had a considerable climb, up 12 spots from #67 to #55, after the announcement of its partnership with Hulu Plus.

"We've known girls are more active than in the past, with consoles like Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinnect. And we've known that women are more into social gaming. CityVille, for example, generated something like 100 million new members in just 40 days -- many of them women," Lavigne-Delville said. "But what really is pushing this all past the tipping point is smartphone usage, which is dramatically increasing the amount of casual gaming."

NBCU's research has found that 75% of female smartphone owners have at least one gaming app, as compared to 67% of men. And social gaming apps are the second-most-popular mobile apps for women, right behind social networking.

But perhaps the most intriguing brands, she says, are those that are integrating "life gaming" into their brand strategies. Geolocation services like Foursquare play into this: Take Arby's (up 55 spots on the NBCU index), which ran a promotion offering $1 off purchases every time a consumer checked into one of its restaurants on Foursquare.

"Foursquare may not be played by the masses yet, but because it ties a game into real life, a real activity, it gets really brand-sticky," Lavigne-Delville said. "The ability to make your day-to-day activities into a game of sorts takes playing into the real world. We'll see more brands creating games like this, going forward, as a way to build a bigger following among women."

The Women at NBCU Brand Power Index is based on social media buzz, online search data, and person-to-person conversations.