On Marketing
Here's a terrific e-mail from "Soulless in Seattle" about marketing, as a follow-up to the Nvidia/Derek Perez post yesterday.I've been in marketing and advertising for just over ten years, with a client base that spans many industries (But not video games, thank god. I'd rather just play 'em), so take what you will from the following.
The marketing you describe may have a new label, "Viral" or Guerrilla", but it's not a new concept. It didn't start with cell phone companies giving away product to celebrities. These methods are a lot older than video games, computers and TV. For example:
- If you've ever read the letters section on the op-ed page of a newspaper or magazine, you've been exposed to it. Less than one quarter of those letters are written by someone outside the news room.
- Political campaign rallies and 'town hall' meetings are populated with people screened as supporters. And I don't mean screened as in asking them a few questions on their way in or showing their party membership card. The audience members know the staff or the candidate within two degrees - tops.
- People are paid to shop at mall stores. They're chosen based on appearance, usually (models) and paid by the hour to spend time in and around certain stores, spread over a short period of time (If you are in the mall on Saturday, will you be there again Sunday? Probably not, but even if you were, you wouldn't notice the same pretty blonde shopping in a store two days in a row.) Wardrobe is occasionally provided.
- Not everyone in a suit looking at a new car in a dealership is really a customer.
I can say these things because I've done them (not the modeling, obviously, I already said I play video games). When it comes to writing, I've either done the writing myself or managed those who do. I didn't come up with any of these methods, I learned them from old-timers. The Internet just makes applying these concepts easier. Where there is a community, it is someone's job to effectively speak to that community on behalf of a product or service.
These methods are sneaky, sure, but how different is it from paying a celebrity to say his new five bladed razor is the greatest thing that ever happened to his face? Did Michael Jordan wear Nikes because they were the best shoes or because it was his job? If you want to be like Mike, you might buy his shoes. If you want to get a better look at the hot chick (or you want to look like the hot chick), you'll spend more time in the GAP and might buy something. If you really think Ethel in Anaheim doesn't like the new property tax and she makes a good point, you might rethink your position.
A direct product endorsement is different than a seemingly 'average joe' endorsement, of course. The principle is the same, however. You don't know Ethel any more or less than you know Michael Jordan, and so you trust either at your peril.
Most of us have our own balance between healthy skepticism and destructive cynicism, while some people have neither and believe everything they read. But taking for granted that posters on an online message board are sincere is less a sign that the companies are sinister and more that the gaming community is a lot less grown up than we care to think. The examples cited by you and Penny Arcade are so blatant and poorly executed that it makes these companies look like amateurs. If anything, you'll see much less of this as the game industry gets better at doing what other businesses having been doing for a long time.
I could ramble forever - spend five minutes in an EB Games and then tell me they don't need to place more attractive shoppers! The bottom line is there are about 11,000 radio stations in the U.S., 1,400 newspapers, less than dozen TV stations (that matter) and who knows how many movie studios (I don't keep track of the buyouts anymore) and all of that is controlled by a group of less than 50 people. Those people don't get paid by viewers, they get paid by advertisers. The Internet is just another tool.
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