Irony tastes better on ice

As part of a promotion for Halo 3's release overseas, they did a PR stunt where tokens were frozen inside a giant block of ice. Participants shot water guns at the ice, melting it to get to the tokens and use them to redeem for gamer tech prizes like TVs and, of course, Halo 3.

Hmm, big block of unmovable ice sponsored by Microsoft. Consumers "pissing" on it until finally it yields and delivers the goods. Sounds like Microsoft's been on a roll lately with their PR efforts, remind you of anything?.

via AdRants

Underestimate of the moment

According to a new study, online game revenue will account for a third of all game industry revenue by 2011. Now, I'm not sure if they mean only games that live online like Wow or if they include all games that touch online, including digital distribution and console games that can be played online (Warhawk). If the latter, then I believe this estimate to be way off.

Four years is an eternity online. Think back to 2003 and the offerings we had at that time and think of the breadth of online gaming now. The fall of traditional console and hardware distribution will happen quick and fierce and my own gut feeling is that it'll happen in two years. It would be more realistic to think that online game revenue will be over 50%. This will include pure offerings like Wow but also downloaded content. Folks, the Wii isn't offering classic games just for the nostalgia or the minor revenue, they're testing a digital distribution model. The Xbox360 and PS3 are already offering full titles online. It won't take long before all titles move online.

By the way, this isn't only for the obvious reasons. Sure, you'll save money on getting rid of the pesky middle man (retailers) but think about the iTunes model. Offering a full suite of titles online will make more games available and tap into the long tail revenue potential of titles that never got a chance at retail.

Over 50%, mark it.

Longtime listener...

So I know, I haven't been around lately. So the fact that I'm coming back now to post something shamelessly about myself is probably the wrong thing to do. In fact, it's downright the worse of self-promotion. But, I know you'll forgive me because that's the wonderful, forgiving, "let's not fight, want to watch a movie on the couch with some ice cream?" kind of reader you are. Have I mentioned how much you mean to me lately?

And now on to the post:

I was on NPR today! It was for Marketplace, the show about business and things. The article was about the huge hype behind Halo 3 and how the game industry's becoming so much like Hollywood. Anyways, you can listen or read the transcript here: My Marketplace moment.

It was a cool experience and Lisa Napoli, the writer, was very nice. What's funny is that the whole time there, I was thinking, "Wow, I really should sign up to be a member of KPCC (the local public radio station)" Anyways, it was funny how I basically just regurgitated what I've written before in this blog and somehow it was interesting enough to include in the segment. Go figure.

If it ain't broke, promote that instead

Check out this banner for the Xbox360. The first image is the initial frame, the second is the final frame.

Notice anything missing? Right, no mention of games.

I'm not sure I buy an entire campaign to deliver the message of these secondary features. The iPhone has Google Maps built in but I wouldn't try to sell it as a competitor to a GPS unit (ignoring that it doesn't have GPS). Does this feel forced to anyone else?

Also, when the ad unit animates, the dude sitting on the... chair?... is rocking the controllers like he's playing a game. Umm... I don't know anyone that pivots back and forth while selecting music, scrolling through photos or pausing their home movie. Hey Microsoft, haven't you hurt yourself enough by giving the Xbox360 a half-ass effort? Couldn't find imagery or assets that actually worked with the concept eh? I guess someone said, "Just reuse the gaming dude, it won't matter". That's a shame.

The ad unit itself isn't too bad. The copy succinctly conveys the message that the console gives you more than games. The call to action at the end, "Learn More Today" is nice and large. Why "Today" vs. "Now" vs just "Learn More" baffles me but it's still a good call to action. A decent execution on a questionable marketing message. Try again.

Hard to reach places

Branded Newb Product of the Week: Infinity Razors

It's the razor that never needs sharpening! If you buy now, they'll even throw in a few bonuses. A "micro trimmer" for your unsightly nose hairs. An Infinity Chef Knife for umm...

Seriously WTF? If you have body hair that needs the freak'n Chef Knife, you have bigger issues than buying a razor that never dulls. I mean, you gotta make Robin Williams look like a pre-pubescent boy-band blondie before this makes sense.

Oh well, buy now! Supplies are limited.

Measure twice

According to the Washington Post, Microsoft will spend $1.15 billion to fix problems with the Xbox 360. As a result of a lot of broken consoles, it's also extended the warranty to 3 years, adding what will eventually be more cost. But let's do some quick math.

$1.15 billion divided by the 11.6 million Xbox360s sold so far.

Comes out to about $99.14 per Xbox360 for the repairs.

According to Wikipedia, the top end Xbox360 was priced at $399 at launch. The cost to manufacture was $525... a loss of $126 per Xbox.

So as of today, for each Xbox sold, Microsoft loses $225.

If Microsoft didn't have cash coming out its ears, would it have a prayer of surviving? This console war stuff is crazy. They sell consoles at a loss because they make money on the software. But it takes a lot of people using the consoles to make money and a lot of software sales to make a lot of money. Unless the console breaks records, by the time these manufacturers recoup the loss on the hardware, it's probably time to make new hardware.

This entire business model is about throwing yourself down a hill at breakneck speed and hoping that you get enough momentum to clear the canyon in front of you. If you don't sell enough units to pass that critical threshold, you'll probably just keep losing money.

You know, I wonder if the gas companies ever thought of selling cars? Milk companies giving away cereal. Eye solution companies selling contacts. Sorry, I think this whole console nonsense is going away. Web-based device-agnostic games are going to take these guys to the cleaners.

Heads or Tails, You Lose

Branded Newb Shopping Network Proudly Presents!

The 100th Anniversary Corvette Coin:

This is a once in a lifetime product folks. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Corvette, GM has allowed the production of these limited edition coins. The best part? The freak'n coin lights up! That's right, the headlights actually glow. Buy one now!

Anniversary does not imply annual celebration: First Corvette manufactured in 1953. Product thickness above standard width, the term coin is used figuratively. GM sponsorship only represents a desperate attempt at additional income. Coin is not legal tender though you can probably trade for a six-pack of PBR. Feeling of shame after purchase not included and may require additional shipping and handling.

Window shopping

When I advise clients on how to optimize their banner ads, I sometimes talk about moving desirable actions upstream. What I mean is that instead of making people click from a banner to a site and then getting them to do something on the site, why not just put the action on the banner? You end up saving some steps in between where many people might just drop off.

What if a client (not mine) took this to the extreme? You might get something like this Radio Shack ad. The thing is a whole shopping site within a banner. It has some pretty amazing functionality built-in. You can browse categories, then products in those categories. Add products to a shopping list, then save the list or go take the list with you to the site. Within the banner you can also locate a store or sign up for email communications. Aside from checking out, you don't need to leave the banner.

The banner where I found it:


Shopping list in the banner


Store locator


Categories to browse


I'm not sure if I could advise a client to go to this extreme. It just seems to me that it'd be extremely challenging to take someone from their mindset of reading an article to a shopping mindset of buying electronics. Sure, you want to show your breadth of offerings but having a full catalog in the banner seems like overkill. Now if this was targeted to when I was reading reviews of electronics, that would be different.

Shouldn't you put up a fight?

I had a miraculous experience yesterday. My 1-year contract with T-Mobile ended a few weeks ago and so yesterday morning I succumbed to my weakness and picked up a new phone, that one powered by AT&T. Knowing I would have to call in to cancel my T-Mobile account, I braced myself for explaining why I was leaving T-Mobile. I imagined throwing off the customer service rep with that single word that would need no further explanation. (I'm trying to write this entire post without using the name of that product, let's see if I can do it.)

You don't need an entire transcript of the conversation; nothing happened. She didn't ask me why I was leaving. She didn't offer me some promo to keep me around. She didn't even sound very regretful. I was in shock.

We always see horror stories about customer service reps on YouTube and home-made vigilante sites. I'm usually the cynic but my experience yesterday was absolutely perfect. It was the best cancellation call I ever made and it ended too quickly (less than 90 seconds). It's time I redeemed for some of my prior transgressions, some of my earlier badmouthing. So to even up things up, here's a batch of words for search:

• T-Mobile great experience
• Best Customer Service T-Mobile
• Easy cancellation

Ok, enough of that. Back to your regularly scheduled sourness.

I see you!

Was watching HBO... ran into tv spot with url.

Went to site... watching it now...

Sweet online application of video technology...

Wooo, what did she just do?!

This is some cool stuff!

Oh damn, what!? I missed something.

Argh, gotta go, gotta keep up with the stories! TTYL!

HBOVoyeur.com

More is not that much

Certain words in the marketplace stand out like chocolate cake at a fat camp. Words like "Sale", "Free" and "Unlimited" grab at your attention and try to elicit the kind of spending that can only be described as Pavlovian. "Unlimited" in particular has been an industry changing term. Netflix used it to change movie rentals. In the world of talking, counting minutes becomes obsolete with Vonage and Boost plans. In music, Napster opened up 3 million songs for the taking. With the sweet whisper of "Unlimited", marketers have shifted our culture beyond buffet aficionados and towards the sinister promise of absolute entitlement. Probably not since French royalty has any group felt like they deserved so much.

The problem with all this is that unlimited is an illusion. Sure, there is the obvious fact that there is no such thing as unlimited. If you do your homework, you soon realize there are only so many movies in the library, so many minutes in the day and that there are limits to the unlimited. But even beyond this obvious fact, unlimited is actually quite a bit less than those upper reaches.

We live in a world where everything can be comfortably bracketed by statistics. I don't have to know all that much about you to be able to predict how you'll behave. I may be wrong on individual cases but statistically, I'm probably going to be right much more often than not. When marketers throw out the word "unlimited", they absolutely know that they are not in danger of everyone suddenly gorging them out of house and home. The fact is, there may be short term spikes as we get collegiately drunk on our new found freedom but after time, we behave pretty predictably. As long as the marketer has priced their offering correctly, they have no concerns of everyone going nuts. All hail the power of statistics.

When we sign up for "unlimited", surely we know that we won't be breaking any records in terms of consumption; so what makes "unlimited" so appealing? It's actually very simple. When we buy "unlimited", we are buying insurance. We are buying the safety and ease of mind that we won't get stuck with a giant bill if we so happen to go a little crazy. I feel the same way each time I get in my car.

I bring this whole thing up because I was recently working on a project that required me to think of different ways to promote an offering. Unlimited was a tempting choice. It also seemed to be the most twitchy-reflexive choice too. There has to be something more interesting, I thought. What kept coming up was this: I may have mentioned this before on Branded Newb but I truly believe the next evolution of provider and consumer relationships is one that takes a cue from investing.

The principle of investing is simple. Find something you believe in, spend money on it and if it does well, you get paid for your commitment. We are starting to see some of this on sites that share revenue from user-submitted contributions. We've also seen this at outdoor retailer REI, whose members actually receive dividends if the company does well during the year. This type of relationship is where we're headed. It has all the trademark goodness that the Internet provides:

• Transparency - The company is trying to make a buck but so are you.
  
• Exclusivity - Consumers that join set themselves apart in a community.
• Collaboration - Everyone is working towards the same goal.
• Entrepreneurship - Let's not kid ourselves, we want "this thing" to be huge.

It's scary to say but "unlimited" is not enough. As a consumer, I want more than what I'm statistically going to actually consume. As a business, I want more out of the consumer than the "monthly fee". We have to (and will) begin establishing closer ties to each other to really shake things up.

This Garlic Naan is Really Heavy

So last night I ordered some Indian food from a local place. It took about 1.5 hours to get here. That's not the story, I'm the patient type. The story is... at 90 minutes, I got a call on my phone.

"Hi, delivery." said the delivery person.
"Hi" said the hungry Ken.
"Are you at [### Rd]?"
"Yes, are you lost?"
"No, I'm here, can you come down and get the food?"
"Is the gate code not working?"
"It works but can you come down?"
"Umm..."

At this point, I'm thinking, "Wait a second, if the code works and you're not lost, why aren't you actually delivering to my door?" Get your lazy ass up here! Now you might be thinking: diva much? But I'm usually a nice guy, full of "thank you's" and "yes, that is a very generous tip, thanks for noticing." This particular delivery was different, it irked me.

"No, I can't, I'm busy right now. Please come up"

But of course, as soon as I say that, I feel guilty. Why couldn't I meet him half way? I mean, maybe he's running late or has a tough time figuring out elevator buttons. I should have just gone down to meet him.

Argh! I put on some pants, find my keys, and head out the door. As the door swings shut I suddenly remember that I was supposed to be busy. So I head back inside, grab a few paper towels and wet them. A busy person has wet paper towels, it's a well-known fact.

I head to meet the guy halfway at the elevator. On the way, I go through my repertoire of available faces: "Concerned Friend" No. "You stole my parking spot!" No. "Does this look infected to you?" No. "Is that 13 items in her cart?!" Perfect!

I reach the elevator and almost push the button but then I think, "Wait a second, why am I out here? I'm not going down. Screw that. I'm paying for delivery not half-delivery."

The delivery goes down as one would expect, eventless. As I walk back to my place, I run through the possible things he could have done to the food while in the elevator. I tell myself I don't like Indian food that much anyways.

This whole episode got me thinking. You can go 90% of the way with customer service but if you give up at that point, you might as well have not started. How much responsibility do we have as customers to meet you half way? Do we have any at all? Should I have gone down in the first place?

Spatial advertising invasion

I was playing around this weekend on Google Map's new Street View function. It allows you to see the map location you're looking at as if you're sitting on top of a minivan. It's nothing new, Yahoo was teasing this stuff about a year ago. So if you ever wanted to travel virtually to San Francisco, check it out.

Myself, I revisited the Sir Francis Drake hotel. I stayed there a few years ago and one of the memorable things was seeing Tom Sweeney, the Beefeater doorman. He's apparently the "most photographed person in San Francisco" and has been standing there for decades. I find it very appropriate that in the Google Map street view image, you see Tom there, greeting some hotel guests (look closely behind the red van). Can you say great ad?
Speaking of ads. Can you start to see the potential of this thing for ad placement? Imagine if you will, a couple years from now, when Map functions are completely 3D virtual with real life skin overlays. While you're looking for directions to the nearest dry cleaner, you're flying in this virtual space. On the way to the dry cleaner from your home, you pass by billboards. Except, these billboards don't show what's there in real life, they show ads by Google, recommending a new dry cleaner. That, my friends, is the future of local ad targeting. Taken to the extreme, you can imagine ads on roads, on buildings, in place of actual store fronts and their signage. When the real world limitations on ads is lifted, there's no telling where they'd pop up or if you'd even know they're there.

Remind me to up my stocks in Google.

Search is not everything, says Google

Ok, they didn't really say "Search is not everything" but the implication is there. Why else would I run into a banner ad from Google trying to sell me on Google analytics? In the toolkit of tactics to use in online marketing, search gets a whole lot of attention because it's very effective and efficient. Its most critical weakness is reach.

You just can't run a search campaign if no one knows about your product. Also a serious problem is if people rarely search for related topics to your product. In those situations, you can't rely on search to do much legwork. You need to do stuff like banner advertising.

If Google is doing it, you can bet it's a good idea. And that's been your daily online marketing tip (daily tip does not represent any actual promise of daily deliver of tips, your consumption of the daily tip acknowledges your understanding and waives any rights or expectations)

Who really pays your bills?

via The Consumerist, a study has shown that companies in the top 20% in terms of customer satisfaction also happen to outperform the general market by about 40%. Let's paraphrase that: Companies with great customer satisfaction are richly rewarded.

Now when I first read this article, I thought, "Duh". But then a few days later, I ran into a waiter who responded to my request for a side salad instead of fries (Look, there's a reason why I haven't posted any pictures of myself lately. Can you say Tubby McTubbs?) with the phrase, "We don't do that"... emphasis on the "we" and "that". When struck in the face with such abhorrent behavior, regardless of whether or not it's a customer server to customer servee situation, I get flash frozen by shock and then pathetically crumble. I'm not good with confrontations, especially when spit + food can still be a valid equation.

So instead, I seethe. And seethe I do extremely well. But it brought back to mind this study and how it reveals a truth in business. No matter what you do, if you screw the customer, you're screwing yourself. Which brings me to the purpose of this post: How many MMOs out there are appropriately allocating resources to customer service?

When I was brand managing games, I spent nearly half of my day immersed in the community. This was half because I'm a gamer myself and was power tripping on being on the other side and half because my business training told me that giving a lot of love to the customer pays off. I'd like to think it worked but we never got the sheer volume of people the bigger MMO's can claim. What would a study done in our industry regarding customer satisfaction and success of the game show us?

Brilliant satire = atonement?

Cynical marketers everywhere are rejoicing today at this viral:

Absolutely brilliant! The problem is, making fun of a problem is wholly different than solving the problem. This is, by the way, brought to you by Microsoft, who, reading between the lines, wants you to stop dating losers and go home with them instead. The viral is part of a "discussion" effort regarding marketing relationships.

When the hell did Dr. Phil get all up on our marketing asses? Hmm, anyways, will be interesting to see what they cook up on that site.

Monday randomness

This banner ad caught my attention today. It says, "Your audience is on our network". Casale, the advertiser, is a media company. What they're trying to say is that you can find who you want to market to on their network of sites. I get that part, that's good to know.

I've been desperately trying to find undersexed soccer moms who run errands around town on mounted young studs. Thank god I know where to go now.

Hit him in the Cheetos

Next Gen has a great article on marketing and branded games. Cheetos hired a game company to develop a branded paintball game.

The developers had thought it would be a great idea to let the kids shoot the famed mascot. They were right. The kids would have loved that. The marketers didn’t. The game was scrapped.

Oops.

Personally, this is probably an overreaction on the part of the marketers. It's not like the kids would be able to kill the character, jump up and down on him and chant "Doritos is great!" It's paintball, everyone is fair game. Take the flip side of this and you could see the marketers potentially wanting the Cheetos Tiger to have super powers (of course only after eating Cheetos), flying around and hitting everyone with extreme accuracy.

As games become more and more a legitimate medium on par with TV, radio and the like, marketers are going to have to realize that absolute control is foolish. I frequently run into the same situation when clients want to create a community online but refuse to allow unedited comments from the community. It doesn't make sense just like having a shooting game with your mascot and not allowing someone to frag em doesn't make sense.

Random thought: So if this game had come out, would my fingers get all orange after playing it?

Random image: I wonder what the marketers think about this girl in a Cheetos bath.

Google Worth

The Wall Street Journal covers (might be subscription only) an interesting phenomenon of late. People Googling names before they decide what to name their new baby. If your last name is Smith, probably not a good idea to name your kid John Smith, though Jonas Smith is not too bad. Me, I don't actually show up until page 6. As we move towards completely archiving our lives, from online baby registries and announcements to angsty teenage MySpace profiles to professionally Linked In, we are becoming more and more instantly searchable. What effect might this have on this upcoming generation?

Well, if you take a look at what it's done with brands and marketing online, you might get a taste for what's to come at home. As common word .com urls started to become unavailable, marketers with new companies had to start getting fancy. Hence new product offerings with made-up or loosely spelled names: Flickr, Digg, Zazzle, Meebo, del.icio.us and the like. The wave of Web 2.0 offerings weren't just about social media or new site features, it was also about defining yourself online which meant making yourself searchable online.

Has it worked? That's hard to say. The value of a unique web name is front loaded. That is, you only really need it when no one knows about you. Once you gain some traction online, search engines should gradually increase your rank. When you're a true success, the value of the name is gone since you're playing with the big boys on page 1 now. I'm sure in the very beginning, when someone is trying to find you for the first time, the unique name is critical. But having a weird name isn't that great either, what if no one remembers it in the first place? What was that photo sharing site? It had a weird name like Flash'r or something.

Anyways, you can see the parallel that baby names might take. Will this next generation of kids find themselves at grade school roll call responding to names like, "J'hnny Smith", "Teepo Bryan" or "MySarah Morgan". You know, I used to wonder why all the names in those sci-fi novels were weird. Now I know.

Thanks for the "ad"

According to Next-Gen: GameTap, the game network that digitally distributes titles to your PC, is now offering a free to play ad-supported option for select games. Some choice quotes:

About nine months ago Snyder and the GameTap team began to realize that its paid-subscription-only model is counterproductive to expanding the reach of the compelling service.

Also, our demographic was looking for an easy way to play games without making a huge time commitment or financial commitment. So we figured why not have all options for all gamers?

This is pretty cool stuff. Like I've been saying for a while, there's a market out there for ad-supported games. We need to stop thinking about in-game ads as the "product placement" type stuff you see after you shell out $50 for the game itself. Rather, we should think about in-game ads as a new option to consume quality content for free. It just makes so much sense for everyone involved.