[arg_discuss] Value of ARGs to clients

[Dan Hon]

 Hi Marc,

I don't think it's quite as easy to gauge cost to client based upon
impact, sales generated, etc. Let me give you an example, and this is
one of the reasons why Google's making a killing in the ad industry:

 - the nice thing about Google is that it can quite reliably lead to a
cost per action, instead of cost per impression. As a brand, you may
care more about the number of direct sales you can make (something
which Google can measure), as opposed to the rather broader "brand"
strategy of just being in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

 - With something like FIA, you could ensure that the campaign was
basically in front of a captive audience - everyone who was at the
festival. But that might not be what the BBC was measuring - they may
just want to do something "innovative" that would, to those who knew
about the campaign, signify that the BBC was doing something new and
exciting. And how would the BBC measure sales?

 - Again, with campaigns like adjutant reflex and ilovebees, there's
no tracking for brands/clients to find out why someone's buying Halo 2
or 3. there's no referre code that can be tracked. And when for a
client like Coke, where they've got one of the most recognised brands
in the world, they've gone on the record (see their Second Life stuff)
that they don't care, and don't measure, whether a second life
campaign results in more sales. It's impossible - or very hard - to
track.

I also know that from my perspective, Six to Start wouldn't publicly
talk about cost of campaign. In fact, none of the panelists at the ARG
panel at SXSW this year would go on record about talking about how
much a campaign would cost because, in all cases, "it depends".

A better way of trying to work out costs, would be to try and make an
educated guess about the size of the team that put together a campaign
(if such information was publicly visible - unlike conventional pieces
of entertainment, ARGs typically don't include credits) and how much
that team would cost, then the kind of multiple/overhead covering the
business would then charge on to the client. That should be much
easier to work out than trying to work backwards from what a campaign
may have accomplished. And even with that said, I'd caution against
assuming that those estimates of staff costs were anywhere near
accurate. The problem is a little like the one that firms like iSuppli
have in producing bill of materials from teardowns - they're best
guesses, at best, and even those can be off by an order of magnitude.

One of the most surprising things I found about some of the commentary
for Mind Candy was in terms of what our staff costs might have been.
Doing this kind of thing as a business is radically different from
doing it as a hobby.

On Nov 10, 2007 10:22 PM,  <marc at thedigitaldemons.com> wrote:

> Hi,

>

> I've been looking at the ARG stats compiled by Christy Dena, and it

> seems that cost to client can be to some extent calculated based upon

> the impact of a game, how many sales are generated as a result etc.

>

> I was actually wondering if anyone had some more detailed figures or

> estimates about how much games would cost companies who want to use

> them for marketing tools. For example, something like 'Frozen Indigo

> Angel' ARG for Radio 1 would presumably be fairly cheap compared to

> something like Vanishing point.

>

> Are we talking tens of thousands for the former and hundreds of

> thousands for the latter, or what?

>

> Any tips would be great :-)

>

> Marc

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Dan Hon {dan at sixtostart.com}
CEO, Six to Start