[arg_discuss] Value of ARGs to clients

[Evan Jones]

Hey Marc,

I'd have to agree with Dan - the costs are really a product of the 
project's scope (how many staff, how many exploding cars, etc) instead 
of its reach (really a product of its creative).

I just wanted to jump in on your last point.  I'm not sure if Dan's 
point was that large companies 'don't really care' about impact - its 
just that they understand that there are other ways to measure success.  
Since you referenced Coca-Cola directly, I wanted to point you to Sergio 
Zyman's book 'The End of Marketing As We Know It" (links below).  He was 
the Chief Marketing Officer as Coca-Cola for years (including the 
dreaded New Coke era) and has one basic message in his book: you can 
measure everything.

Dan's point may be correct - there isn't a direct method of tracking an 
ARG's impact to sales (unless you do something crazy like put unique ID 
codes on puzzle cards or something).  But in the marketing industry 
there is a direct correlation to end sales from each part of the 
campaign.  Rest asssured - Microsoft knows approximately how many sales 
will be driven by each part of their HALO release.  They've done 
billboards and tv ads before and seen their effects and are getting 
close to an equation - one ad during the Superbowl equals this many 
millions of end sales.  Since an ARG is new for them, they need to take 
a bit of a leap of faith at first but there is a way to measure it - add 
up the predicted effect of all other media.  If the end result is higher 
than the prediction, then the ARG must be the marketing iniative driving 
this.  It may sound like a little hocus pocus at first but if the CMO of 
Coke is preaching it... :)

Just a little something to stir up the discussion,
Evan Jones
Stitch Media

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887309836
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Zyman

marc at thedigitaldemons.com wrote:

> Thanks for that information Dan!

>

> I guess you're right. I was referring more to trying to figure out the 

> cost of a project from the stats about the game (reach, impressions 

> etc.) but of course from a production point of view, it'd be silly to 

> base the cost upon the intended impact of a game.

>

> What I've noticed from my work in web development is that a lot of 

> projects are priced by first calculating the production cost (mainly 

> the cost of staff per day), working out how many days the project will 

> take to complete, and whacking a figure on top for profit (based upon 

> the client, how important the project is to them, project scale etc.) 

> This definitely compares to what you were saying about deciding on cost.

>

> I'm particularly interested in your point about companies such as 

> Coca-Cola who don't really care about the impact campaigns have, 

> they're at the stage where they can just experiment.

>

> Thanks again,

>

> Marc McGinley

>

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