[arg_discuss] is ARG just a marketing technique to the press?

[Brian Clark]

"What are the upsides to ARGs being collective, hyped, anti-establishment
and not suitable for classic marketing channels? What are the possiblities
within those boundaries?"

I'm not sure I completely buy how you got to this analogy, Kristian.
Comparing ARGing to the "music industry" or the "game industry" is really
requires that we think there is an "ARG industry" (there isn't) and that it
has established structures that can be disintermediated (there aren't.)

I get that you're trying to draw out a bucket other than marketing so that
we could illuminate what the advantages of that bucket might be. I think it
dodges the point, though.

Anything that aggregates attention has the potential to leverage that
attention towards marketing something. Heck, they put advertisements on
zambonis at hockey matches, because they tend to collect attention from
people in the crowds (but the zamboni isn't on the ice to produce a
marketing effect, it is there to smooth the ice!)

The strange thing about ARGing is that *most* of the major work in the genre
in the last 10 years has been funded by the marketers far more directly than
slapping up an ad on a zamboni.

So I personally am just pushing back against the "ARGs are marketing" by
pointing out that anything that aggregates attention can be used for
marketing, but that doesn't mean it is marketing. The marketing isn't what
aggregates the attention together anyway, it is all of the other techniques.

That said, if you want the kind of anti-establishment and "not suitable for
classic marketing channels" I can point a few things that give marketers
heartaches and make me cackle with glee at the possibilities.

Anti-establishment is that I don't need labor unions ... if I do it right, I
don't even need permission to use a space for a particular purpose (think
flash mobs). I can look at something and say, "We should do an Eldritch
event here" and know that's because we can appropriate all the textures of
real life. The collective nature of the anti-establishment attitude also
spreads risk around ... if someone had a car wreck going to an ARG event,
who is liable? What if they twist their ankle at a flashmob event? These
kinds of risks give corporate lawyers small twitchy fits as they stare into
the deep abyss of case law and risk management.

And yet ... none of those things are necessary to do an ARG. Heist was
decidedly non-anti-establishment, but it had to go to incredible lengths
behind the scenes to make it not appear that way (and involved no small
amount of internally focused anti-establishment behavior.)

No wonder the press has a hard time following all of this.