[arg_discuss] Insights on Majestic

[Andrea Phillips]

 On Jan 20, 2008 12:34 PM, Beth Aileen Dillon <beth.a.dillon at gmail.com> wrote:


> Looking back at past ARGs and their successes/failures can really help

> plan out future ones. I realize there's not a standard format to an

> ARG, but I haven't seen much work in how to follow-up and tell if your

> ARG was successful on a large level. Page hits, player posts, word of

> mouth, community feedback?


I'm on four hours of sleep and cranky, but... I think success comes
down to filthy lucre. And as in cinema, the benchmark for success is
really different depending on what you're trying to do.

At the end of the day, Majestic cost a whole lot of money to make and
didn't make a lot of money when it was done. For commercial projects,
this is the way it's always going to be. There's a reason they call it
the bottom line.

For non-commercial projects, success is whether the developers feel
they reached out and touched an audience, and whether that was worth
the time and resouces put into the project. The definition of
"success" is going to vary wildly in this case. If I make a one-off
interactive blog drama, and it gets a thousand readers, this would be
successful beyond expectations. Kind of touchy-feely. :)

For marketing projects, it boils down to whether, dollar for dollar,
the press mentions or sellthrough or success in getting the message to
a difficult-to-tap demographic or whatever were as effective (or
preferably more effective) than buying a couple of 30-second spots
during Grey's Anatomy. As previously discussed, there are ways of
measuring these things..

But there's no objective benchmark out there that says "You must have
reached 50,000 unique hits before you are a success." Success looks
different for different projects.

-- 
Andrea Phillips
andrhia at gmail.com
http://www.deusexmachinatio.com
Words * Marketing * Interaction