[arg_discuss] The (Marketing) Effects Of Alternate Reality Games

[Sven Abraham]

>Hi Sven,

I've mostly worked in ARGs related to television shows, and believe me,
those
clients want to measure exactly how their marketing dollars are
contributing to
the success of the product (the show). One thing we did would be to
measure
traffic of websites over time. The show aired at different times in
different
cities, so when a new url was mentioned on the show we could track the
response
and see spikes in traffic immediately after 35 minutes into the hour,
for
instance. We reported weekly to the clients with information on web
traffic,
forum traffic (and topics) and ARG progress. Unfortunately, all that
information is locked up tight and can't be made public. 
Ultimately,
our ARG had to impact show ratings and that's an exceptionally
difficult thing
to correlate, but since most of our ARGs were intended to build up to
the
launch of the show and get people to watch that first premiere episode
of the
season, getting a good rating on that premiere showed we did something
right. 
Wendy
Despain 
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for your posting. We’ve produced recently two ARGs. One was for
a thrillernovel by a german writer and the other one for Microsoft
Germany (Visual Studio 2008). We measured everything as well. The
traffic and postings of the IG websites and -blogs, the quantity of
postings at the main playerforums/websites/weblogs, etc and analyzed
the quality of the postings as well. But what does it mean? What does
it mean if you have 100.000 views on an internetforum? You need to
complain it with other ARGs. But we don’t have that “many” ARGs in
Germany to compare with. Do you think it’s enough to compare the goals
of the ARGs with the outcome? Is this the method to messure the effect
of an ARG? 




>Hey Sven,

Great to
see you're pursuing both academic study and creative practice at the
same time.

:) 

I've
considered your question about measuring the 'effect' of ARGs too, and
found
that looking at what you're measuring and what 'branding' is, is
helpful. What
is the difference between branding and advertising (indeed marketing
and
advertising)? What are the differences in their goals? Once you've
cleared up
these questions, I think you'll find different assessment methods
emerge. I
look forward to (hopefully) reading what you discover and propose.
Sorry, but I don’t get it! What should be the difference between
marketing and advertising? Advertising is one part of marketing
(product, place, price and promotion). What do you mean by “branding”?
Are you talking about the “branding” of the (advertised) product in an
ARG?




>Also, I

think you'll find that in most cases the product, service or company IS
known
during the game phase. The difference here is that it is not
necessarily
'announced' as a commissioned project for a product, service or
company, but
the relationship to a product, service or company is made very early on
in most
ARGs. Various techniques include starting the game trail from a trailer
in a
film, during a TV show and so on. It is usually in the pre-game period
where no
obvious connection is made, but these are very, very short periods.
That could be true. But I can tell you that in our ARGs the players
have realized the product/company very lately. I.e. in the latest ARG
“The Final Mill” they even didn’t “get it” with the ending of the game
that it was produced for Microsoft. Visual Studio was mentioned in the
game!!! I.e. At a live event they had programmed with it! ;-) 





>The

interactivity of the game and the high
involvement of the players shall award a strong effect to the
communication
strategy.
But for a disproportionally small segment of
the total audience. Heist was trying to sell cars directly to the
people
running mission for Nisha.
That’s true. But you have in general always a few people (1%) who are
very into something, 9% are unsteady in that subject and 90% are
noticing it only alongside. But that few people can reach a lot more
people by talking about what they are doing. So that they could recruit
new players.





>ARGs

are produced effortfully and can get
very expensive.
Not really: expensive is a relative term in
advertising or entertainment. They are still "small to moderate"
budget projects for the most part in the advertising space.
True. If you compare it with the mediabudget of big companies. But
money is money. No company would scrap money away. We are talking about
up to a few million dollar/euro for a game!





>You

can read on the internet that this form
of advertising is unimportant for them and they're playing the ARG
because
alone the fun counts.
Soap opera and home improvement television show
viewers would say the same thing: that's the heart of a branded
entertainment
strategy.
Could be stand the branded entertainment strategy above everything? Is
this the strategy of “all” promotional ARGs. 




Best
Sven


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