Download Video Game Marketing Sees Lots of Action in Social Media

Entertainment
market
Video Game Marketing Sees
Lots of Action in Social Media
Facebook and Twitter offer broader platform
for consumer engagement in DR campaigns.
I
f there was ever a group of consumers ready for the advent of social
media, it was video gamers. Long before marketers started utilizing
social-networking sites in direct response campaigns, fans were creating
their own online communities to network and discuss product releases and
gaming strategies.
As social media have gone mainstream, big names in the video game
industry, including Ubisoft and Sony Entertainment, have begun drawing fans
to one central entertainment hub, taking consumer engagement and brand
interaction to a whole new level.
“It was a natural evolution for us,” says Ryan Yount, manager of digital
marketing at Ubisoft, which has shifted much of the marketing for its
“Assassin’s Creed” franchise to Facebook. “We’ve been doing community outreach and management as a core part of our marketing for about a decade,
but social media has allowed a lot of that to come out of the shadows and
become the forefront of our marketing.”
Ubisoft launched a Facebook fan
page for “Assassin’s Creed” in 2007
when the first game was released.
It was “a no-brainer” to incorporate
social media into continued marketing
for the second and third editions of the
game, Yount says. “Assassin’s Creed”
characters have posted Facebook status
updates to engage fans, and marketers
have launched plot-based challenges
where users can directly interact in real
time with key figures from the game.
“Social media keeps conversation going
in between game releases,” Yount says.
“Conversations are happening right now
on the front pages of Facebook and Twitter
and we’re able to bring that back to our site’s pages. Fans naturally want to
talk about our games and we’re encouraging that.”
Facebook and Twitter have become integral marketing tools when advertisers don’t have a lot of information about a game that can be released but
want to keep consumer dialogue going, says Justin Landskron, director of
digital marketing for Ubisoft.
“Facebook is really how we get to be creative and have fun with the fans
even in the earliest stages of marketing,” Landskron says. “It’s been very
successful for us. Dramatically, it plays really well for the marketing and the
fans really love it.”
Sony Entertainment took its use of social media a step further while marketing “The Agency,” launching “The Agency: Covert Ops,” a social game for
Facebook users that lives inside the world created for the main action game,
according to Chris Barnhart, senior manager of online marketing and analytics for Sony.
“The Agency: Covert Ops” exists solely
on Facebook but incorporates storylines,
character tie-ins and similar art from “The
Agency,” says Taina Rodriguez, Sony’s
senior public relations manager. In this
way, Sony has been able to use social
media as a broader platform to solicit
interaction from consumers, even before
“The Agency’s” official launch.
“There was this buzz already out there, so we could ride that wave
a little, all while creating new buzz by launching the social game,” Barnhart
says.
“The Agency: Covert Ops,” which has about 372,000 monthly active users,
is the eighth fastest-growing Facebook game, with an 818-percent increase
in daily active users, according to data from Inside Social Games, which provides news and marketing research on social gaming.
“It’s been awesome,” Barnhart says. “The response has well-exceeded what
our initial expectations were. (Facebook games) are living products that allow
us to take feedback from the community and constantly improve our game.”
The real-time feedback that social media offer is a powerful DR tool the
video game industry can use to its advantage when reaching out to consumers, industry experts say.
“We can immediately tell when people like what we’re doing and we can
encourage that,” Ubisoft’s Yount says. “When we see things that work for our
fans, we’ll keep doing that.”