Being in advertising and relatively familiar with the concepts of this disruptive art, virals can usually be broken down into 3 phases. These phases are procedural and are imperative in captivating audience attention and curiosity. The phases are known by many names and often have sub-phases but from where I come from we call them, "The Seed", "The Spread" and finally, "The Reveal".
Valve and its marketing team appear to employ these fundamental phases through its community communications channel, www.tf2.com. The blog-slash-website appears to use a hook, line and sinker tactic in feeding information to its target audience. The site appears to assume that viewers and visitors are already aware of the nature of Team Fortress and attempts to build around it... slowly. It also considers the audience as sponges for content. Most contemporary game companies have a marketing vehicle of sorts to deliver information to its customers, when the company makes a statement, no matter how long or short, it can and will be read by the audience in an unfathomable amount of ways.
Maintaining a blog simulates a casual channel for updates and communication. Readers are conditioned to believe that posts on blogs are usually frequent, honest and often light-hearted. However, what isn't often noticed by visitors is that every character and punctuation has thought put in it. The clever crafting of copy coupled with the predispositions of a blog environment stimulate an emotive response amongst players and readers. This plays to the company's advantage in "The Seeding" phase.
Once the blog serves its initial purpose as an injection tool to excite and stir, it is used to deliver "booster shots", fueling the curiosity and capturing the imagination of the community.
This is clearly visible in all of Valve's media marketing but moreso in the circle of TF2. My guess is because TF2 is already build on a rich history of coloured team attrition with familiar character configurations, expanding the universe by supplementing the distinct classes with background stories and placing them in a caricature. It is said that no one likes change, TF2 effectively avoids the argument of change and instead confuses its audience with something new... but old. This maintains the familiarity desired in order to un-alienate customers and players. Anyway, I'll save this for another discussion.
This interesting familiarity ultimately works to the company's advantage by providing an entry-point to fuel curiosity. If we look at the recent Sniper/Spy Update for example, the thought of a Sniper update is seeded in through an April Fools joke: The "Jarate" Jar. The Sniper archetype is perceived as the Aussie outback, rough & tough ranger, crude but still a gentlemen at heart (he writes to Mum, respects the dead and brushes his teeth). This seed not only furnished the Sniper character with a stronger back-story on how he contains his liquid waste when on the job, but generated a whole slew of curious questions; Is a new update coming? Throwing a jar, is this grenades?
Of course the game community has Blizzard to thank for the infectious culture of April fools pranks (Pandaren in WoW anyone?) - the jar of pee was obviously a joke. Nonetheless, it set laid the bricks for the next mind-blowing tidbit and waved "goodbye to your head, wanker."
"The Spread" kicks in when the community is alerted and aroused by an impending update. Particularly an update that claims to be game-changing.
It's actually shaping up to be the largest TF2 update yet... In addition, we've got another update in the works that should be done before the Sniper, and that one will include some new content for all classes.Players excited by the news take the bait and often change their online handles and Steam IDs in anticipation, addressing an ever increasing demographic of socially networked individuals. Cleverly, a modification to the game itself added to the curiosity. Suddenly, a "Head" slot was available in the load-out menu. Could this be the new content for all classes? Discussions and questions were everywhere, a fantastic move (intentional or not) by Valve.
While allowing the guerrilla advertising to do its work, the next 2 bits of news seemed to posted as peripherals. If you've watched any magic tricks, you'll know that there's always the step where the magician attempts to throw you off with things like fancy talk or slick card shuffling. If you watched that 2006 film The Prestige, you would probably would remember these lines:
"Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called "The Pledge"; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn"; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, "The Prestige"; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before."While everyone was still talking about the possibilities of the next update, their attention is diverted by a game design/development post and a community feature on the new improved Gang Garrison. These make for conversation and discussion points to run concurrently with the more anticipated Sniper update, also serving as back-up content just in case the community got tired of speculating the incoming update.
And now, the Master piece. The unveiling of the first alternative Sniper weapon is the first step in the seemingly multi-faceted phase of "The Reveal" The community has already been preconditioned by the previous updates to expect a microsite which details a day-by-day unfolding of the releases. This begs the question, "Why does the Sniper Update look distinctly different from the previous?" Valve and its marketing team clearly amp'ed up its web design strategy, twisting it to communicate the message, "expect something different this time" Furthermore, the Sniper update did not have a tab to navigate within the days, leaving the number of days the updates took to roll in indefinite.
As with previous update traditions, day-by-day updates were usually built up to a weekend for Valve to offer TF2 for free or at a discounted weekend rate, thus increasing sales. The Sniper update was released on a Tuesday, fair enough, they could offer TF2 free on Sunday (Saturday in the US) and then extend it to Monday. This in itself created the hype and speculation seen in the previous updates. BUT, everything changed before the weekend when the Sniper update was usurped by the Sniper archetype's nemesis - The Spy.
The true marketing genius begins here.
They successfully managed to turn a Reveal into a Seed again. Not only that, they did so in a manner that suited the classes they were updating. The Sniper was about to reveal his final updates, much like how you would take a game-breaking shot at the Medic's head, only to be politely interrupted by a well-dressed gentleman. Surprise.
This surprise re-ignited, no wait, exploded the community. It was a Seed, Spread and Reveal all in one. A new snippet of a class update had been introduced, word got around that the Sniper's updates had been interrupted by his arch-nemesis, countless avenues for conspiracy theories were opened and most interestingly, how many more updates could there possibly be?
The marketing strategy of Valve is quite literally, mind-fucking. The style in which juicy pieces of information is fed to the hungry audience is like corporate sex with the consumer. Pleasure is conveyed in waves and always held at its most anticipated before releasing to recover for the next big wave. Each crescendo and climax is always greater and more exciting than the previous, building to an ever-more explosive finisher.
Amidst the convoluted battle of revelations and peripheral updates, there seemed to be a stealth Seed or two surfacing. Only a few managed to catch a glimpse of an "expose" made on the TF2 blog. It strongly suggested that the Pyro was female, adding on to the mystery of the flowered purse in the spawn room locker.
The line has since been changed to "Pyro's going to be inconsolable now."
However, as viral marketing goes, errors and slips are often directed and intentional. The single line not only caused speculation on what the next day of updates could be, but also brought back old discussions on the purpose of the purse. This move strengthens the already thriving Steam community as enthusiastic users align to find meaning in the little information they were given.
It's now Saturday and a time-bomb was about to go off. In the true style of Spy espionage, there was an information "leak", someone from within the corporation had released premature information (Anyone remember the Source code theft? Where did that end up? On almost every gaming portal I recall) As it unfolded. this "leak" turns out to be the most powerful media delivery package. It was a "Reveal" cluster-loaded with "Seeds". The image of an TFC MIRV comes immediately to mind.
The Meet The Spy video subtly showcased a whole slew of new game elements as well as hinted at a few possible ones. I won't go into detail on what was featured but if you're keen you can find the list of community extracted easter eggs here. What was more interesting though, was how on earth was Valve and its media squad going to deal with this breach. Skeptics like myself already guessed that this was intentional and a reveal would surely ensue, or would it?
Already I found myself asking questions like, "Is this truly intentional? It can't be true can it?" Not to mention all of this was on top of the longest and most well animated machinima Valve has released to date.
As leaks usually go (especially voyeur ones), they're usually sketchy and low resolution. Valve maintained this by using YouTube as its medium knowing full well that community members are bound to see it on the "recently uploaded" or be looking out for key search phrases like "Spy Update" and like any effective viral marketing, nothing, NOTHING, was going to stop the community from viewing, ripping and re-posting the video.
It's Monday in the US, Tuesday over here and a statement is issued on the TF2 blog. The craftiness of this line is extremely impressive:
As many of you know, the Meet the Spy video was leaked this weekend. Some of you on the forum have wondered if Valve leaked it on purpose. And until we find the clown who did leak it, the answer to that is yes.This truly took me by surprise, Valve has successfully acknowledged the existence of leaked footage but is cleverly keeping the joke running by saying it was intentional but won't be if they find a culprit. Beautifully crafted copy.
This made a side-story possible during the course of the Sniper/Spy update throwing users off what they thought was content they had already seen. Day 5 of the update was merely a the same video that was leaked... or was it.
Most people had overlooked what they perceived as "digested" content. Valve has never made the HD version viewable on the same day the of a new video release (guessing it's bandwidth). Oddly, the Day 5 video was a HD version and it's amazing what details you can find in high definition.
Like a true great magic trick, this is "The Prestige", the answers to all the speculations were already right in front of you in the leaked video and not just that, in the first 5 seconds on the Announcer Board! You just couldn't see it clearly yet!
Perhaps at this stage I am reading far too much into the media. However, I feel the video is somewhat a metaphor for the unfolding of events. We, the Soldier and the Heavy, have hastily barged into the intel room, not questioning why the the Scout (Valve) doesn't know their own passcode. We've let the enemy in and allowed it to walk among us. An intelligent comrade (Blu Spy) shows up, detailing the nature of the situation and the character of the enemy. Of course, the enemy (Red Spy) already knows this and acts completely non-chalet. The general populace is impatient and rarely cares for detailed analysis. They demand immediate answers, personified in the Soldier's explosive behavior in blowing the head off the only thinking person in the room - our friendly Spy. With the removal of over-speculation, we are left open again for the enemy's next deadly blow to finish what he set out to do.
In closing, I'll break it down to what is derived from this. Anyone wishing to attempt new-school advertising should take note of these points. They are humble suggestions and as simple as it sounds, you'll be surprised how many advertising agencies are completely unaware of the nature of new-school guerrilla marketing.
- Know your target audience - Realise that they want to know you too.
- Starve them of information about you - make them hunger, knowledge is power.
- Feed the hungry - hungry minds are sponges and will soak up anything.
- Viral marketing is cheap, if not free, but requires extreme passion and thought. Seeded conversation in public must be fed by fresh news and speculation. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back - Reward your customer.
- Explain process - it not only shows that thought has been put to every decision you have made, but also defines you as a professional. Put it in context, like the series of "Meet The..." videos. Describe each class and their personalities and explain it procedurally.
No comments:
Post a Comment