9. D + E + C = P2
THE PARTICIPATION WAY
Consistent organic activity delivers more engagement
DISCOVER
is about relevancy, the
human desire for
knowledge. Create an
environment that
promotes competence.
ENGAGE
participants through
choice, motivate them to
provide meaningful
contributions to the
product/brand
CONNECT
Humans love to connect
with others (not just the
brand) in meaningful
ways. Facilitate
interactions, “community”
Results in increased engagement, action and Participation leading to
increased engagement and actions -- Performance!
Editor's Notes
Unlocking brand potential from social media
innovation, disruption and evolution that has — and continues to — redefine influence and engagement
It’s not that marketing hasn’t evolved at all since 1950. In fact, a book that was published in the 1980’s by Jack Trout and Al Reis called Positioning made a huge impact on marketing — and that’s that is that the primary metaphor for our industry is war. We take aim at our target market. We capture or defend market share. We seek to gain shelf space, attack the competition, engage in guerrilla tactics, and win customers. Not necessarily the right approach if marketers want customers to participate with them.
In 1982 Star Wars was the top grossing film. In fact, adjusted for ticket price inflation, Star Wars is the second top grossing film of all time. Keep in mind the average ticket price in 1982 was $1.65.
By 1980, just two years after it’s launch over 300,000 Space Invaders arcade machines were sold in Japan, in addition to 60,000 machines in the United States, where prices ranged from $2000 to $3000 for each machine.
By mid-1982 more than eight billion quarters ($2 billion) had been grossed from Space Invaders machines, (this is equivalent to $4.6 billion in today’s value), with a net profit of $450 million (equivalent to $1 billion today).
This made it the best-selling video game and highest-grossing entertainment product of its time.
So think how this compares to the then highest-grossing film Star Wars, which had grossed $486 million in movie tickets
Space Invaders is known as the first video game to have found the game “killer app.”
D: Participative style of gameplay with the enemies responding to the player controlled cannon's movement
E. While earlier shooting games allowed the player to shoot at targets, Space Invaders was the first in which targets could fire back at the player.
It was also the first game where players were given multiple lives, a participant could take cover from enemy fire, and use destructible barriers, in addition to being the first game to use a continuous background soundtrack, with four simple diatonic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, which was dynamic and changed pace during stages, like a heartbeat sound that increases pace as enemies approached.
C. And, it was the first game that encouraged people to play with others. You could save your score.
Now let’s look at Minecraft today which is a huge hit. How huge? The PC version of the game just broke the 12 million sales mark.
Minecraft first debuted in May of 2009. In 5 years the game's original PC iteration has surpassed 11 million units sold.
Minecraft with StarCraft and Battlefield 2 is the fourth-highest selling PC game of all time. The only PC games that have sold more are Diablo III and the first two Sims games.
But PC versions only tell part of the story. Minecraft has sold over 27 million copies across its various incarnations. For reference, the massively popular Wii Sports - a game that was sold in a bundle with Nintendo's Wii console for quite a while - has only managed to sell 22.67 million units.
Minecraft has truly embraced participation and the values and it paid off for them last week when Microsoft bought the company for $2.5 Billion in May 2014
So I just tweeted, I can’t put up with this, does anyone want to buy the company?
F: And then what happens?
MP: A couple of days later or the next day, [Mojang CEO Carl Manneh] came in and was like are you serious about that because we got some offers.
So, let’s dive a little deeper into what gaming companies discovered early on. There is a formula for creating environments where people are more likely to participate. When I wrote my book I took the elements of self determination theory and created a visual formula that could be used by marketers. It’s not a literal quantifiable formula, but rather in formula format so it’s easy to remember. Let’s walk through these…
Let’s walk through some examples on how brands are beginning to create participation experiences. Remember, these are not mutually exclusive, but breaking them apart sometimes helps illustrate the case…
