The Holiday Marketing Apocalypse

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The frenzied carnival atmosphere of E3 is fading into memory, and the calm of summer is descending on the game industry. Not really — it’s anything but calm in the marketing departments of game companies. Savvy marketers are sharpening their plans for the holidays, knowing that it’s going to be a brutally competitive season this year. Marketing budgets will be huge for major releases, the noise level will be extreme, and the traditional game industry will be competing for consumer dollars against other devices. Let’s take a closer look at some of the factors involved.

Imagine a family with one or two kids, looking to spend perhaps a few hundred dollars at Christmas for a major entertainment device. They may look at consoles, and the range of options will be dizzying: the Wii, the Wii U, Xbox 360 in several versions, the Xbox One, the PS3, PS4, the 3DS, the PS Vita. Prices will range from $99 up to $499, and there may be multiple different bundle packages for the holiday as well. The choices don’t stop there: There’s also the Ouya for $99 at most of the same retail outlets, the GameStick, and the Gamepop, all Android-based consoles for low prices.

We may also see a Google console, a revamped Apple TV with and App Store, and Amazon with a Kindle TV console box, all probably around $99. That’s not all — families will be bombarded with ads for tablets, with a bewildering array of features, screen sizes and prices ranging from $99 all the way up to $999, stopping at every major point in-between. You can bet all of those tablets will be pushing their game-playing ability and how it’s the ideal electronic gift for the whole family to enjoy.

Hardware marketers will be trying to explain the distinctive benefits of each individual product in their line, while trying to keep consumers from spending all of their money on a tablet. It’s going to be a very difficult task indeed. This will all be taking place while all of the leading game franchises will be launching new editions, and trying to explain why you should buy the current-console version even though the next-gen console version looks so much better. Really, they’re both great. What exactly is the difference again

The marketing conflicts will take place on several battlefields. At retail stores in September, massive displays for GTA V will be dominating the space. By October, we should be seeing the retail strategy unfolding for new game hardware and key software titles. Precise availability dates haven’t been announced for new consoles, but it’s absolutely certain that both the PS4 and the Xbox One will be available in quantity prior to Thanksgiving weekend, the biggest shopping period in the USA. The consoles may well arrive weeks before that time, maybe even a month ahead . . . but they will be in stores for Black Friday.

For new consoles, retail kiosks where consumers can try out machines are usually seen as a critical part of the strategy. Where those kiosks are placed, what games are on them and how widely distributed they are will be an indication of how serious Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are about marketing new consoles. Nintendo in particular should be looking to get people experiencing new Wii U software for themselves, especially after seeing the response to the Best Buy test Nintendo conducted during the week of E3.

Other battlefields will be TV advertising, social media, online and print advertising. Traditionally, new consoles have been introduced with a bombardment of television ads to reach a broad demographic. This time, many of the younger consumers are spending far more time online than watching TV, so marketers will have to get more creative to reach them. Sony’s Guy Longworth hinted that the company will be using social media more strongly than ever before this year. Print advertising will probably end up the loser in the shifting marketing budgets, though Game Informer will still see its share of ads.

Let’s not neglect the massive battles that will be occurring between rival game titles this holiday. Activision has already declared an increased marketing spend for its key titles this Christmas in order to fend off competition. The war between Call of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 will be huge. In particular, watch the retail spaces to see who dominates end caps, whose standups have more impact, and which title gets strong licensing support from peripherals manufacturers.

Another battle to watch will be between Skylanders and Disney Infinity, competing for the kid’s market with toy/game crossovers. Activision has had a huge shelf presence at key retailers like Toys R Us for Skylanders. Will Disney spend what it takes to get a similar impact at big chain stores Skylanders has an advantage in the sheer number of products, if you count all the older versions of the toys. This will be a fascinating marketing struggle to watch as it unfolds at retail stores.

It’s one thing to see which marketing effort is better funded, and it’s entirely another to see which product sells more. We probably won’t know much about relative sales of competing products until after the new year begins. Winners will be proudly proclaiming numbers early and often; second and third place products will be looking for other metrics to tout rather than sheer sales numbers. Remember, when the marketing dust settles, it’s sales and profits that ultimately determine the winners.

Facebook Rolls Out Improved Graph Search

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Users who may have grown frustrated with Facebook’s elementary search feature are getting an updated version designed to make it easier to find people, places and photos on the site. Starting today, Facebook is giving US users access to Graph Search, the advanced search feature it announced earlier this year.

 

Facebook launched beta testing for the new social search tool in the beginning of this year, which for a site with 1.1 billion users meant millions of them having the chance to try it. After more than six months of user testing and feedback, Facebook said it believes the product is ready for the masses. It will be a few weeks before everyone who uses Facebook with the “US English” setting will have the new feature, but several hundreds of millions of people will be getting it this week.

“Over the past few months, tens of millions of people have helped improve the product just by using it and giving feedback,” Facebook says in blog post, which will be published on Monday morning.

The improvements include speed and accuracy with searches. For instance, now when users begin typing in a search they get Google Instant-style suggestions. Unlike searches on Google, Facebook’s tool is most useful in unearthing information about your social circles. Graph Search isn’t for finding recipes or deals on running shoes. It’s to find friends who live in San Francisco who are vegan, friends of friends who live nearby and like hiking, nearby restaurants that your friends like, photos of your boyfriend taken before you met him in 2010, and so on.

“Graph Search isn’t Web search. We aren’t duplicating what Bing does and what Google does, but rather we are making things easier for people to find on Facebook,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said when asked about the new search function at the All Things D conference earlier this summer.

But making all of Facebook more easily searchable does have privacy repercussions. While user information is only searchable and visible to those they’ve shared it with in the first place, the new tool does make it much easier for your information to be resurfaced. In fact, the internet has already had a field day with exposing embarrassing queries, showing just how much information people reveal about themselves on the site, whether intentionally or not. Care to find out which brand of condoms your friends prefer Graph Search might tell you. The blog actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com posted a collection of searches ranging from “married people who like prostitutes” to “current employers of people who like racism.” Both produced more than 100 people.

“[Privacy] is something, of course, we care a lot about, and so from the very beginning we made it so that you can only search for the things that you can already see on Facebook,” lead Graph Search engineer Tom Stocky told ABC News when the tool was first previewed in January.

On the ad front, Facebook does not currently show users any ads based on what they are searching for, but the company may do that in the future. As Google has shown, it’s a lucrative business. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Google will take nearly 42 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending this year, well above Facebook’s share of less than seven percent. With its new search tool, the social network is clearly trying to divert traffic and ad spending from its rival. Whether this will work will become clearer as more people begin using it and giving Facebook feedback.

Source: ABC News

Apple Hires Fashion Exec

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Apple has hired the CEO of famed fashion house Yves Saint Laurent for an unspecified role, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Paul Deneve to Apple. He’ll be working on special projects as a vice president reporting directly to Tim Cook,” an Apple spokeswoman told AllThingsD.

Deneve is a former Apple employee, having been a sales and marketing manager with Apple Europe from 1990 to 1997. Does this mean Apple has found someone to head up its retail store operation Perhaps, but if Deneve was being hired for that position you’d think Apple would just say that.

Hiring a high-profile executive into an unspecified position would seem appropriate if the product or service the exec would be responsible for is still unannounced. In this case, you would think that might mean a product that has the opportunity to be considered as a fashion accessory. Deneve has experience not only with YSL, but also with Courreges, Nina Ricci and Lanvin. Phones as fashion accessories Or perhaps a more traditional fashion accessory, the wristwatch, might be the focus of Deneve’s efforts.

Source: AllThingsD

Android Smartphones Finding Profit Scant

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Apple has seen its shares fall in value over the last six months over concerns that it may not be growing swiftly. Profits are still strong for Apple, and that’s not true of some of its major competition. Samsung missed expectations for its quarterly earnings, which is never a good thing to do. Apparently the Galaxy S4 smartphone isn’t selling as well as the company expected, despite moving some 20 million units so far.

It’s not as if Samsung isn’t doing well. Profits of $8.3 billion are not to be sneered at. In the stock market, however, missing earnings targets means a drop in the stock. The days of new smartphone models automatically selling better than the previous model may be over, and that concerns investors.

Samsung isn’t the only smartphone maker with an issue. HTC has also had a bad quarter, with profits down 83 percent. The company’s new HTC One has been well-reviewed, but apparently its sales were not enough to lift the company higher. Other versions of the HTC One are planned, including the smaller, more affordable HTC One Mini.

Samsung continues to add features to the Galaxy smartphones as well as increasing the processing power of the device. Many of the new software features (like using your gaze to scroll with) seem less than compelling, and they don’t work properly all the time. Will the relentless pace of new smartphone introductions continue, or might we see a slowdown at some point

Source: TechCrunch

Adblock Plus Is Selling Ad Access

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Adblock Plus is used by millions of people to block ads on web pages, much to the dismay of companies that advertise on the internet. Some ads still get through, and apparently Google is paying to help make that happen. Adblock Plus contains an ‘acceptable ads’ filter to allow some advertising through, and it charges big companies for the right to get onto that list.

Essentially Adblock Plus acts like a gatekeeper that Google and other companies need to pay in order to get advertising through. Smaller advertisers who don’t have the willingness or the resources to pay up find themselves excluded. The entire situation is causing a great deal of discussion on Hacker News with questions being raised as to whether Adblock Plus users really know about the company’s policies regarding advertising, or if it’s fair or reasonable for a company to build a business around blocking products – the ads – that others are paying to have delivered.

Adblock Plus says its fee is fair and reasonable, and it provides access to some websites and blogs for free. How Adblock chooses which sites to whitelist isn’t specified.

Source: TechCrunch

Apple Files iWatch Trademark

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Apple’s apparently getting ready to launch a smartwatch, at least if you believe that a trademark filing is a good indication of intent. According to Bloomberg, Apple has filed for the “iWatch” trademark in Japan. Certainly the company isn’t bound to produce such a device, or even use that particular name, but it’s an indication the company wants to keep its options open.

Rumors have been swirling for months that Apple is working on a wrist device that would connect to various iDevices. Many applications have been suggested, among them notifications from your iPhone and pedometer or other exercise related apps. The devices would likely have a color screen and run some version of iOS, though battery life may be an issue.

Traditionally the #1 category of apps for mobile devices has been games. Will this trend hold for wearable computing What sort of games would an iWatch enable or enhance A finger would cover up a considerable amount of an iWatch screen, which may limit or eliminate many types of game play. Apple will likely seed some key developers with prototypes before launching such a device, so that compelling new apps could be demonstrated at launch. Will games be among them

Source: Bloomberg

Twitter To Roll Out Retargeting Ads

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Twitter is making another step toward making their site even more advertiser friendly by experimenting with retargeting technology. Among the technologies being looked at by Twitter is the use of browser cookies to match up Twitter accounts with businesses’ mailing lists to make targeting of ads easier. Twitter’s senior director of product and revenue said about the changes “Users won’t see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones.”

Facebook has already begun to use retargeting as a means of reaching out to customers through their in-feed advertising, which has seen a lot of success. By adding services like these to their recently announced location-based advertising and promoted tweets, Twitter is quickly becoming one of the foremost places for social media advertising. Having ads relevant to users, even ads that don’t come across as ads, gets advertisers one step closer to reaching users who may have an interest in a product or service instead of firing blindly in the dark.

These new features can be turned off if a user does not want cookies tracking their computer. Twitter users can opt out by clicking the box for ‘promoted content’ under account settings. By doing this, these features will be disabled. In addition, Twitter also supports Do Not Track, and Twitter’s implementation has been endorsed by the EFF.

Source: TechCrunch

Skype Gets Personal

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Skype has created a series of online videos showing how its service connects people with far-flung families to create ‘family portraits.’ The focus is on how Skype connects people and doesn’t show more than the merest snippet of how the software works. It’s an interesting lesson in how to keep laser-focused on the benefit and stay away from talking speeds and feeds. See more examples of the Skype ads here.

Sonic Lost World Dashes Onto 3DS

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Sonic Lost World comes from an unlikely partnership between Sega and Nintendo, and is only available on Nintendo’s systems. At E3, footage and gameplay was finally shown off for the 3DS. With the same combinations of 2D and 3D gameplay as its Wii U big brother, the game also has certain 3DS-specific levels and features.