Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Brother None

Brother None

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I couldn't skip over this one; marketing guru Seth Godin has been put on TED talking about what he calls "The Century of Idea Diffusion". He argues that the old marketing model of "making average products for average users" is no longer a valid model as the "average user" has become hard and risky to reach through advertising in a world of mass choices and little time to make choices. Rather, he argues that you should target the fringes, and that through word-of-mouth your product can become a success.

As he puts it, "the riskiest thing you can do now, is be safe (...) The safe thing to do now is to be at the fringes, be remarkable." But, most importantly: "So, what you need to do, is figure out who does care. Who's going to raise a hand and say "I want to hear what you're doing next," and sell something to them." I won't agree with everything he said, but, especially if you're a Bethesda dev/PR guy, it's worth a look.

Link: Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Thanks radnan.
 
well if we go by what Seth has said in that talk we can see that the "safe"/best selss technique now is to go for the "geeks/"fringe". well id say we are the fringe of fallout if you talk to most of the people in the mass market of gamers alot of them havnt heard of fallout if there young or if they have just gotten into RPG's. So if beth would have taken a bit of his advice then they would have marketed the game to suit us the most so as Seth says we will spread the word thus markiting the product for them. But alas Bethsda are to stupied to be doing this they will market it for the masses and spend a fortune on markiting it for it to be mostly ingnored.
 
Gotta love the way the world works. Bethesda markets to the non-hardcore Fallout fans, and then an expert comes along and says that might have been a mistake. :)
 
maybe if time and mood permits it you could also check out Dan Gilberts TED Talk about What makes people happy ? Real Happiness and sinthetic hapiness ...

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/97

i can easily see how this sinthetic hapiness is something you stumble upon in the game world where things dont always meet expectations ...
 
Actually, I think this was rather an interesing watch as Seth discusses things I have longed to express for a long time. (I have linked to the Seth Godin's talk on TED in one of my posts).

The thing is that Seth is absolutely correct:
In today's market you need to be worthy to make a remark about, to be re-mark-able :) [That's why the Finnish monsterband Lordi won the Eurovison Song Contest last year, simply because they were themselves and that was, at that time, re-mark-able].

I especially like his remark! ;) about purple cows....(but I'm from Denmark, where we have lots of cows, so that's maybe why ; - none of them purple, though ;) ) ) since it relates to today's market so well. If you see a 'purple cow' (figuratively speaking, of course), you stop up and think: 'now that was re-mark-able'.

If we pause for a moment and relate this to game development, STALKER has gotten a lof attention. And why: because the game is re-mark-able. It literally boldly goes where no man has gone before as it uses the tragic :( incident 21 years ago at Chernobyl as a backdrop for its (main) story. It is a shooter (of sorts), but it has much deeper story (i'm told) than the traditional FPS shooters. And it has quests & missions, choice & consequence, and I think 8? different endings which partly irelies on what you did in the game. It is truly re-mark-able.

Another FPS type game or Oblivion (with guns) won't be re-mark-able by the public. And why ?Because the (gaming) public want something that isn't seen before, or eveniif it is seen before, they want it presented to them in a new form.

In the old (industrial) age, it was enough to go for the middle, for the avarage customer, or for the avarage joe. Today, this isn't so. You need to cater to the fringes, like NMA and DaC, and to get these people (us) excited about your product. And rely on them (us) to spread the good word.

And yes, agree, Pete Hines and Todd Howard really should see it. Or better yet: Understand it, too & then implement it (use it) in the design (phase) of the games that Bethesda makes.

This includes Fallout 3....
 
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