Tag: marketing

Veronica Mars and the Crowdsourced “Long Tail”

Posted on by Bri

Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m a marshmallow and I believe in LoVe. Regardless of how much Kristen Bell can get me to fangirl about her misadventures into private eye work, the story of “The Veronica Mars Movie” is an interesting case study in marketing, specifically, marketing to the long tail.

As most familiar with marketing are already aware, the long tail is the section of the market that does not cater to the most common buyers. These are your specialty items, your underwater basket weavers or fans who need a figurine of that one character in that one episode of that one show that -one- time. The beauty of the long tail is that, while you won’t hit many buyers, those you do hit will invest almost unrivaled amounts because they really, /really/ want that product and have few places to get it.

Veronica Mars, for those who (sadly, sadly, sadly) haven’t heard of it, debuted in 2004 and featured a young Kristen Bell working on various whodunit cases using the skills she learned from her father’s Private Eye business. Cases range from the mundane (who’s rigging the school ballots?) to larger overarching cases (who killed Veronica’s best friend?). The show ended in 2007, after seeing Veronica through one year of college. The show, while never a huge success in ratings, received critical acclaim for its well-written noir presence, epic female lead, and intriguing blend of humor, wit, and drama. Much like Firefly and many other shows with a highly engaged and supportive fanbase, when Veronica Mars was cancelled, there was a huge hole that left them wanting more.

Why hello long tail, there you are. (read in Veronica’s internal monologue voice for added ‘tude)

Seven years after the cancellation, Rob Thomas appeared on KickStarter encouraging fans of the series to fund a Veronica Mars movie. The response? Astounding. Even if you weren’t a marshmallow, anyone following news of successful KickStarter’s surely heard of Veronica Mars utterly smashing almost every KickStarter record ever: Two million dollars were raised in less than ten hours, breaking the fastest grossed one million and two million dollar records. It also broke highest minimal pledging goal achieved, largest successful film project, and on its final day most backers of any KickStarter project. (Note: this has only been beaten thus far by the Reading Rainbow project – which seems to have been an obvious take from the success of this project!)

For those who think the long tail isn’t a worthwhile investment: let Mars Investigation show you it depends on the long tail you’re trying to cater to.

The film itself, nine years after the final season in terms of timeline, received overall good reviews from critics, coming out at 77% and 6.4/10 on RottenTomatoes and 61/100 on Metacritic. Tabulating box office earnings was a bit difficult for the Mars movie, considering its fund source and due to the fact that prizes for some tiers of backing were copies of or tickets to the film – meaning quite a large portion of watchers would be absorbed in the funding. Despite this, Veronica Mars still grossed $1.988 million opening weekend, coming in at #11 on the box office charts, and had a worldwide total of $3.485 million – again, not including those backer-watchers, who already ensured the costs of film production were covered with their $5.702 million given to the KickStarter. This means most if not all of the total box office revenue should ideally have been profit for the film, and if one wants to argue semantics, the true total is more like $9.187 million, if the funds the KickStarter received are counted toward the film’s grossing.

What do all of these numbers mean? Even if this film wasn’t a box office smash, it created huge ripples, and at very low cost to Warner Bros, who facilitated the Digital Distribution and ensured screening of the movie in 291 theaters across the nation.

While the movie might not have hit record-breaking numbers at the box office, it did pave the way for a new generation of entertainment catered to a willing long tail, and it certainly shocked the system as a reminder that if you build it – no matter how niche, the diehards will most certainly come in their small, but desiring droves.

“Do you not instinctively fear me? Maybe you should make yourself a note.” – Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars (c) Warner Bros. Entertainment

Google Pokemon MAPster: On Nintendo and Mobile

Posted on by Bri

If you have any aspiring Pokemon masters as friends, or happened to open Google Maps up today, chances are you found out about Google’s April Fools prank this year:

Granted, there actually ARE Pokemon in Google maps today: just in sprite form and no traveling required. (Unless you count hopping from Harajuku to Old Faithful via the Maps app travel)

While a collaboration between Google, the Pokemon Company, and Nintendo was a rather ingenious prank to tug on any kid-at-heart’s nostalgia and gain some excellent publicity for all parties, what might not have been expected of the prank was the conversations it brought about to the future of Pokemon, and well – Nintendo games in general.

Nintendo franchises are some of the most beloved and memorable games: Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Link (Legend of Zelda) easily spring to mind among others when one is asked to think of a video game. One of Nintendo’s best selling points for its games is the exclusivity of its characters: typically confined to Nintendo only titles with rare cameos to outside titles, and exclusively playable on Nintendo console systems.

Does that exclusivity exclude Nintendo from some successful business ventures? Any console junkie will tell you that when it comes to hardware, Nintendo may have innovative ideas (a controller with a screen? Some of the first motion detection titles?), but their processing power can lag years behind Sony PlayStation or Microsoft XBox. Some mobile devices may even have better processing capabilities and features than current generation Nintendo devices.

Would it be better business for Nintendo to farm out their franchise characters? Or start developing and selling for mobile? Maybe opening up a retro games section of the Play store filled with mobile formatted nostalgia-inducers?
Think of the possibilities mobile could offer: the augmented reality type game described in the Google Maps trailer isn’t so far off – granted it might have to be scaled down a bit since it’s unlikely one will hop a plane to Egypt to finish a game.
Mobile could hit a base of users Nintendo is missing too. Users who love Mario and Pikachu, but can’t bring themselves to shell out the money for a console just to play one or two titles, but would gladly pay the money for those titles on their mobile device. Or even users who would play more classic mobile games a la CandySwipe, Cut the Rope, etc. that would buy extra levels or make a micropurchase for a small game with their favorite characters starring. There’s a potential market left untapped.

Yet for all the possibilities, and all the frustrated Nintendo lovers but non-console buyers who would clamor for mobile Nintendo love, there’s some sound strategy to what Nintendo has done so far. As stated at the beginning, Nintendo built its characters partially on their exclusivity. Only seeing Mario in his Nintendo environment gives an expectation and a context, and it gives a level of quality expectation for the product. Letting Mario run around just anywhere willing to shell out the cash for him could dampen the iconic-ness of him and other Nintendo franchise.

Plus, just like Sony and Microsoft, part of Nintendo’s profits come from console sales. While PlayStation and Microsoft have plenty of great third party developers to contract out games to and are known for a vast array of different games being available to them, Nintendo again breeds its consoles in part for the exclusiveness of their franchise titles – third party developers are almost akin to just gravy. Take the franchise titles and put them anywhere, and when stacked against the competitors with better horsepower, who is going to buy the Nintendo console anymore? They may have novel hardware innovations, but given console sales for Nintendo already are less than their competitors, who can say how much more the scales would tip?

None of these conversations are to say Nintendo needs any advice. Their brands speak for themselves: the company has amassed quite spectacular revenue and while their current consoles may seem in trouble, the company itself is far from likely in the same waters. These are what ifs, and exploring the whys.

The bottom line seems to be that for all the excitement and potential new markets Nintendo could open up by expanding its horizons, it could also become a fatal blow to the company. Dwindled to a halt console sales could potentially rip open any gaming company,  and beyond that the iconic nature of Nintendo franchise characters could get lost in the mix as they jump from game to game, console to console. While it might seem backwards to those looking at the potential innovations ahead of us, Nintendo sticking to what they know may be exactly what they need to continue on their path of household gaming entity.

Plus, if the technology already exists, that means it can always become a part of the next big Nintendo thing. The 3DS already HAS augmented reality features, for example: they’ve just never been that strongly used in a franchise game to my knowledge. Maybe this Google Maps trailer is opening doors to something right in their backyard?

Regardless of what they choose to do in the future, Nintendo is a savvy company who chose to opt out of the console horsepower war and opt into developing further what was already working for them: their characters. I’m interested to see how their business plan continues to unfold, and I’m actually doing a marketing course research survey project on Nintendo and mobile devices, so you may see more blog posts about this from me.

But until then, I’m going to go back to searching for all these Pokemon in….where am I now, Kyoto? And hoping against hope if I find them all Google sends me a lovely little Pokemon master card to hang on my wall, right next to my pile of Pokemon plushies.

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock-n-roll” – Shigeru Miyamoto

Pokemon and respective characters (c) Nintendo, Game Freak, and the Pokemon Company International; Mario, Luigi, and other characters (c) Nintendo

What Girls’ Toys are Really Lacking

Posted on by Bri

I wanted to take a break from my Grace Hopper reflections for this blog, as I think during the holiday season it is especially pertinent. I was wrapping Christmas presents for my extended family when this thought dawned on me – and with all the articles and bemoaning of the “pink aisle”, it seemed a worthy time to add my two cents.

The dreaded “pink aisle” – for those unaware, it is a nickname for the girls toy aisle, as rolling past it in any store you will most likely see a large wall of pure, unadulterated hot pink. Is the pink the problem though? Or is there something more at play?

While I wrapped up the latest mishap in the Barbie-to-Bratz-gone-wrong saga – Monsters High, my problems with the pink aisle hit me like a ton of bricks. I was reading the back of the doll’s boxes – Abby Bominable and some Poltergeist one for those who’ve manhunted the dolls this holiday season – and on the back I noticed mugshots like yearbook pictures, where the doll in question mentioned who they hated, who was their friend, etc. Miss Poltergeist had Abby as her “BFF”, but Abby did not reciprocate such feelings, instead some mermaid also blue-skinned buddy named Lagoona was hers. I commented on this to my dad as he walked past, who laughed and said “it sounds just like high school”. Of course, the dolls were high school girls, but something about that statement fit the pieces together to me.

Girls toys promote conformity. Boys toys promote imagination.<br />
Cut and dry, it clicked. Before anyone thinks I’m jumping to conclusions (and of course, there’s always going to be outliers in the equation), let me break it down.

Almost every popular girls toy most seasons is some variation of Barbie/Cabbage Patch/Friendship-Super-High-School-Buddies/Bratz … the picture of the generic doll souped up to whatever is relevant this year comes to mind. Yet most of these dolls, while at times promoting exploration, have gone the way of having one central theme: how important being liked is. No, maybe they mask it as the importance of friendship (always a good thing to learn), or making memories and finding yourself with friends, but at the heart of every one of these toys is a glaring message if you dig deep enough: you need people to like you in order to be worthwhile.

Even My Little Pony – one of the less blatantly gender specific toys of our era despite its pinkness (as evidenced by brony culture) – the tagline is “Friendship is Magic”. Of course, the show teaches a deeper message – love and tolerance despite differences, honing ones talents and using them to help others. In all actuality it is probably one of the least representative franchises out there for this phenomena.

That is, until Equestria Girls is taken into account – blatantly following the trends of the other competitors just in time for the holidays. Of course, Equestria Girls the TV Show has yet to actually have any air time -so it’s still undetermined if it will be a high school show actually maintaining the high school show archetype, or follow more closely the vein of MLP:FiM.

Moving back to the point though – these girl’s toys as they stand don’t really promote individualism, encourage creative scenarios/problem solving, or tell them much other than that they need to be popular. With girl’s toys you’re given a doll with an outfit and a purse/day-planner/laptop/desk – some sort of school/home and fashion accessory. What story is there to imagine up for that doll beyond, well, high school drama?

Boys get action figures with laser blasters – you can shoot the laser blaster at the crocodile you got three holidays ago, shoot it at your brother, shoot it at the dog, pair him up with the superhero from another franchise entirely….the stories are endless.

Put a high school doll with another high school doll and the only story is cross-high school drama.
Even adding in toys like ponies, unicorns, fairy princesses – there are little ways to explore them besides accessorizing them in the girl’s aisle.

Even dress up toys and the ideas children have while wearing them reinforce this concept. When a boy dresses in a ninja turtle costume or a Batman mask, if asked why he is more than likely to say he wants to be Batman “so he can do anything” – or more kid-maginatively – so he can “fight off the evil zombie hoard outside the living room”. If you ask a girl
why she wants to be in a princess costume, it’s so “she can be pretty
and play dress-up with the sparkliest clothes” or “so everyone will love
her”. Or craft toy kits, while fueling artistic creativity, typically
only teach girls the same message that “pretty-fying” is important and
are typically geared again, toward sharing or playing with their friends
– not exploring their own individual creativity, but creating together
and thus sometimes stifling their true exploration (not to say that
group play is a bad thing – but children also should grow their own
talents).

What girl’s toys really lack is opening their minds to something more than the same old message. That how you look is the most important, that you need to fit in to be significant. Boy toys have samurais, pirate ships, ancient crypts, and plenty of gadgets and weapons to explore with – they encourage imaginatively dreaming up new scenarios, and believing in oneself. Boys also get more villain toys – lessons in overcoming adversity and never quitting come to mind (though granted, the villain archetype is a bit black and white compared to real life). Boys are taught that things are about what they want – what they can dream up, and that they are more than capable of achieving them. Girls toys teach the importance of sticking with your “pack” and reinforce staying in the same boxes of the high school, the home, the pretty pink vacation yacht.

In my eyes it’s not the “pinkness” of the pink aisle that leads girls astray. It’s the message that conformity is key. Imagination fuels exploration and learning – some of the best engineers in the world have huge, vividly creative imaginations. When we hand girls toys that tell them to pay attention to what others think and not stray “outside the box” – how can we question the lower numbers of women in STEM fields? We never used toys that taught them to dream outside the friendship circle, to be their own person, and to make their own stories and be problem-solving heroines, rather than gossiping schoolgirls. And of course when these messages of conformity are drilled in – if they never see women in STEM, they won’t stray from the “normal path”.

Don’t hate the pink aisle for its pink, glitter, and unicorns – franchises like My Little Pony have proven that the pink is not the problem and that it can break gender walls.
Instead, wonder why the unicorns can’t have laser blasters, and the dolls can’t go anywhere beyond the mall, the classroom, or the sparkly mansion. Check back with me on the damage the pink aisle does when we see the diversity of possibilities those fuchsia boxes hold matches what we offer boys.

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by its lapels” – Maya Angelou

Monsters High (c) Mattel, My Little Pony (c) Hasbro, Justice League (c) DC Comics