The Missing Link
Agencies like to draw conclusions between what they do and the value it has to the client. We often use it to justify our existence. Or at least our involvement on a project.
Web and viral advertising make this easy because they come with metrics easily attached. The link between creative and clickthroughs is easy to ascertain. The link between clickthroughs and sales is less easy.
I just watched this viral movie. In some ways it is impressive. Certainly it has had a big budget behind it.
Now, forget about the special effects and whatever you might think of the script. Ask yourself what it is doing for the game. It has had a million views on YouTube. That’s an impressive number. Can’t argue with that. If I had a million people choosing to tune in to an ad I had written I wouldn’t be complaining.
So we have to look at what value it is bringing to the product. Is it helping sell more copies of the game? Is that one million figure a million unique viewers? Does it tell us the viewers were considering buying the game or went on to buy the game? If there was a rise in sales was the data separated out from other marketing activities running simultaneously?
To me, the film seems like a gift to existing users. I’d say that’s a pretty nice thing to do. No doubt the scriptwriter had fun fulfilling a live-action dream too.
All I’m seeing, however, is this quote:
Because of the length of the video, this live-action short makes the potential players and audience connect emotionally with the characters on the game, and that will probably make the chances of them buying the game higher.
And that makes me wary. The length of the video is enough to make potential players connect emotionally? It will “probably” increase purchase? Where’s the link between length and quality (that ought to get the spam bots in a frenzy)?
Of course, I’m looking at this from one side. From the side of someone reading a claim about the benefits of lengthy viral movies. From inside the information could change. It could well be that the sales were delivered and the ad paid for itself. It could be that the project was a longterm, brand building exercise designed to heighten awareness of the brand. It could be that I don’t know the full story. Certainly it is true that the game has achieved great pre-orders but whether that is because of this, it’s hard to know.
But as someone who is often asked to create ideas for this whole viral marketing movement I’m still left asking one thing and the answer isn’t clear:
Why?
UPDATE: Ogilvy.com just posted an interesting post which overlaps my cursory thinking on this (and does a better, more analytical job on an article I was going to write about the whole notion of measurement and what it is actually doing for marketeers).