I recently received from my wife and children a Sony Playstation 4 for Christmas, well I think the honest truth of it was, I bought it and then everyone claimed it was my Christmas gift, who am I to argue?
Anyway, one of the things that really shone through as I started using and playing, was the idea of how much the “Second Screen” experience had penetrated every element of the primary experience itself. Using this new extended experience, really made me think about how this could translate in to the business sense for B2B and/or B2C marketing disciplines.
The trick here is that the Second Screen experience keeps you engaged with the primary experience, even when you cant be using it, and when you use the secondary experience, it actually impacts what your situation is in the primary experience. Sounds complicated right? Well let me give you the scenario that did it for me.
Assassins Creed 4 from UbiSoft (http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/en-US/home/index.aspx), is a fantastic game full of pirates, action, adventure and intrigue, and great story to boot… but that’s not what we are here to talk about, this ain’t a game review site. What the game actually added to the experience was a companion app that could be run on the iPad or Android devices (An example is the iOS version at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag/id692766233?mt=8).
This companion app lets you manage the captured ships in your fleet, send them in to battle, send them on trade routes and essentially earn money, upgrades etc. These items and cash, and the status you left your ships in, would be translated in to the game itself.
The trick with this is that it kept you constantly engaged, when you had some downtime you could always just check on the ships, make sure they are up to scratch and send them off on the next mission, and all that took a matter of seconds. The key is continual engagement, delivered in a way that you want to engage. While that is the key, the trick is the last point, “… in a way that you want to engage.”.
Now if we think about the way we engage in marketing today, we typically engage customers in a series of one off engagements, that feel just like that to the customer, a one off engagement that has little meaning in the scheme of things. What is the interest for a customer to take action on some sort of email marketing campaign, or website? Sure you might have some sort of offer that might encourage a course of action, like a discount or special offer, but its still a one time engagement.
Let’s attempt to drive the comparison here between marketing and the video games. The events or campaigns that we run are the video game on the TV, and the time in between is basically the missing component unmatched by the Second Screen experience for the game on the tablet or phone.
So maybe that’s whats missing? What are the things that marketing can encourage its customers to do between events/engagements, that would influence the next engagement, ensuring that the next experience is a better one.
Maybe what we need is someway to demonstrate the continual engagement we have had with the customer, how its benefiting them, what they can do in between, and by doing so, set an expectation on what the next engagement should be like, ensuring that the customer feels like they are in control.
That I think is key…
Hardman's space 