Ah, Pokemon. The iconic symbol of a 90’s childhood. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! have always touched a soft spot of mine.
Not only are their products good, but the respective marketing strategies for both fandoms are surprisingly effective. Just take a look at this Pokemon dubstep video ft. Lindsey Stirling:
Released merely one day ago with already 301k views, and over 25k likes? Needless to say that this video is popular and well-liked. The bit.ly link embedded in the video leads to a Pokemon X/Y preorder page, with the end url “/KurtHugoSchneider_Pokemon.” Needless to say that this video was, at least in some way, commissioned by one of the parties involved in selling the upcoming game. And it’s great exposure! Fans of Pokemon (and Lindsey Stirling, Kurt Schneider) have a great video to watch, and Pokemon/EA have increased their landing page visits by a good amount. So how do those sales numbers add up?
Assuming that 1/10 people click on the link, they would have received over 2.5k visits in one day directly onto their pre-order page. Assuming that 1% of these visitors actually end up buying the game, that translates to 25 new pre-orders…which is $1000 (25x$40) in the bank.
Product campaigns have intrigued marketers for years, but I am particularly interested in how even “fan-made” videos can help a company sell a product. Such is the power of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other “social media” sites around the world…
More to come on that topic later!
Signing off,
Chris