Marketing-ing

Today I am going to talk about a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), “World of Warcraft”, and some of its marketing strategies. “World of Warcraft” was released on November 23, 2004 and was estimated to have 62% of the MMORPG market now. Its players are not just teenagers, but many people in their fifty are also subscriber of this game. It’s really a game that has players all around the world.

When the game is first realized, it’s free to play. People could the game for free. After some time, when the gamers are really addicted to the game, then subscription fee begin to apply.

Even now, since the game has already earned its reputation, it’s still free to play for the first 2 weeks. Whenever an expansion for the game is released, Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of the game, will still send invitations to players to try out the beta version for free, before they start charging.

The game has created loyalty in every player, when a new expansion is release, Blizzard does not have to do much to advertise, because all its players seems to be waiting and begging for the expansion to be released. All Blizzard needs to do is to post the trailer of the new expansion, and its players will automatically start spreading the news and the trailer.

It is really easy for Blizzard to promote their game when have such a big population of loyal gamers.

In order to get into Sauder, volunteering work in the supplemental is one of the criteria. Therefore after searching through the internet, I found a volunteering position at Investor’s Group as a marketing associate.

Basically, the work is very simple, there is weekly a seminar going on in Investor’s group, and my job was to call the phone numbers on the yellow page one by one to inform them about this seminar, explain to them what is it about, and record down whoever is interested in it. To make things easier, I was given a script to read to the person I phone. However, when I started calling, I realized how challenging is can be, the first person I phoned hang me up even before I could finish reading the script. After I few dozens to tries, I realized it’s so much easier to talk to a lady than a man, at least the ladies could let me finish my script and said “sorry” before hanging me up, but for the men, as soon as I announced that I m calling from Investor’s group, I got cut off without mercy…

After a few weeks, I am much better in it, I could even judge if the person will let me finish my script from his first word. I even altered the script a little to make it more accepting. Sometimes I could even chat with the customer for more than half an hour!

Anyway, it’s a very meaningful experience for me. At least I won’t feel shy whenever talking to a stranger on phone…

When the question, if the baby carrots campaign is sustainable, is raised in the lecture, I had come up with some ideas to help to make it more sustainable~~

First, perhaps when the sales of baby carrots start to drop after few months, if I were the marketing manager of the baby carrots, I will encourage other similar product to adopt our style, such as the baby tomato or the baby cucumber. Can you imagine,  when u walk down aisle of chips and see almost half of aisle is occupied by refrigerators full of these healthy snacks?  I bet you will definitely grab one of these healthy snacks. In this case, we are not only increasing our own sales at a low or almost no extra cost, but surface a whole new industry to the customer. Therefore, we could further consume the market of chips and turn these consumers into our loyal customer.  

Whether to buy the baby tomato or the baby carrots, it’s the consumer’s preference, however, we can MAKE them buy our baby carrots by creating a new mix-and-match package that contains the baby carrots, baby tomatoes, etc.

After some time, when consumers have adapt this new eating habit of holding a packet of healthy “baby” product when watching TV, we can go to the next step, distinguish the baby carrots from others.

We could come up with new ways of eating baby carrots to make it more tasty and enjoyable. We could also emphasize on the nutrient facts of baby carrots and make the consumer believe that this is the best among all the others.

However, I m not sure if all these will really work…