The actual post is up at my employer’s site. (It’s hard to see hotlinks on that site – the article I was riffing off of is here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2262544/) But comments there are borked, and I figured, if y’all wanted to talk about the post, I ought to give you a place to do it before I pimped it all over creation.
If you’re looking for a diatribe about Sarah Palin, you aren’t going to get it. If you’re looking for me to admire her community management, you sure as hell aren’t going to get it.
But brand management is a different animal. I respect the hell out of whoever she’s got doing brand management, and I stand in awe of what they’ve accomplished on behalf of their client. The client is doing her own part, though. If someone came up with a natty armband and some good slogans for her, she’d be unstoppable.
I see.
So you start with a big turd and then chip away all the bits that don’t smell of roses?
How do you mesh the goals of using your message board as both a PR mechanism for new gamers and a retention tool for existing gamers? Games that develop a reputation amongst players as having “nazi boards” (that is, boards with lots of deletions) don’t tend to be useful communication mechanisms anymore.
I mean, boards aren’t viewed by many players anyway, but usually enough of them check the board to disseminate key information to guild members and such. But when the boards have a negative connotation, they are just completely ignored. The SOE message boards were this way for the several years I played EQ2. I was reading the message boards only out of professional courtesy — that is, looking for material for my blog — but I was always the best-informed of my entire guild. Their forums failed utterly to be a communication mechanism.
Given that I don’t think a lot of prospective buyers actually delve into a game’s forums before trying the game, it seems like the PR side of things is better handled through a blog, which should allow comments, but those comments should be viciously moderated; whereas a forum should only have negativity towards other players (and vitriolic animosity) deleted, so as to “keep it real” for the in crowd of people… those extremely irritating, whiny, terrible people that also contain the lurkers and occasional-posters who will disseminate key info to your players.
Perhaps the more enlightened approach would be to put “key information” on your BLOG so more people could read it, but everywhere I’ve ever worked, the blog has been a tool of the PR department alone and could never be used for information-dissemination… the rationale being that new players might see that stuff and get scared by all those details.
So the thing is… if we are stuck using the shitty forums as a communication mechanism, and even THAT needs to be PR-sweeped to clear out all negativity, then there aren’t any communication mechanisms left that players will actually use.
I’ve been saying this from the start: Agree or disagree with Ms. Palin, she’s got a very smart team behind her that seems to be successful at promoting her brand. For those who support her, it’s exciting. For those who disagree with her, it’s frightening.
Eric – Yes, exactly. That’s why people who do the full Palin to their community outlets aren’t building community, they are managing their brand.
What I’ve laid out is what I suspect the actual Palin strategy *is*, given the pattern of what they’ve deleted. It’s what I’d do if I were hired to do brand management and paid enough money.
I wouldn’t do it for what I’ve been paid to date in my career, mind you
I believe in community building because that’s the right way to treat people.
Brand management with community tools is breathtakingly cynical, and sees people as units of leverage.
So Sarah Palin:Republicans like Bobby Kotick:Gamers
Sure half the base sees him what what he is (A money grubbing idiot douche), and as much as the informed and educated base would like to take a principled stand against him, the Call of Duty: Black Ops special editions were just announced.
Hey, it’s a strained analogy, but it’s 8 in the morning.