Guitar Hero: Reaching the Unreachable

http://www.adrants.com/2008/02/guitar-hero-helps-marketers-understand.php#more

The prime task of a media planner in today’s “hustle and bustle”, media-overloaded society, is of course to make a series of decisions identifying what the best combination of advertising vehicles for reaching target consumers would be. This task includes using their recourses effectively and efficiently to reach the largest number of people with the advertising message, using the least amount of money possible. It is very important to find a medium that most relates with the target consumer to have the biggest and best impact in that consumer’s mind. The use of effective media is changing at a breathtaking rate in today’s media world, therefore media planners need to accommodate to that change to be effective. In Erik Hauser’s article entitled Guitar Hero Helps Marketers Discover Product Relevancy, Erik explores the fact that through the product relevancy of Guitar Hero, advertisers can discover and reach entirely new consumer targets that they never expected, and encourages advertisers to come up with new engagement techniques in order do this successfully, and in turn boost sales. Guitar Hero may only be the beginning of this bizarre new way to reach consumers around the country, but there is no telling what the future may hold.

In Hauser’s article, he discusses the fact that playing Guitar Hero, a hands-on interactive video game where users actually “play” an electronic guitar to the sights and sounds of real video game action, stimulates involvement in the consumer, and opens the consumer’s eyes to entirely different products and services that advertiser’s and media planners never imagined. In his article, he uses a specific example in which a 9-year-old boy asked for a Lynard Skynard CD, because he was able to “play” that song on Guitar Hero, and was actively engaged in the process so much, that the 9-year-old wanted a CD from a band that was big in the 1970’s. He implies the argument that this is something that advertisers and media planners never thought possible; a 9-year-old boy making or influence a purchase of a band’s CD that was big in his parents generation. This is something that media planners (as well as advertisers) need to consider in this current day and age, because the impact of product relevance and promotion through that, may just be a glimpse of the future.

Hausen poses 2 main questions that many brand managers face in today’s market; "How do we increase relevancy within a particular market segment, and more importantly convert that new found relevancy into sales," and "How can we drive purchase and purchase consideration by our intended audience - an audience that currently doesn't even know that we exist?" Guitar Hero led a small child to purchase a CD that no advertiser, media researcher, media planner, or marketer could have imagined or foreseen. The fact that the child was able to engage and in a sense control the Lynard Skynnard song, one of many other songs and artists featured on the game, led him to influence a purchase of that band’s CD. This takes on a whole new challenge for media planners today.

Media planners need to find a way to not only reach completely unexpected consumers such as the previous example, but also their target audiences as well in the same manner as this example. There may be many other product tie-ins that can be made out there, other than video games and the music business. What partnerships could be formed that would symbiotically benefit two or more genres, companies, or even industries of products and services? Media planners are given the task of reaching consumers through this new idea of a media vehicle, with perhaps placing different forms of advertising with use of other products. Artists and other products being promoted on video games, TV commercials, and through alternative and non-traditional advertising is only the beginning of it. Media planners could look at this symbiotic relationship as an entirely new component of a media plan and an efficient way to promote their client’s product, and perhaps interactively connect it with demographics that no one ever thought possible. It is important to figure out how take products such as Guitar Hero, and implement them into the market in accordance with the product, including different aspects of markets that the product can represent (the music industry in this example). Guitar Hero blends these markets together, and with the current condition that the music industry is in, this could be partially be a potential savior. What other possibilities are out there? Perhaps we will just have to wait and see