You run a publisher and...

Whinge about the lack of tax breaks for video game developers in [insert country].

ndubz are so cool I want to be like you rock on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Close a markt. depart because those guys don't now how to respond to drastic economic changes AT ALL!!

If you're not marketing, then people aren't going to be aware of the product you are able to make. Therefore you're going to lose sales and be forced to sack game-making staff anyway.

It's an old argument... I recall reading a "How did companies manage to get through Great Depression"... one of the reasons was out-advertising the competition.

Dang it.

Tim

Sure you can, just make a product that is small in scale and budget but cheap (in price) and accessible and let word-of-mouth do the rest, that's called making a disruptive product.
Examples:
Pong
Google
iPod in its initial stage (remember, it took the iPod 3-4 years before it became the hype it is known for now, those 3-4 years were almost absent of marketing).

If your company has it rough, that's because you failed to attract customers because you listened to those bloody marketing peeps anyway (and also some of those financial retards). Companies that launched disruptive products mostly don't have marketing budgets at all, but with rising succes they can afford it.

If a crisis hits your company, sack the marketing department and let your (core) teams do some smaller experiments, one of them has to be good at least and probably disruptive in nature. give it time to pick up steam and then hire a new markt. dept.

Does the book also state what companies are still alive now that out-advertised their competitors? I'm thinking...a small minority. Big economic crisises are almost always forbodes of new disruptive products and entirely new economic structures forming and taking hold. There's a reason why European car-companies survived the asian onslaught compared to the american ones (which got supported by goverment sponsored "Buy American" campaigns): they adapted product-wise and structural-wise and not because they trew around more marketing millions then the Japanese.

Really, if people start bringing up resources in a debate where one of the sides possesses any kind of assymetry towards the other, you know they probably are ignoring the majority of the actual factors in place.

I take your points. But what you've outlined is true for all economic conditions. If a company can make a cheap, accessible product with good word of mouth at any time, that product will be successful. It's the '(positive) word of mouth' that is the Grail.

A company that overlooks cheap and accessible product at any time is looking either looking for specialist, high-spending, not mass markets or is destined to fail.



This argument can't be allowed to stand. The word "disruptive' does not mean "product of a small battling company". Aside from Pong in your example list, Google had huge investment; Apple the same. Neither came to market with zero marketing.



See, my soul is fully supportive of a company that runs along those lines. Absolutely, let creativity loose... but the end of that line is "and hope for the best."

If you're not selling product, you can't afford to retain creative manufacturing staff because you can't pay them.



As for the companies that advertised (or out advertised) I recall that Camel, Goodyear and Chrysler were mentioned.



Big economic crises inevitably end up with greater regulation that lasts until a generation has passed. The basic structures remain the same: free markets that are underpinned by tariffs by the super-wealthy countries and company-states.

Back to this 'disruptive' word again. Google and iPod occurred during periods of prosperity in the regions they originated. Pong happened during a period of stagflation, I'll grant you that.

Here's another example of disruptive ... the "Lemon" Volkswagen Beetle advertising campaign. Old(ish) small European car originated by Nazis gets ad campaign that sells it to young, American, liberals. Now, that's disruptive.



I know next to squat about car manufacture so I'll avoid that tangent and let someone else take it up.



Nope. I didn't understand a word of that last paragraph. My fault. Can you explain again.

Ta

Tim

Some simple things
investment does not equal having a marketing budget (Google did not had any marketing department, it had a fantastic bussniness plan, but no marketing department, also muskets didn't really had a marketing department, or steam boats, or bicycles, mostly because they didn't really exist then, but all those are disruptive as well).
Not having a marketing department does not equal not having any type of marketing (it was about scrapping a marketing department, not marketing per se)

If your company has a bad time because of a economic crisis, it probably already was in trouble before the crisis happened either of inherent structural faults or because its marketsector was being disrupted (ever wondered why a lot of newspapers and tv-stations sacked so much people very shortly after the crisis took effect, because they were allready in the process of a being disrupted before the crisis). And yes, disruptive does not mean being a small company, but disruptive products have a history of originating from small upstart companies who offcourse do need to find a way of attracting investment (aka Google). However, disruptive innovations do not need as much investment in general as other regular innovations do.

Also, some economic historians believe that we have been in a constant crisis-limbo since the oil-crisis from the 70's but we have been inflating the economy trough all kinds of financial constructions (money being invested more and more into money and not in production), an other period like this was from the end of the 19th century to 1929, Britain leading the charge then when it dropped it's so-called grain-tariffs, it also explains why Britain is now also again being hit so hard (relative to the rest of the EU) because of it GNP being more relative reliant on financial activities compared with other EU-countries.

And also, you described a trade-structure, which is only part of the entire economic structure, you also have production and financial structures. After this crisis we'll probably return to an invest-production era like the 50's and 60's, hopefully based in reweneable energy and total recycling (or organic synthetic materials aka grain being used to make plastic). The free-market tariff thing is sadly a mark of all times, i think Europeans also hated the Chinese tariffs during the 11-18th century.

And also, disruptive does not mean a marketing campaign, there is no product magically turned disruptive because of a marketing campaign. Disruptive products are carried trough disruptive innovations within the product or a disruptive bussiness model, marketing only plays a supportive role in the company's strategy behind the product. A disruptive product is most easily recognized when it is replacing functions (or jobs) of an established product in a market (the easiest example here are HDD's vs. flash memory).
There's a reason why Nintendo 's Wii and WiiFit (and other games on the console) keep selling for abnormal long periods because of the strategy (not marketing) behind it: creating customers trough a more accessible interface and refocusing game-design on the arcade-like principles. It was conceived in function of that strategy, it was designed in function of it and it was marketed in function of it. Because it was conceived and designed in such a customer-satisfieing way and the marketing didn't lied (or over-exagerated) about it, word of mouth took over and bam...WiiFit still in the top-10 after a year of release.
The power of a marketing departments is mostly over-estimated by a lot of people i believe. in reverse, if your company is being hit by the crisis, it means you are losing customers which means your strategy is failing so you need a new one (keep in mind, there are companies that actually benefit from this crisis, receiving more customers like bicycle-makers, micro-wave noodle makers and surprise, fish-and-chip places), it's at that point that sacking a markt. dept. is usefull because those marketsegment-thinking retards couldn't even see a new possibility if it bit them in the nose. Which does not mean all of the sudden all your commercials stop running and stuff. Now a lot of established companies choose to keep going with their old strategy (which is losing them customers) but believe that sacking a lot of people will save their company. it won't if at the same time a disruptive company is making it's way up the consumer-foodchain. If there isn't a disruption happening in the market, then the established company will by the most just restore its former market share.

Ah yes, the assymetry-resources thing. Well it's just that, when in competition (let's say also in war) and when your opponent has assymetric skills and assymetric motivations it doesn't really matter how much resources you trow at it (Vietnam war: Geurilla-method vs. US "let's bomb the s**t out of everything...twice" method) because your opponent isn't playing according to your perceived rules. But if everyone does play by mostly the same rules, it becomes a symmetric competition and then resources matter (best example here is the Xbox-project and the dozens of billions lost by MS, tough luck for them that some other company was launching a disruption when it seemed that MS was about to "out-bomb" Sony for the game-market).

In short: yes word of mouth is the holy grail but no marketing alone does not do that, a strategy does that with some supportive marketing. Having no marketing department does not make it impossible to achieve that.

My view of it, from someone who gets games, but not always business.

Marketing would have to be cut back, plain and simple.

Why?? Its quite simple really. Gamers will find out enough about your game, all you have to do is release some decent game trailer, to give them a good enough idea about your game. The rest will move from there.

One game I'm due to buy in 09' is D3's Matt Hazard game. How did I find out about it? Through going to game trailers and watching some trailer, gameplay and development videos. This is so easy to do now, and the net evens the playing field for big and small dev/pubs.

Unless you have people that understand games and how they work, how would they sell Matt Hazard to us? I feel places like Game Trailers, do a huge portion of what would cost a lot more to do on tv. Its also a place that allows gamers to level with the developers. Over the year, I've learned more there, than any expensive marketing team could tell me in corporate speak.

Why go to the monkey, when the organ grinder will tell you everything you need to know.

While understandable where you're coming from, this is all wrong except if you aim your games at the high-tier minority.