9
Playing the Game

When you come right down to it, Mary Poppins knew an awful lot about how to get things done. As she sang, “You find the fun, and snap! The job’s a game.” For children cleaning up their rooms, turning the chore into a game makes the work go faster. And that’s a child’s game. But, to continue the metaphor, children play Candyland, and adults play Risk. Where children are content with the luck of the dice—and an occasional dip in the chocolate swamp—adult games are infinitely more elaborate and strategic. For adults, the way the game is structured and played determines the outcome. A lucky roll of the dice can help, but it is not the sole determining factor of who wins and who loses.

The same elements that make a good game also provide the strategic framework for competing in today’s marketplace. (This is especially true in a market and a marketing-driven culture that is as dynamic and mercurial as our own.) Games, like business, require a fundamental concept, clear objectives, and a set of rules. So far, that’s pretty obvious.

Good games also have three other things in common that are essential to their success: They have clear objectives, are easy to learn, and are different depending on who is playing them. These are significant features. We’ve discussed the necessity of clear objectives earlier, but what bears repeating in the context of games is that if you have no idea what winning is, you’re not going to be able to plan a way to achieve your objectives, or know when you have won.

When we’re talking about “easy to learn” with respect to games, what we’re really talking about is clarity. Someone can pick it up and know exactly what they need to do. It’s not over-thought and it’s not overly complex. When I worked on launching the game Pictionary, we had one line: “It’s charades on paper.” This really tells you all you need to know. There may be details that require clarification, but the overall concept is delivered in a simple, comprehensible way that’s accessible to everyone.

Linda Pezzano, who was a marketing mastermind and with whom I worked at Pezzano and Company, launched Trivial Pursuit as well as Pictionary and, always believed in the power of simplicity in communication. Even in the mid-1980s, she saw how difficult it was to get the attention of people, a challenge that’s only escalated in the ensuing years. She believed that effective communication boiled things down to their essence to get consumers intrigued. Once their interest had been piqued, you had to be ready to provide more information, but at that time, she believed, the balance of power in the interaction had changed. It shifted from you as the marketer trying to get attention to your prospect wanting to know more. Sometimes weeks were spent developing that simplicity for clients—such as those in wastewater management—or they came in a flash of inspiration, but Linda always boiled it down to a game and to finding that thing that would make someone want to play with you. She was equally adamant that the role of the marketer was to be the catalyst for someone’s experience and that it couldn’t be forced on people, particularly when, as with a game, what you’re selling is not essential to survival and is in a competitive market.

In the final analysis, what this means is that you have to both simplify the message and give people what we call a “way in”—a way to project themselves into an experience that they want to have. In toys and play, this doesn’t just apply to board games; it applies to all sorts of toys. If the toy or game is too complex, and if it doesn’t engage the individual or the imagination, it’s not going to work over the long term. We tend to call these “watch me” toys. These are toys that do what they do whether or not someone is playing with them. We always say, you can start it up, go have a sandwich, and the toy just keeps going. That’s certainly one kind of toy, and the global success of Tickle Me Elmo would certainly attest to the fact that this can work, but it’s not a long-term strategy because ultimately when you leave out the kid who’s supposed to be playing with it, they’ll get bored. Remember: Kids, like consumers, are nothing if not completely self-involved. Your job, really in almost any function, is to get people to want to play with you, and that has as much to do with them and their perceptions as it does with what you do or say.

So, once you’ve got them hooked, your next task is to overcome the inevitable resistance that will come up. Let’s look at Pictionary again for how this can work. It’s all very well and good to get people intrigued by the idea of “charades on paper,” but almost as quickly as people got the concept, they think, “But I can’t draw.” The fun of the game is that it doesn’t matter if you can draw or not, and someone who takes a long time to draw well might be at a disadvantage. The fun of the game is really about how well people communicate.

This brings me to the most important element of the three features mentioned: The game is different depending on who is playing. This is critical at all levels of business, but it really comes down to the very simple concept of knowing your audience. Whether you’re communicating internally or marketing, it’s important to know who you’re talking to as well as you can. We often call this “speaking into their hearing.” The essential element of this is that people will always hear you through their filters, so analyzing those is important to your ultimate success. It’s important that you not end up talking to yourself.

If you’re making up the game, which is what you do as a business-person, the focus needs to be on the players. Lose that focus or misread the players, and your brand is likely to get stale and lose share.

This is exactly what happened with Mattel’s Barbie and MGA’s Bratz. Bratz were launched in 2001 with a dramatically different look than any previous fashion doll, and a marketing platform that was aggressive and reflected the kind of edgy fashions that were very much of the moment. It was the antithesis of Barbie. Novelty, however, was only part of what drove the doll’s success. What really changed was how the game was played. Whereas Barbie’s design and marketing always sought the implicit or even explicit support of parents, which it could do given its history, Bratz went directly to kids, knowing that what kids asked for, parents would buy. And it worked, for a time. The game had changed, and whatever one might think of it, marketing to kids worked, and it went beyond product and challenged the role of the parent in the purchase of fashion dolls for kids.

But that’s not the end of the story. Bratz ultimately died down significantly, partially because the game changed again. Given that the toy market is always changing as new kids enter it—and the rate of change is much faster than other market sectors—a new group of parents looked at the Bratz and were upset at what they thought was the sexualized nature of the dolls. This issue, combined with the dolls not seeming novel to a new group of kids who wanted something new that was uniquely theirs, meant there was a different group playing the game, to continue our metaphor, and the company did not respond well. Barbie, after some defensive missteps such as launching a direct Bratz competitor called Flavas, focused on creative entertainment and other elements that were certainly within the context of the Barbie brand legacy but resonated with new groups of girls and moms, and regained market share.

The point of this is to illustrate how quickly the game can change in this market. As noted, it’s probably faster in the toy industry than in some commodity businesses, but the principle is the same. Elsewhere we’ve discussed the importance of research and its effective uses, but research must always be analyzed and interpreted in the context of the larger culture. Too often we see companies that take qualitative research and look at it in isolation. The game is bigger than that, and you have to be thinking several moves ahead. As we always say, research is helpful, but it’s only a snapshot of a moment in time. You have to consider all the pieces on the board or you’re likely to be in trouble.

The Importance of Rules

Even if you’re making up the game, there are rules you have to follow. You can’t play Harry Potter or Batman or G.I. Joe or even Barbie without some parameters on the play. Monopoly isn’t Monopoly unless it’s played by the rules of the game.

We’re not talking about rules in terms of laws or regulations. We’re going to assume you—or someone you work with—have all of that under control. When we talk about rules in the perspective of play, we’re talking about the boundaries and structures that define the game. In the culture, these are the forces that shape belief systems and perceptions. These can be societal or religious or philosophical, and they can be quite confusing and at times conflicting. But they are an essential organizing principle for groups of people. What’s particularly challenging to marketers and businesses right now is the fragmentation of the marketplace and the number of diverse rules one has to consider in talking to them. These rules become perpetuated by stories, and form the identity for a company or an individual or a group.

From a marketing or business perspective, rules also create an identity. Most companies have an identifiable culture, and the people who thrive there have internalized the rules of that culture or are likely to leave. Finding that match is critical in hiring because, though somebody may be perfectly competent and experience, if they don’t fit into the culture of a company, they’re not going to play well with others, and over the long term will likely be less effective.

Brands also function in the consumer’s mind on a set of rules. As we discussed, a brand is a story that the consumer has come to believe in. Tide gets clothes cleaner, Crest gets teeth whiter, and so forth. To the consumer story is the fundamental truth of the brand, and the rules are what reinforce that truth over time because they are what give the brand its identity and dependable consistency.

Obviously, this might seem limiting on the surface. You can’t really do much with Tide and Crest, other than update the formula. You can’t make Fritos taste like something entirely different, because if you break the rules, you’ve broken the essential contract with the consumer, which is a dependable, predictable experience.

Except when you can.

In a competitive environment where retailers are risk-averse and competition is high, your rules can actually be a strategic jumping-off point, at least if your approach to your brand is outward-looking.

Consider the Jeep brand: How it went from the battlefield to the backyard is a great story for anyone looking to expand a brand. The vehicles were first created in World War II and, like many things developed for the war effort, found a place in civilian life back in the United States after the war. The brand’s legendary toughness and performance under challenging conditions became the brand’s identity. In the ensuing years, Jeep became a family car, but it always kept its identity as rugged and individual. The rule of the brand, if you will, was that it stood for anything rugged, outdoors, and adventurous. That eventually became a characteristic people wanted to associate themselves with, and so they began buying other products that were branded Jeep. And so, a Jeep stroller is assumed to be rugged, be dependable, and convey a sense of adventure. If you analyze it too closely, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and surely the soldiers who drove the first Jeeps around the battlefields of Europe would probably not have believed their “Blitz Buggies” would inspire a baby buggy, but in the world of strategic brand evolution overtime, it was inspired. If we define the game as interactions with the Jeep brand, over time the players changed from soldiers to civilians, but the civilians wanted to align their identities with the brand’s story of ruggedness and individuality. This is fundamental to the adoption of any brand, naturally. There is very little objective relationship between a solider driving a Jeep in a war zone and a parent pushing a stroller in a shopping mall, but subjectively and perhaps even subconsciously the brand comes to complement part of the consumer’s internalized identity. That is one of the most powerful elements a brand can have, and the expansion of the rules to include that modern mall denizen opens up new markets and opportunities without violating the brand’s core rules, which are arguably its greatest asset, because the rules stimulate the story the consumer tells him- or herself. To get there, however, the brand managers had to be willing to play around with the brand, and to continually revise and update the story to reflect a changing consumer (and the realities they were creating). What once seemed illogical has made perfect sense (and significant profits) because, over time, play has allowed the rules to change.

When the Game Changes Radically

There are always game-changing events that you have to adapt to in an ongoing way. But sometimes there are events that create wholesale, seismic change that affects individuals and businesses by creating a radically altered game. Moveable type, radio, and TV spring to mind in the annals of communication. But no change has been as fast or as transformative as the rise of the Internet. With TV and radio, communication and advertising changed over time, but the basic premises of the business did not. Companies sold products. They told people about them in creative ways, and people either bought them or they didn’t.

The online world, though, has changed the dynamics of business in a way that we haven’t seen before. What used to be a one-way conversation between a company and a customer has become a dialogue—and not always a very nice one at that. Everyone with a keyboard and a connection is a critic and can potentially influence business. And everyone with a camera can become a star. Measurement metrics, writing to maximize search engine operations, the availability of information, and the speed of response and interaction are transforming everything from politics to pornography.

But even as dramatically as functions and communications have been transformed, not everything is changed. Marketing expert and agency owner Jennifer Deare noted to me in an interview:

There are basic human factors that drive business that really don’t change over time. How those are experienced and expressed, however, is changing today at an ever-faster pace. The challenge facing every business right now in terms of leveraging the Internet, is to figure out how to understand the changing nature of communication, purchasing and consumption structures, but not leave behind the essential element of marketing and business which is the ability to make a connection between a person’s identity and the expression of that identity through what they buy and the experiences they seek.

When a new game emerges—which is really what the online world is—this is when the principles of play matter the most. After all, a common element of all play with kids is knocking over the blocks and building again. You’ve been presented with some brand new pieces, and you need to put them together in a way that works in a different way.

The companies we work with that are using the Internet effectively are those that have been willing to re-examine their business in light of this new information. They are creating new models, for instance, for research and interpreting data. They are monitoring interactions with their consumers and responding to comments online, and they are engaged in a process of re-invention that is the essence of play. Moreover, they are embracing the fact of non-stop change and responding to it. They are looking for or, in some cases, creating the new rules to accommodate the new game, and at the same time leveraging and preserving that which has worked in the past.

This is where imagination and play count most; it’s where you are free to create something new in response to a changing and developing world.