Cas Carter: Businesses cashing in on Pokemon Go mania
Pokemon fans gathered on the waterfront to play the new Pokemon Go phone game.
OPINION: If you’re a business that’s failed to leverage the Pokemon Go mania, don’t panic, there will be plenty more opportunities. Evidently augmented reality is the future.
The rollout of Pokemon Go was not only text book marketing for Nintendo, whose stock price soared by an estimated US$7.5 billion (NZ$10.5b) after launch, but created business opportunities for companies large and small.
The app where you find small digital creatures, capture them and battle with them against other players, is so popular that within a week of launch, it overtook Twitter for the amount of daily users on Android.
The marketing of Pokemon Go is beyond textbook brilliant, including launching the game during school holiday in the northern and southern hemispheres.
The phenomenon is a lesson in being nimble. The game allowed businesses to get involved by spending less than $200 to set up lures to attract hundreds of players desperate to collect a Pikachu, Squirtle, Jigglypuff or Bulbasaur.
READ MORE:
* Pokecrisis as Pokemon Go servers go down worldwide
* Pokemon Go, an honest review
* Pokemon GO fans descend on country’s landmarks for meet-ups
* Misunderstanding leads to ‘cancelled’ Pokemon GO event at Auckland Domain
* 8 reasons you should be playing Pokemon Go with your kids
* Pokemon Go is already a big boon for museums
Restaurants, airlines, movie theatres, supermarkets and more, rushed to capitalise, driving foot traffic and sales sometimes with simple in-app purchases, other times with creative marketing campaigns.
It was swift work for those who got involved, because it would be a safe bet that no one had ‘leverage off Pokemon Go’ in their business plan this year.
Woolworths in Australia gave its customers online tips on how to catch Pokemons in store including. « We hear that Pikachu has been seen near batteries, lightbulbs and power boards. » And, « Don’t confuse ‘Oddish’ for ‘Radish’. One goes great in a salad, the other not so much ».
Air New Zealand used Snapchat and Instagram to promote ‘Geodude’, New Zealand police cautioned « don’t let your pursuit of virtual monsters get you into real strife ».
Virgin mobile Australia was quick to help out with the battery hungry game by allowing trainers to top up their phone’s in store, restaurants set up Pokemon Go nights and even Australian Bananas used Facebook to warn users of the Pokemon known as Mankey hiding near bananas nationwide.
The marketing of Pokemon Go is beyond textbook brilliant.
Pokemon is a brand that has become so powerful that the new game was instantly recognised, it launched in school holidays both in the northern and southern hemispheres, it hit the nostalgia button for 20-plus years olds and worked on word-of-mouth marketing – when you see people having fun with the same mobile game you’ve got to get amongst it.
But the success of Pokemon Go also picks up on a very real cultural shift in consumer behaviour.
The materialism that used to drive our identity; the car we drove, the house we lived in or the clothes we wore is on the way out. Now, the millennial generation is getting much more exercised about experiences.
They see material goods losing value over time: the shiny new car is not so cool after a while. But the value of experiences increases: from the anticipation of planning, the connections, the experience itself and the memory which strengthens as the story is retold over again (Eventbrite research 2015).
This doesn’t have to be a traditional event – it may simply be heading out to the park to chase Pokemons and literally crash into each other.
That’s pretty much what happened on Saturday when thousands of Pokemon Go enthusiasts met in main cities to hunt for virtual creatures together.
Despite concerns that digital technology was making us anti social, Pokemon Go leveraged off two things: the human need to belong and FOMO – fear of missing out – and its used social media to connect us.
It’s a stunning example of the potentials of a combination of technology, social media and the awareness of cultural change. There is a lot of learning there for any size business.
Cas Carter is a marketing, branding and public relations specialist.
– Stuff
Next Opinion Analysis story:
Rod Oram: The housing mish-mash
Business Homepage