Category: PR Trade

Who is Your Email Wearing? A Guide to Fashionable Pitching.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from a former convicted felon, Neal Caffrey (on White Collar), it’s that you need to dress the part.

Neal is such a charming guy not just because of his smooth moves or his way with words – it’s the way he presents himself. I’m like Neal. I walk into the office almost every day with a tie and blazer. I consider myself a professional, and to play that role I want to look the part. The beauty of working in a metropolitan office (and not remotely in my PJ’s) is getting facetime with my colleagues, clients and journalists. Impromptu meetings and post-work meetups are pretty common, and with the right duds, can be a welcome surprise.

For me, presentation is key to a proper first impression, and in this day and age of PR, the right outfit is just as crucial as a solid email pitch.

The Subject Line: Stylish Outerwear Makes a Good First Impression

For starters, the subject line of your email matters just as much as the right outerwear. It’s the first thing a person notices, and you can’t really avoid someone making a snap judgment. Like a good subject, a well-fitted jacket or blazer will intrigue people. Of course, don’t over-do it; lead with something attractive, without screaming for attention, to pique their curiosity.

The Body: Everyone Appreciates a Hot “Bod”

It’s time to show off the main portion of your outfit, or in the case of an email, the content of your pitch. Similar to a purple striped shirt and dark jeans, or a maroon v-neck with checkered grey slacks, the core of your outfit should show you put in the effort, an indication you “took the time to care.” The right combination can do wonders, just like the newsy hook that will have a reporter curious to learn more.

The Details: Accessories Add Personality

Go further by accessorizing and personalizing your main attire. A perfectly knotted tie can bring your shirt to a whole new level; a pocket square for your blazer can make you feel classy. Accessories compliment an outfit and add a splash of detail (and confidence). In a pitch, that detail could be some facts to support your claim. However, don’t go on mixing and matching with just any accessory; too much fluff will make your outfit or pitch feel unnatural and forced.

The Call to Action: Wrap It Up With A Nice Pair Of Shoes

Last but not least, shoes. A good pair of shoes can bring your look to another level. If you haven’t acquired a nice pair of monk straps, wingtips, or leather boots, there’s no time like the present! In the wardrobe of your email, shoes are a call to action that gives a reporter a reason to take interest in your story. Find the right pair, and you might just strike gold.

Getting the right pieces can be tough, and assembling them properly is an even bigger challenge. Remember, it’s all about experimentation. I didn’t become a head-turning fashion guru overnight! (Kidding, kidding) But honestly, the same goes for assembling a persuasive email. As you come to understand each element of writing a pitch, you’ll see better results. Keep practicing – eventually you’ll find a sweet spot and build up your own personal style, a voice that’s uniquely “you.”

Photos from SuitSupply and VINSPI 

Waiting for Superman: The Beauty of Virality

One day in October 2012, I happened across this YouTube video with a top-down view of PSY’s concert in Seoul. Over 80,000 people were in attendance, with the crowd spanning entire city blocks. Every member of the audience was singing along in unison with PSY who was on stage addressing the crowd as if he were a superhero who had just delivered their fair city from evil by swooping down in black suit pants and baby blue cape, I mean, blazer jacket.

Nonetheless, to this day, I have never been able to watch the video of said concert from beginning to end due to an inability to come to grips with it emotionally. This is why.

Amidst the Harlem Shake craze of 2013, famous YouTube film director, Freddie Wong, released a video in which he attacks a man about to perform a rendition of the Harlem Shake, ending with a screen saying, “Friends don’t let friends make Harlem Shake videos.” Whether this video expressed Mr. Wong’s true feeling towards the extreme virality of the trend or was simply his creative take on the Harlem Shake itself, it made me think about the real annoyance I have seen towards the trend in other social media.

Perhaps it is my personal preference, but I always wondered what makes some people so annoyed and angry over a trend that becomes very popular very quickly. Some pointed out that each Harlem Shake video was not indeed the “real” Harlem Shake dance move. Others simply expressed disdain over people trying to bank on something popular for the sake of achieving virality.

Last October, some friends of mine and I got together on a semi-weekly basis to learn the Gangnam Style dance then perform flash mobs throughout San Francisco on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Many onlookers stopped to watch, took videos that are now on YouTube, even honked their horns as they drove by. Street performers stationed at our chosen venues offered to step aside for us (one even told us the $10 we offered him for a few minutes of his time wasn’t necessary). To be honest, I was feeling quite under the weather that day (I was coming down with what amounted to be two colds and a flu) but I felt energized and refreshed because I was dancing. I was sweating. I was back to my days of exercising regularly and when dancing was a part of my life.

At that moment, I thought this must be the best viral video that happened to the world. It got everyone dancing. It got everyone to get up and move. It appeared on Ubisoft’s Just Dance 4 and Harmonix’s Dance Central 3 where players downloaded the DLC and danced along (myself included, I have 5 stars on that song), sweating, exercising, bringing movement back to our sedentary lifestyles. Of course, its benefits lie beyond physical fitness. That flash mob group I danced with was asked to perform for a man who would then propose to his girlfriend while we danced for her.

It’s obvious that said individual is not the only person who associates Gangnam Style or any motion of virality with love, even peace. At the height of the Harlem Shake’s popularity, Egyptians and Tunisians recorded their own renditions of the Harlem Shake as forms of peaceful protest against their governments. In this interview with CNN, two Egyptian protesters explain that the Harlem Shake is their tool of “protest in a fun manner” and that, “instead of chanting and getting beaten, we’d have fun, laugh, and then leave normally.”

If virality is indeed the new universal language and is proven by political protesters to stop violence, can it bring peace? Can a single viral trend bring us to a common understanding? Can one person dancing be what puts aside sentiments of hate, dissent, and intolerance?

It’s still a stretch. PSY and the Australian YouTube celebrities known as TheSunnyCoastSkate and DizastaMusic who started the Harlem Shake video trend have yet to stop all wars and conflicts ravaging the world today. But virality’s abilities are now known to stretch beyond just mobilizing people to get up and move and make something fun. Perhaps it can bring peace and understanding to people who embrace it and at least gives a tiny clue in finding what can unite us as human beings. For me, and for some of the 80,000 attendees at PSY’s Seoul concert, it was a glimpse of a group of like and unlike minded people singing, dancing, and thinking as one.

This is why I have yet to watch the video from beginning to end…without needing to pause at certain moments to recover from the impact felt from a simple song and dance. This is why I don’t understand why I should stop my friends from making Harlem Shake videos. This is why I feel overwhelmed when I see something as beautiful as a group of over 80,000 strangers rallying around one song, one dance, one person, one idea, one love, for one thing.

This is why I give thanks for every global viral trend. I give thanks for bringing us together. I give thanks for delivering us not from evil but for delivering us to harmony.

Four minutes and thirteen seconds. Maybe even as little as thirty-one seconds might be enough to save the world. If everyone saw viral trends this way, perhaps we have found our Superman.

Reposted on Frisky Mongoose

Photos from Business Insider and The Verge

Featured image from Reuters

TPNY: Staying Connected Through Hurricane Sandy

In the tech and digital entertainment industries, late October and early November traditionally mark a particularly busy time, with product launches left and right, and a major scramble to finalize plans and promotions in advance of the looming holiday season. This year, busy East Coasters were slammed with an additional challenge – Hurricane Sandy, dubbed “Frankenstorm” for its agglomeration of several storms and pre-Halloween timing.

With major media coverage of the hurricane’s effects across the country, and especially New York City, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that TriplePoint NYC, with our Silicon Alley-located office (27 West 24th St) struggled to stay connected through the blackouts and other travails caused by the unexpectedly severe storm.

But the city that never sleeps earned that moniker through the dedication of its workers, and the thousands of downtown New Yorkers affected generally found ways to stay connected. Today, with fingers crossed that we won’t have to go through this again, we’d like to share a few of our own stories on Sandy and the blackout week after the storm.

Joe Ziemer, Account Director

“Surviving in Style”

Like my other colleagues living beneath 34th St., I was without power, Internet and cell service throughout Sandy and the week after. However, I wasn’t about to let that stop me from enjoying warm showers and warm meals. That meant long, but worthwhile, morning walks up to midtown to reach powered branches of the Health & Racquet Club and Smith & Wollensky, both of which featured Wi-Fi connections. Figuring that if I could only have one hot meal a day it better be a good one, I’d eat a steak and take a few conference calls before heading over to the gym’s locker room to grab a shower. I wasn’t the only New Yorker “working from bathrobe” that week, and met a number of other execs who were staying connected at the gym – it made for some interesting conversations, and great opportunities to blow off some steam with industry folks on the basketball court.

Samantha Qualls, Account Executive

“Panera Hopping”

I live on the fourth floor of an East Village walkup, avenues away from any water. While my building wasn’t damaged at all, like the rest of Downtown, we lost power Monday evening. With no timeframe for when the lights (and heat AND INTERNET) would be back, a close friend offered me her couch for as long as I needed – so I made my way up to Queens (getting there is a story in itself!). In comparison to Manhattan, Queens was warm, dry and bright. The restaurants were open and grocery stores stocked. The only problem was that my friend’s cable and Internet had been knocked out in the storm.

With client work on deadline and some essential international calls that needed to happen, I had to stay connected. So every morning in Queens I sought Wi-Fi (and LOTS of coffee) at a local Panera. Panera unfortunately limits Internet time (unlimited before 11, only half an hour between 11am 2pm, and unlimited again till 5pm), but, with many displaced workers all stuffed into the same shop, it wasn’t too hard to talk my way into sharing a rare hotspot.

It was amazing to see everyone band together – I will never understand the stereotype of the angry New Yorker because I only saw helping hands deliver warm food, volunteer groups cleaning up destruction and patrons flocking downtown to help bring needed money to business that were forced to close for days.

Zach Fuller, Account Executive

“Crammed Co-working”

Living in midtown there was no real sense of crisis prior to the storm – for example, even at the peak of the bad weather, my roommates and I made an ill-advised trip outside to watch the floodwaters rise over the East Side Highway, hanging on to the fence at the top of a retaining wall while 80 mph gusts threatened to send us tumbling backwards. We sat around with pizza, beer and power, watching football like it was any other Sunday night. It was only the next day that Sandy’s toll came into better focus.

My friends that live downtown frequently chide me for living in a place as “un-hip” as midtown, but such banter was unsurprisingly absent as Monday morning dawned and the first of them came knocking at the door looking for a warm shower and the exceedingly rare powered outlet. As the week progressed and power below midtown remained an exotic commodity, the population of our little apartment swelled from its usual three to six at night, and even more throughout the day.

Each morning the sleeping bags and air mattresses were put away for the day, replaced by a tangled web of power strips stretched in every direction as our living room transformed into an impromptu little co-working space. It was crowded and not terribly comfortable, but in between bemoaning the lack of dual monitor productivity, terse calls with IT as VPN servers crashed and chuckling as Chris Christie rescheduled Halloween, we all grew a little closer. While it’s a bit sad that it takes a disaster to remind us to slow down and appreciate the incredible people in our lives, I think we made the best of it.

Stephanie Palermo, Account Executive

“Library Living”

The Eye of the Beast had its sights set on every single part of New York – and living in a coastal town in Long Island, we were hit hard.  I had to be resourceful to keep up with the rest of my team and clients. With no power, I set out each day traveling a several-mile radius hunting for any open business, questing for the coveted Holy WiFi. Store entrances were sandbagged and some still have not reopened as I write this.

Spotty, intermittent cell phone service allowed me to send several updates and information about my projects to a teammate who had power and was covering my responsibilities until I could get settled. But to do even that I needed a powered cell phone and that meant charging at any outlet I could get to – at the police station and even my local favorite fried chicken joint.

Finally a week later, the cup runneth over with WiFi when the library was up and running and offering residents to charge all electronics and use their WiFi. I didn’t have access to my desktop computer, so I purchased a new, emergency laptop, headed to the library, and was back in business.  Commiserating with fellow neighbors at the library was certainly a highlight, as people also working hard there to catch up with work gathered ’round, chatted and were all more than willing to offer a helping hand (after business hours, of course!) by providing things for each other such as food, clothes or clean-up help to those that needed it.

TriplePoint Long Island stands strong!

Sam Dalsimer, Account Director

“Over-prepared”

While many of us lost power or more in the storm, a few of us remained largely unaffected aside from the need to work from home while the office’s power was down. My neighborhood (East Harlem) sustained little damage, although the gas station near me continues to have long lines and a constant police presence sitting outside as gas rationing continues. I stocked up on canned goods, bought new flashlights, filled every pot in the house with fresh water just in case, but never needed any of it.

Those of us whose power and internet remained online hosted friends who were evacuated and helped ensure that other colleagues were able to get updates out to press and clients alike.

At the end of the storm we were left feeling somewhat guilty to be so fortunate while so many others in our city were in the dark or worse. It was a huge help to have a few of us operating from powered home bases to keep connected with our NY coworkers, West coast office, and clients around the world.

 

Imitation, Hoaxes, and Halo

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We don’t feel especially flattered, in this instance, though – you may have seen a hoax circulating recently, suggesting TriplePoint is a part of the Halo 4 review campaign, and making unprofessional demands of journalists.

We don’t represent Halo, nor do we represent Microsoft, and nobody named “Terry Graves” has ever worked at TriplePoint, either now or at any time in the past. The image of the letter, allegedly sent from our offices, demanding that reporters award Halo 4 a certain score, is a fabrication. It’s not even a very good one – reporters can only reach us between 9-5? C’mon.

Kudos and thanks to all of our friends in the industry who immediately spotted this hoax for what it was, and for having our backs. We’re looking forward to playing Halo 4 along with everyone else.

Surviving E3 2012

Whether or not E3 is still the games industry’s foremost gathering, or whether that honor has been usurped by shows like GDC or PAX, one thing about E3 remains true every year: It’s nuts. Whether you’re an exhibitor or a reporter, you can expect to run yourself ragged, staying on your feet for hours on end, scrambling to meet your various appointments while trying to wedge in just one more meeting in between the big presentations. Then, you’ll try to see just how much socializing you can do while trying to finish the rest of your workload that evening — assuming the Wi-Fi works in your hotel room — and convince yourself that 4 hours of sleep will be enough to let you get up and do it all again the next day.

This pattern of self-inflicted abuse is true for most conventions and expos, of course, but the brutal traffic of Los Angeles and the mainstream appeal of the biggest names in gaming makes E3 especially trying for even the most seasoned attendee. Thankfully, your friends at TriplePoint are here with another helpful set of tips and reminders to help ease the pain of next week’s quagmire. Continue reading Surviving E3 2012

PR Tips for App Developers

Which icon stands out in this sea of apps?

The secret to a successful app is a combination of factors, some of which you can control, others you can’t. In order to do well in the oversaturated app marketplace it’s essential to put yourself in the best possible position for success. App success starts with a great idea, it hinges on execution during development, and it is largely influenced by PR, marketing, timing, and luck.

Of those factors, PR is one that you can control. PR for apps is about how you present the product to the public, garner media coverage, and build users and awareness through proactive outreach. Here are 5 tips to help your PR effort.

Continue reading PR Tips for App Developers

A Visitor’s Guide to Silicon Alley

TriplePoint New York is often asked about life in Silicon Alley. We get questions such as “what companies do we need to meet, what co-working spaces do we need to check out,” and more from our colleagues and contemporaries on the West Coast.

While there are numerous growing technology companies with offices in the “Alley,” including Tumblr, Bonobos, AppNexus, Birchbox, Boxee, Learnvest and more, there are also many favorite communal spots of the NY tech community. At these staples, you’ll find everyone from founders to VC’s to hackers plotting their next product feature or closing a funding round.

Here are some of the most popular destinations, complete with insider tips from TriplePoint and various tech influencers.

[portfolio_slideshow]

Thanks to @Mashable, @Birchbox, @FredWilson, @Naveen, @NihalMehta, @Benpopper, @Digital_sweet, @CBM, @LonisTweets, @Daveambrose, @Bonobos and all the tipsters within. Here’s our full list:

Ace Hotel Lobby (29th and Broadway):Get there early if you need seating for more than yourself. Make sure to grab coffee from Stumptown and if you have time, have breakfast at the Breslin.

Shake Shack (23rd and Madison): SF has In-N-Out, but we’ve got the shack. Give me a Double Shack Burger with a black & white shake in Madison Square Park over In-N-Out’s loud fast food environment any day of the week.

Birreria, at Eataly (23rd and Fifth): Situated atop Eataly with a retractable roof, Birreria is enjoyable year-round, but unbeatable when the weather is nice. The Shiitake mushrooms is one of the best dishes in the entire city.

General Assembly (20th and Broadway): What sets GA apart from the rest of the coworking spaces is its robust education program. If you don’t take a class, you’re missing out.

Tarallucci E Vino (18th and Fifth): Tucked around the corner from General Assembly, this Italian cafe is a regular on the tech breakfast and lunch circuit. You can’t go wrong with a croissant or the custard cream doughnut.

Grey Dog Cafe (11th and University): South of Union Square and only a few steps away from Dogpatch Labs, Grey Dog is often packed with various techies. Get the “Grey Dog’s Breakfast,” and thank me later.

Intellectual Property vs Inspiration

A little book hit the shelves recently, called Fifty Shades of Grey.  The racy trilogy by Australian author E L James has spent nine weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List for combined eBook and print fiction.  The sequential two books have been steadfastly trailing along in second and third.  Prior to its success as a print book, readers had already been clamoring to read the series in eBook format, downloading it hundreds of thousands of times.

Since then, James received six-figure advances for US print publishing rights, UK and Commonwealth, as well as film rights.

What may not be immediately apparent is that Fifty Shades of Grey began as a piece of Twilight fanfiction.  E L James took Stephenie Meyer’s characters of Bella and Edward and reimagined them in an alternate universe for the basis of Fifty Shade of Grey.  So the question becomes, as Jason Boog states for NPR:

“Does the book owe more than just character names to Twilight? Even though the names and relationships have changed, Fifty Shades of Grey reproduced the mad thrill of reading Twilight, the moody relationship at its core and the endless emotional analysis.”

Boog further speculates that this may be a trend that publishers are going to have to tread lightly around as they hope to also capitalize on the series’ popularity.  But the larger implication is on authors’ intellectual property.  Authors are a divided camp when it comes to fanfiction of their works.  Some openly support it, such as Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, and JK Rowling.  Others are staunchly against seeing their characters and environments used by others, most notably Anne Rice and George R.R. Martin, whose arguments against focus on legal copyright and intellectual property.

Writers of fanfic generally are under no disillusion that they’re using someone else’s creations, often including on sites such as fanfiction.net disclaimers that they don’t own the original source or characters within.  James’ story created a new environment for the Twilight protagonists, set in modern day Seattle, also changing the relationship between the two and molding it into a different story.  Others writers have used fanfiction as a launching pad, such as YA author Cassandra Clare, who cut her chops writing Harry Potter fanfic.  Her popular fanfic was not adapted for mainstream publishing; she instead wrote a new original series.

The issue with Fifty Shades of Grey is that at its heart, it and its characters were inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s works, begging the question of where to draw the line between copyright infringement and an inspired homage.  Is Fifty Shades of Grey a derivative of Twilight or can it be seen as an original work?  It is, admittedly, a rather grey area that can’t be answered simply.

Vintage Books included a disclaimer acknowledging the book’s fanfiction origins, and the original fanfic has been removed.  As self-publishing continues to rise in popularity there’s a likelihood that more works based on fanfiction or existing IPs will crop up, and the definition between derivation and influence may need to become more black and white.

Bourbon Cupcakes, BBQ, and a Sense of Community at the East Coast Game Conference

Two weeks ago, hundreds of game industry professionals and industry hopefuls gathered for the fourth installment of East Coast Game Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. While the southeast doesn’t quite have the bustling industry reputation of San Francisco or Los Angeles, attendees didn’t seem to mind in the least. That a show planned almost entirely by a board that has separate full-time jobs, competing with giant expos that bring in 30 to 70 thousand people, continues to thrive says a lot about the industry today.

The expo hall, much like the show’s attendees, featured a unique split of well-established companies (Insomniac, Funcom, Red Storm), growing independent developers (Spark Plug Games, Mighty Rabbit), and industry-focused businesses, all rubbing elbows as they showed off their work and wares. Panels and presentation topics ranged from business to mobile and social gaming, along with a standalone track led by the region’s most recognizable name: Epic Games.

Of these varied panels, one in particular provided some helpful insights into the continually evolving relationship between consumers, journalists, and public relations in the gaming industry. Within trappings of bourbon cupcakes and actual bourbon, covered to great effect by Kotaku’s esteemed Mike Fahey here, editors from Polygon, The Escapist, Kotaku, and IGN spent an hour going over some of the tougher ethical questions they face in their work.

At the end of the final day, as the expo hall closed and the last panels wrapped up, the unique spirit of the NC Triangle’s gaming industry became a bit more apparent. Attendees lingered and chatted as they broke down their booths, some helping others as they packed up to head home and very few seeming in a huge rush to leave.

While it’s true that hubs like SF and LA lead the industry in size, there’s a lesson to be learned in the continued success of the ECGC. No matter how competitive the space gets, or how much worry goes into predicting the future landscape, we’re all in this together in the end.

Oh, and one more extremely important takeaway from the show: bourbon before noon can be dangerous. Drink responsibly, and preferably a bit later in the day. Cupcakes optional.

Why Isn’t Instagram at Least as Evil as Zynga?

Instagram selling for $1 billion dollars generated surprise, and envy.

Perhaps people can understand a strategic rationale for Facebook buying it, or competitive impulse, but the befuddlement remains.  You can hear the suppressed snicker coming from the mainstream business prairie: they weren’t making money, but hey, for the team itself, hooray!  Everyone agrees they’re really nice young men, who network and took risks.  They are poster boys for the Stanford-Silicon Valley axis.

Would people feel the same way about Instagram as a company if they did make money from their users?

They could insert an ad, spam your friends, or give you a premium upgrade only if you filled out a survey. They would share in Zynga’s original sin. There are other reasons Zynga may or may not be evil — options cancellations, labor practices and the like — but it is unlikely these are abnormal and surely the case that they are examined intensely only in the wake of their basic game philosophy of, and success from, compulsion loop design.  “Copying” is the other charge, but widespread in the industry, and goes back to the dawn of video game time.

Imagine an alternate history where Zynga relied on the capital markets instead of their user base to monetize. Imagine they sold for $1 billion just on the promise of how a user base could be monetized rather than how they actually did monetize. Zynga monetizes now, Instagram monetizes later, and by a different corporate entity.  Anyone that believes “Zynga is evil” must also hold that the corporate shower of riches on Instagram is even more nefarious. Their user base was “hooked” on beauty instead of compulsion loops, only to be revealed ultimately as corporate assets, passively awaiting their harvesting by Facebook.

When Shay Pierce of OMGPOP turned down the offer to join Zynga, he went out in a blaze of Gamasutra glory.  He warned:

When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) — yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that.

A “good” company is one which provides goods or services of real value in exchange for a fair price. A good game company recognizes that its developers are the ones who create that value, and treats them as valuable, especially if they are good at what they do. It follows practices that are sustainable. And it ensures that, at the end of the day, the world is a little better for having their goods and services.

An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm they’re doing along the way. It’s not making things of value, it’s chasing a gold rush.

This evil company moving fast on an acquisition was taking very normal preventative steps for their intellectual property. But the game Shay made and “loves,” Connectrode, was in jeopardy, or so he thought.  A game whose video is self-described as an “Addictive” “evolution” of Bejewelled, Mario, and so forth.  In other words, Zynga, just not as successful.  Even the art form of the haughty public resignation letter was an iteration on something that had been just been done two weeks before.

What are the PR lessons from the respective public responses to the startling ascendancy of these two different companies?  The strategy for public positioning of companies needs to take two powerful psychological biases into effect: anchoring and confirmation. One creator of addictive iterative games calls Zynga evil and it is uncritically accepted and propagated. NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower rips off Corporation Inc. only to have Zynga do the same to them, but is lauded for their sarcastic lob.

While a private company, Zynga was transparent to the point of being cavalier about their culture, aims, and monetization.  That could have originated out of Silicon Valley philosophy, carelessness, or speed.  Whatever the reason, no effective or persistent defense was made about the value that they were bringing to bear.  The fact of the matter is, Zynga games are fun too: objectively so.  Fun in the very elemental sense.  They are friendly, brightly colored, and not too taxing.

Is this worse than any other form of consumer entertainment product that isn’t a labored indie film?  “Gamerz” protest too much and play these games in bespoke fashion. Yup we’re just doing it for research. For our kids. To see what’s happening in the industry.  Let me see just how stupid…level 10 is.

Cow Clicker is a nice shot at Farmville — it’s also a shot at Skyrim?

Skyrim is so much higher quality but, quick, what is the literary quality of these place names: Eastmarch, White Run, Dragon Bridge, Winterhold.  Quality is a difference of degree rather than type. In each game you customize, click, and level up, with a different number of dimensions and more bloodshed than in Castleville.  Obsessed with communicating their corporate growth, Zynga never made it OK to like or admire their games as a product.  The financial prospects Zynga demonstrated saved the game industry from a normal console transition downturn.  There is no Kabam, Kixeye, Funzio, Crowdstar, and so on without Zynga.

Don’t flash your headlights in urban areas.  Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet.  Zynga is evil.  People look uncritically for confirmation of their beliefs.

Take two casual photographs: Mark Pincus is photographed in Vanity Fair, lord of all he surveys, from his condo.  He’s already rich.

The most smug photo I can find of the Instagram guys is still that they’re jus’ brogrammers, in some class B office space, maybe fresh from hacking:

We can not help but interpret these photos with information we already know.  Imagine the positions were reversed: the above photograph was of a photo filter CEO.  Beautiful city, shaded to orange.  Below, the punk manipulators of lonely middle America.  Don’t the smiles look a bit more cocky, the office more ominously clinical?

The lessons between Instagram and Zynga, both dazzling and great companies with different public perceptions:

1) Companies should zealousy discuss the value they are bringing to the world.  Discuss the vision that inspires the product line, not just the anecdote behind the corporate name (though that humanization is probably Zynga’s most effective consumer media message.)  Failure to do so opens interpretation to lowest common denominator possibilities – you’re just in it for the money.

2) Companies — but more particularly, the people creating them — should not talk about the financial benefits they have subsequently reaped or were going to reap.  Descriptions that someone is now “rich” are hard to latch onto, be envious of and tear apart.  Specific dollar figures are easy to.  (See any public executive officer compensation report.)  Rare is the response of a Paul Graham to any quantification of income inequality.  This works in reverse too. Simply saying one is charitable has minimal effect.  Giving away half of your income is tangible: even if you’re not giving it to old Skype employees.

3) Transparency is only effective if complete, and properly segmented. There is no such thing as complete information. If your transparency is simply “shocking revelation” (or even tongue-in-cheek revelation, or whimsical attention-getting revelation) it will be pulled out of context.  Zynga was transparent, Instagram was not but Zynga didn’t win any points from the blogosphere or the professional community for it.  When in conversations you need to know the motivations of the reporter (/analyst/blogger/customer.)

4) When monetizing something that had previously been free (or uncluttered), you have perilous waters ahead.  Success with many customers will mean failure with others.  You may risk backlash.  Proper messaging about the changes need to be done in advance, not in response.

Communications plans should incorporate strategies for success as well as failure. Aim for transparency but support it with a clear narrative.  Journalists start out wanting to like you. They want to see a company succeed; to talk about the transformations made possible by technology, and see the local kid do good.  Zynga was once that kid, just like David Morin’s path.io might be today – and at a crossroads. Are they a visionary networker or cynical monetizer?

 “A few weeks before f8, Morin had coffee with Mark Pincus, the erstwhile founder of Tribe.net, co-owner of the sixdegrees social networking patent, and early investor in Facebook.  Pincus told Morin excitedly that he intended to build a poker application for the new platform.  “It won’t work,” Morin asserted dourly.  “Games aren’t viral.” Pincus went ahead and launched Texas HoldEm Poker on Facebook, starting a company called Zynga, which was headed for huge success.” –David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect

When pushed, most entrepreneurs will confess their jealousy for this early insight. It is easier to discount the visionary as evil, that they are somehow winning through unfair play. “Zynga is evil” might be the Phiten necklace of the videogame industry: Something objectively not especially true but a (consoling) motivator, at least until the Zynga buyout offer comes around.

 

 

How to Be Innovative

There must be something in the water. In Silicon Valley, innovation runs deep and entrepreneurs seem to be everywhere you look. There are countless go-getters who all believe they have the next big idea and are willing to drop everything to prove it. Even beyond the world of tech meetups and conferences, it seems like every weekend I chat with servers, bartenders, bus drivers, lawyers, and bankers who admit they are working on a side project, creating a new product and dreaming of one day running their own business.

With so many ideas brewing in the Bay Area and entrepreneurs so confident that their idea has what it takes, it is important to stand out from the crowd which can be difficult when everyone around you is trying to be “different.”

How do you keep up your mind sharp and continuously innovate?  Here are a few ideas you should try:

1) Stop calling company brainstorm meetings

The idea of brainstorming first became popular in the 1950s, thanks to B.B.D.O. advertising exec, Alex Osborn. It’s a nice feel-good idea because in a brainstorm, no answer is allowed to be criticized. The idea is that people will share more ideas because they are not afraid of ridicule. However, Jonah Lehrer — a science writer and expert on how companies can encourage innovation, and author of Imagine — explained in a New Yorker article that research has repeatedly found that, despite the popularity of brainstorming, group performance declines as the group size gets bigger. It turns out groups generate more ideas if they work alone and pool ideas together later.

Groupthink

Psychologists have found that in large groups “groupthink” sets in. People tend to want to avoid tension and disagreement, so they end up gravitating toward agreeing rather than considering alternate viewpoints. Critical evaluation of ideas is beneficial because it challenges people to reassess their arguments, consider other perspectives and discover new viewpoints they may not have considered before. To be innovative, it is best to skip the brainstorm and instead share thoughts with only a few people, evaluating and challenging each other’s ideas.

2) Accidentally run into people that are different from you (on purpose)

Intellectual diversity is key to innovation. Encouraging people with different backgrounds and areas of expertise to converse and bounce ideas off of each other can help them think beyond their normal patterns of thought. Steve Jobs understood this and purposefully planned Pixar’s headquarters to be built in a circular fashion around an atrium. He wanted to encourage people from different teams to ”accidentally” run into each other every day and share ideas. In order to increase foot traffic, they eventually put all the bathrooms in the building in the atrium. This way, the Pixar staff was more likely to strike up chance conversations outside their normal teams multiple times a day.

3) Encourage an “aha” moment by taking a shower or watching comedy

Make them laugh

Have you ever solved a puzzle or thought of a new creative idea in the shower? Or after taking a stroll or a quick a cat nap? Many creative moments reportedly pop up when least expected. These moments of insight typically come out of the blue, when your mind is not focusing on the problem you are trying to solve.

Part of this has to do with being relaxed and in a good mood. EEG studies (that measure electricity in your brain) have found that people who are more relaxed are able to solve more puzzles. In a study by researcher Mark Beeman, researchers found that participants that watched a clip of Robin Williams doing stand-up comedy were more likely to solve insight puzzles, with the average success rate increasing 20%.

4) Let them eat cake! …or nap, or play Ping-Pong…

Jonah Lehrer has also studied the work environment of the innovative company, 3M. 3M gives every engineer an hour to do anything they want, as long as they promise to share it with their colleagues. It could be anything – and employees have the freedom to choose — from playing a video game, to taking a nap, knitting, or going for a stroll. As Lehrer puts it, they are encouraged to “manage their own attention.” This gives engineers the chance to step away from their desk and do something else, which often helps them be more productive even if it could potentially look like they are wasting time.

5) Paint your walls blue

If all else fails, one quick fix that could help is to paint your room blue. John Lehrer has noted that people working in a room that is a relaxing shade of blue tend to solve more puzzles and think more creatively. Those in a red room are able to focus more on details, which can be good for certain tasks, but blue rooms encourage relaxation and thinking in more abstract terms.

Paint the walls blue

Sources:

Scott Berkun Blog: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/

Susan Cain, “The Rise of the New Groupthink,” The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Jonah Lehrer, “Groupthink,” The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

Jonah Lehrer, Imagine

NPR Fresh Air interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/21/148607182/fostering-creativity-and-imagination-in-the-workplace

 

Playing in an Asynchronous World

The recent rise of mobile as a key platform in the gaming space is accompanied by meteoric growth in asynchronous gameplay. Not what you typically envision when hearing of the latest “multi-player videogame,” asynchronous games do not require the two or more participants to be playing simultaneously; rather, players make turns at their convenience. Chart toppers such as Words With Friends, Hero Academy and Draw Something have millions of people around the world playing asynchronous games daily.

The appeal of this detached gameplay mode on the mobile platform is obvious: by not having to participate “in-sync,” players are free to go about their day, logging in to make a move only when it’s convenient. Growing up, getting a quick game of StarCraft going with my friends required planning in advance to ensure everybody was free (or hoping they were signed into Ventrilo). Now the rich, social experience of multiplayer gaming is available anywhere, anytime, and with any of your hundreds of Facebook friends.

Without a doubt, asynchronous gameplay is bringing millions of new gamers online. Everybody from busy professionals to even busier moms can find time throughout the day to glance at their phones and lay down a quick 20-point word or crudely sketch a sunflower for their friends. These types of people that could never carve out a two-hour block of time to delve into the latest RTS or explore the world of a new MMO are exactly the target audience for asynchronous games.

Recently, I became completely addicted to Zynga’s Words With Friends. My phone buzzed constantly with updates – after all, with 10 or 15 games happening simultaneously, there’s always somebody free to play. I am, and imagine I always will be, a huge Scrabble fan, and my initial enthusiasm motivated the first few weeks of play. However, after a few months of playing WWF, I found myself oddly numb to the experience. Sliding my finger across each subsequent “New Move” notification pop-up seemed more and more of a chore and less about enjoying the game. I was no longer playing because I was immersed in the game, but rather because felt beholden to making the next move so my friends would not be left hanging.

A few months back, I finally snapped out of my daze and started reflecting on the experience, ultimately concluding that I expected too much of asynchronous gameplay. Like most of my daily electronic information flow, the game simply became another source for that short, addicting burst of serotonin so many of us crave in the Digital Age, with little to gain that could not be found in a casual glance at Twitter.

I may think that I’m a busy person and at times certainly am, but I’m no mom rushing kids to soccer practice and dance recitals. In retrospect, I probably spent close to two hours a day keeping up with WWF – not exactly a “non-disruptive” amount of time. Keep in mind, this was not two hours I scheduled specifically for play, but like with most players, time taken in small increments throughout the day that quickly added up to the point of distraction. This most convenient form of gaming was not only sucking an hour or two out of each day, but also doing so when I should have been focusing on work or enjoying the company of friends.

A few months free of Zynga’s iron grip and I’m making a point to schedule time for the sort of immersive gaming that I used to know and love, inviting friends over for a game of Super Smash Bros. or investing the time to set up a game of Risk or Settlers of Catan. I still play the occasional game of Draw Something or Scramble With Friends, but my notifications have all been turned off, and the icons are gone from my home screen. Now, I play only when I’m truly not busy or have made a point to invest some time.

Asynchronous games are part of a wider push in the tech space to make everything as convenient, connected and on-demand as possible. “No time to sit down and play? Just have these bite-sized snippets instead!” That’s great for people on the go, but for those of us accustomed to the deep immersion that comes with truly investing yourself in a game, with setting up your StarCraft hotkeys and arguing over which dictionary to use for Scrabble, there is more than a bit of magic missing so far, in asynchronous gameplay.

While I may sound like the exception to the rule in the face of so much overwhelming success, evidence suggests many others experience the same burnout and disappointment after the initial rush to play. However, I’m confident that the next generation of asynchronous game developers will mitigate these issues with innovative new features that not only keep us hooked, but also tear us away when things start to get out of hand and our entertainment threatens to become a chore.

 

Should Gaming News Report on Anders Behring Breivik?

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behrig Breivik killed 77 people in a horrific tragedy in Norway.  Within a day, game-centric journalism sites and blogs began covering stories about the killer because Breivik wrote a 1500 page manifesto that included recommendations on using Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as training for an inevitable war with Islam.  He also discussed using an obsession with World of Warcraft as a cover – saying you couldn’t answer your phone because “you were busy raiding” isn’t likely to invite any questions.  “If you’re planning requires you to travel, say that you are visiting one of your WoW friends,” Breivik writes, “or better yet, a girl from your ‘guild’ (who lives in another country). No further questions will be raised if you present these arguments.”

Violent events have been linked to videogames countless times in the mainstream media, usually to the dismay of gaming journalists.  While some have strong connections, such as Breivik explicitly saying he used Modern Warfare 2 to train, others have much more tenuous connections, like when the Denver Post claimed the Columbine school shooting was caused by parents revoking the shooters’ videogame rights.

Continue reading Should Gaming News Report on Anders Behring Breivik?

Social Media Circus: Harnessing Social Influence for Games

Which social ploys do you employ in trying to generate discovery for your game? Here are a few of the usual suspects:

The Persistent Pesky Pop-Up
“Hey, you just set a high score! Want to share it? Oh, you’ve leveled up, that’s awesome; you ought to post about that! Did you know this game is more fun with friends? You might think about mentioning that to some friends you can have fun with! Oh, no way, you just harvested your 37th crop, hey you know what would be great is if you posted about that!!”

The Bald-faced Bribe & Blackmail
“Say, you’ve gathered enough experience to reach level two! Now all you need to do is get five friends to click on this for you. You do want to get to level two, don’t you? Oh, and look at how nicely you’ve set up your mafia empire – it would be a shame if it were to burn to the ground while you’re offline. Maybe some friends of yours will keep an eye on it for you by clicking on this post you’re definitely about to make, eh?”

The Gut-punch Guilt-trip
“Thanks for playing this game of ours. This free game we provided to you, for no cost, out of the kindness of our hearts, which you’ve been playing for 5 hours now for free. We know you care about indie development and small studios – like us! – and you want to do your part to keep us afloat. Surely you can take a moment to write us a 5-star App Store review, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook, can’t you? After all, we live or die by your support alone, and if you like this game, and don’t want its creators to starve, alone, in the street, you could mention us to a friend… that’s not so much to ask…”

Nearly every social game is guilty of one or more of these “Please, please, share us with your friends” tactics, and it’s not restricted to Facebook. Show us an iOS game that doesn’t continually ask you for an App Store review, and we’ll show you a development team that forgot something. While you’re at it, ask us if it’s coincidental that every Steam Holiday Sale includes “write a recommendation” as one of its prize-worthy achievements.

Don’t think too poorly of the developers and publishers, though, for trying their hardest to leverage your social network. The personal recommendation still carries more weight than the advertisement for most of us, and as discovery becomes an ever-harder proposition in the crowded marketplace, it’s not just enough to get a few of your friends to talk to you; publishers need all of your friends to talk to you.

As social media continues to supplant traditional media in our attention spans, so too must our mass-media strategies adapt and evolve. In a world where the Internet has given a voice and platform to every single person you know, friends and family have now become analogous to the different channels on your television. Your daily Facebook crawl has taken the place of grabbing the remote and surfing to see what’s on. Furthermore, while we’d never admit this to our friends’ faces, let’s face it… there are channels we like and trust, and channels we almost always just flip past.

Much in the same way that we favor the opinions of certain news outlets, we categorize our friends and their “channels” for trustworthiness and taste. The decisions we apply to television (Bah, those hacks on channel 51 are so biased, and the guys on channel 28 just show fluff pieces. Oh, an interview on channel 12? This I’ve got to see!) have now migrated to social media (Ugh, Jesse posts a message every time he clicks a cow; I’ve just begun to tune him out. Wow, Kate usually hates all social games and works as a developer; if she posts about a game it must be amazing!).

Better Learning through Social Games

This carpet-bombing of coercion is the new version of a broad ad campaign across several TV networks, in an effort to secure as much attention as possible. It’s no longer enough just to get the casual posters to share a link to a game; it’s important to get a wide cross-section of evangelists who can capture an equally wide audience with their recommendations. There are thousands upon thousands of games out there, all hoping to turn into the next FarmVille, and they can’t do it with an audience that isn’t growing.

Until there is a scientific way to codify who the key influencers are in your social sphere, via Klout or otherwise, developers have to assume that every one of us could be the most trusted name in gaming to our friends and relatives – the Leonard Maltins and Roger Eberts of our own private circles, whose opinions drive the purchasing/playing decisions of the world. You are a media empire unto yourself, so you’d better get used to being schmoozed.

Social Media in 2012: You’d Better Start Swimming

In the past few years, so much has changed for social media that little of our quaint old landscape remains at all anymore – at least, not as it once was.

Now it’s spread to encompass much, MUCH more than a few social networks. Social media affects every corner of the media landscape – traditional press outlets just as much as blogs.

Spilling Over

And that’s only a small piece of the social explosion – tech companies, web, mobile and app developers, be forewarned. The new generation of consumers is not nearly as interested in new technologies as the last. Forget confusing, varied user interfaces – there is no learning curve for platforms and programs today’s consumer already knows. Free social services with unlimited content, like for a case-in-point example, YouTube…

Teens today would rather use YouTube for music discovery than apps like Pandora or Spotify – even more than the almighty iTunes itself.

It’s all traced straight back to social media and the implications go on for days… If you don’t understand how teens (and other mainstream consumer demographics) are using social media, then you will have a hard time succeeding in web-based business at all anymore. Why? Because it’s no longer just a matter of reaching – or even engaging – fans in social media.

The whole social industry has forced its way to the top of a virtual landscape that once didn’t exist.

Now What?

Now, not using social media to its full potential is a silly missed opportunity. Not realizing you need help is a leading cause of brand drama. (Okay, that was a made up fact, but probably still true.)

Social media is about reaching your most important audiences with messages that SCREAM genuine, relatable thought leadership.

For some, “doing” social media is obvious. But for others – the ones balancing budgets and doling out dollars – the question is all about measuring results. What metrics and analytics are representative of a successful, data-driven social strategy? Answering that is a mountainous task. There is no one right answer. Social media isn’t just about what you do, it’s about how you do it.

Numbers Game

From the PR agency perspective, we’re entering an exciting (and somewhat scary) new era of measurement. Ours is an esoteric craft with typically intangible – though highly influential – results.

Until now, advertisers had their CPPs and CPMs… Web marketers had their affiliate links and traffic analytics… And then we PR folk came in and guaranteed little to nothing numerical… Awkward.

TriplePoint long ago realized the need for SEO driven websites and blogs. We’ve built a system with more measurability than ever for press release distribution, website referrals, measuring influence and sharing information internally. If you’re wondering what any of that has to do with social media – it’s everything.

Now, we can implement these same strategies for social media – marketing and promoting our clients more effectively, and finally having hard, measurable data and results – proof of pass or fail.

Double Trouble

If the next (ahem, current) generation of online consumers gets their news and multimedia through social networks instead of through traditional media… Well then welcome to comboville, because now (and for the foreseeable future), you have no choice but to “do social” and PR. “Old school” generations aren’t going to stop reading USA Today anytime soon, you know.

For more info on TriplePoint‘s social media and content creation services, please contact pr (at) triplepointpr (dot) com.