Majesco Entertainment Company recently released a game for the Wii, featuring home improvement retailer The Home Depot. The game, "Our House: Party!" features 175 mini-games in which players (up to four) complete home improvement projects in order to make their homes the best in the neighborhood. These projects include tasks like construction, demolition, plumbing, wiring, landscaping, decorating, and, of course, racing through The Home Depot store to get the necessary power tools.
Majesco also released a similar version of the game - "Our House" - for Nintendo DS. In the DS version, players start as contractors who must build customer's houses in order to save up enough money to build their own home.
The first brilliant thing about these games is that they're just plain fun. (Or at least they sound fun! I haven't tested them out yet.) The second brilliant thing is that, in the midst of all that fun, Majesco and The Home Depot have combined education (learn, loosely, how to do various projects), branding (The Home Depot, of course!), and entertainment. The game provides instruction and fun in a positive brand experience for The Home Depot's potential customers.
The Home Depot creates other positive brand experiences, too, without forcing customers to pay them a dime. In addition to the caricatured "do-it-yourself" projects of the "Our House" and "Our House: Party!" games, The Home Depot shares scores of free, real-life "how to" videos on their YouTube channel. And, as I understand, anyone can visit a Home Depot store during their project workshops for hands-on instruction in home improvement.
These are the kinds of things that attract customers to a brand. Give people something useful, teach them, provide them a service - for free. In the process you will be building trust, building rapport, and building relationships with people. And then, when those people really do need a product that you sell, with whom will they prefer to spend their money? You've proven yourself trustworthy in a service that does not earn you money; now those people will be ready to trust you with a service that does.
How can your organization provide an honest-to-goodness, helpful, positive, fun brand experience for people, before they ever have to spend a dime?
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What They Don't Know Can Kill You
Over lunch earlier this week, my friend Howdy and I had an interesting conversation about the hoopla surrounding President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren on September 8.
During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.
By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.
For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?
CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.
Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.
It was perfectly harmless.
The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.
This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.
When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.
Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.
Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.
Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.
Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.
During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.
By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.
For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?
CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.
Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.
It was perfectly harmless.
The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.
This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.
When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.
Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.
Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.
Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.
Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.
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