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StarCraft19 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Samsung@WCG

Since its conception, WCG is in a constant quest of self-improvement and growth. It is a visionary long term investment plan for Samsung. The WCG website has released another poll asking the following question which sparks more questions about the future of WCG and Samsung’s involvement with it.



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» Register and Vote

“drastically improve the Grand final?” The question brings up immediately my morbid curiosity as to why they would phrase it so. It is not secret that WCG is a Samsung project. Nor is it a secret that they finance 90% of all its cost. We also know that WCG has only been growing in size and participants every year. So why is it they phrase the question with such terms? Does the need for a drastic improvement imply that they are not satisfied with its current improvement?

One thing for sure is that the bigger the event becomes and the larger it is global reach the more expensive it will become. I suspect this is the origin of the particular phrasing of their most recent poll. Samsung has been investing every year an increasing amount of money to sustain WCG and its growth and yet it has not been able to make the event to self fund itself nor has it reaped any immediate benefit from it. For any business this always raises the bells of alarm. But should they be worried?

It is a known fact today that the average WCG gamer, whether participant or audience, is generally male from age 13 to 35. Due to the nature of the competitions this group tends to be tech savvy and own a PC, i.e. not without means. What does this mean? Well, it means simply put he is the ideal future consumer of a wide variety of products that Samsung just happens to sell and or have interest of selling in the future.
Samsung plans to capture market share in mobile phones, flat-screen TVs, fridges and computer notebooks from its nearest competitors, fellow Koreans LG, and Motorola, Sony and Philips. Samsung's research shows that its brand is seen as being at the cutting edge of style and technology. This perception is being pushed in a new brand advertising campaign, brought in from the US, which broke this week in Australia. Similar campaigns will follow in each of Samsung's main product areas - "Samsung ahead of the field" Australian news press release.
This target group also happens to be the hardest group today to advertise to. Even leading companies, like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, that rely of heavy advertising have realized this and are spending every day less and less money on TV advertising and more and more through other less conventional means of advertising. In fact today Coca-Cola spends less than 60% of its advertising money on network TV, when in the 70’s it was well above 80%. With tools like Tivo, remote controls and an ever increase of valuable content over the web our target group avoid publicity like the plague and watches less and less TV. Even online advertising, ask your self how much time you spend reading POP ups? The answer will be invariable zero and I will not even go elaborating on the hatred it evokes in us.

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Diagram form Wired: The lost boys


Let me quote Robert Krakoff, the General Manager of Razer Inc., a company selling high performance gaming mice form the article The Digital Arena by Araxas."Always remember, young males are the single most difficult marketing segment to reach. Advertisers would cream themselves over the opportunity to reach gamers and peddle toys and trinketsIt can be done today, and sponsors would pay huge piles of cash to be able to reach the lucrative 18 to 34 year old males of the world who no longer watch much television, don't read newspapers and spend 6 to 10 hours a day on their computers. Did I mention that gamers don't trust marketers? Look at what has happened to the X-Games over the last five years ... gaming could and should be next."
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Diagram form Wired: The lost boys


So should Samsung worry? There is a golden rule in advertising. The very first thing and most important step in advertising a product is name recognition and brand-building. Through WCG Samsung not only is achieving this, in the hardest advertising group today, but it also creating in them a priceless emotional tag between Samsung products and that which we love most, our games. It is truly a visionary investment, a stroke of genius by this company that in the long run will pay them many times over.

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Diagram form Wired: The lost boys


Does WCG have a weakness from an investment point of view? Well I mention one, the larger the event the more expensive it becomes which means no immediate profits and just increasing apparent immediate “loses”. Their weakness of the investment lies in their difficulty quantifying the long term benefits and thus being able to justify the ever increasing losses. The other “apparent” weakness is that the gaming industry is an emerging industry, so although fantastic growth that it promises and is currently occurring, Samsung has had to wait for this growth since the very beginning of WCG.

Solutions and QuestionsIs there a solution? Of course, they have some options they have already been battling with. One is to view WCG exclusively as a long term advertising investment. Concentrating heavily, and to a greater extent than they have done so far, on name and product recognition only. The advertising of the event itself needs a more aggressive and innovative approach than its current methodology.

Another option is to improve the revenues of the event itself. If the WCG becomes self funded it becomes a self-propelling short and long term Samsung advertising machine. They do not have the TV right revenues that the Olympics and other sporting events have, so presently the only significant revenue WCG has available to them is advertising space during the event. I suspect that in this aspect they have under performed selling themselves. The have to prolong this advertising space beyond the duration of the event itself. How? Making it a spectator event, not just a participation event using the internet itself or cable/satellite services.

They have to develop closer partnership with the actual game developers so that both can capitalize more on the spectator aspect of the event. Imagine transmitting the matches live with exclusive streams of all the competition games, each and every match, so that the vast majority of non participating gamers can experience WCG from up close right from their home PC. Not only of the WCG grand final but of the long preliminaries. Why not use their WCG TV properly? They could offer access to the all the matches live with 1st person views, and re-transmit them during the months following the event. Would you pay for this or would advertising through it pay it all?

The Poll, The Answers and WCG So then now how should we answer their poll? What suggestions should we make for them to drastically improve WCG Grand Final? On a matter of principle if WCG wants to grow as a massive competition event, it needs to focus on fairness and equality. If it can not do this it will fail as such. The even HAS to be fair.

Every nation should be able to send the same number of gamers than the other nations. This is basic principle in any competitive event with global reach. The preliminaries too have to follow a system for every game in every nation that is the same. WCG must set stricter guidelines on preliminary tournaments. Referees need to be paid and trained on these guidelines much like they are in every sport. If the all the events do not follow strict equal rules and the in charge of make sure the rules are followed are “amateurs” there is no accountability and the whole event sets itself up for abuse and disorganization. This means less independence to the Strategic partners but more control in the outcome.

WCG should concentrate on number of people gaming in a particular game, thus they should follow strict statistics obtained from gaming publishers and independent studies on number of active players currently per game and simply chose the top gamers. A poll can be a dangerous way to determine what games to include and which one to exclude. Some very popular online games that favor the competitive scenario, whether they be PC or console, were excluded from WCG 2004.

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Form Pro-Gaming.de


Every measure to be taken to avoid abuse. One can not hold online preliminaries that do not have anti-abuse controls. Online preliminaries and joint partnership with the game publishers is a win-win venture but it must be taken seriously. Successful organization of online preliminaries can guarantee truly massive participation and a truly magnified audience if a real effort is put on avoiding abuse.

Game developers too would do well to realize the huge potential of associating themselves with events such as WCG. That is perhaps the main criticism of the whole WCG event. One would think that there would be a much closer business relationship between the game publishers and WCG in planning a strategy to make the association mutually profitable.

Samsung and WCG: Final Thought.Still, as far as Samsung goes, even financing the event themselves and blundering forward I truly believe that WCG in the long run will be worth many times its initial investment as an advertising tool alone in the global marketing and brand-building game.

Put it this way, WCG will probably give Samsung much more than the Olympics did in the long run, and this for pennies on the dollar compared to what they sent in the rather failed Greek Olympics this year. Who of us remembers that Samsung has been a sponsor of the Winter Olympics in Utah or this years Olympics in Athens? Very few. We are after all the most inmune group to advertising. I am not saying to quit with Olympic sponsorship as featuring in the Olympics will always be a good idea, but I say stick to WCG closely. Divert a little of that Olimpic money to WCG because as an advertising investement, it is the future.

Having said all this we gamers are truly quite fortunate that Samsung will be sponsoring and fostering WCG. They have well planned long term plans and I believe that ICM, the Samsung organizing branch of WCG, has executed the WCG Events admirably and will have more for us in the future.Sources» WorldCyberGames.com
» Wired.com
» Araxas.com
» Pro-Gaming.de
» Samsung.com
» Samsung.com
» sportsillustrated.cnn.com

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