Golden Jigsaw and Control
The most common question when talking to companies who are new to using social media on the web is about control, about how they can control what is being said about the brand, how to keep everything on message keep it nice and tidy. They have not yet grasped the reality.
YOU CANNOT CONTROL WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT YOUR BRAND
That’s just a little reminder; you never could control it, people where always free to say what they wanted. Yes, they would often talk about what you were doing and often only knew small elements of the whole picture, the stuff that they found out themselves or that they got from the media (which can be controlled to a certain extent, money always talks). They would usually only talk to people they knew, or maybe write to the paper or sometimes, get onto That’s Life.
Now, with the web, the behaviour has not changed but the reach has. People pull together and share all the little bits, encourage the pleasure or the outrage at what companies do - it’s pure gossip, always a favourite. You can no longer hide in a little corner hoping the isolated conversations never join up - they now connect in an instant; like-minded communities congregate around sites to discuss what is going on with this car or that advert or this game. All the customers are doing what they always did, but now the marketers can find out about it and get worried, pretending for a moment that they are still in control. But it can only ever last for a moment, then reality sets in.
The people behind The Golden Jigsaw, Infinite Imagination, are in the place now, they think they can control their players. If you have been reading the comments to my previous post, you can see that they have been busy changing the rules. They are now banning players because they are posting in forums, collaborating on answers. In one case, they banned someone who was connected with the forum, even though she had never posted in the topic about the game. For the people in the forums, it is all about playing the game, not the winning. It’s the community around the chase, not the chance to win a theoretical amount of money.
I was going to write a longer post about the hows and why of this, but I don’t have to. Jessica Price at ARGNet already has in her piece Jigsaw Made of Fools Gold (and I thank her for quoting me :) ). It was good to find the existence of a despoiler wiki that has been put up to track the puzzle and the answers, with good information about how to anonymise yourself. As John Gilmore said “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” and this is what is happening here. The promotion company is trying to censor a right to talk about a game and so they move around it.
Tags: censorship, control, goldenjigsawRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Engaging the Customer, Entertainment Marketing, Fun and Games, Influence Marketing, Uncategorized
2 opinions for Golden Jigsaw and Control
Maria
Aug 5, 2007 at 9:10 pm
So on the money, Rachel! When I was being interviewed about 12 years ago by various companies wanting to jump on the graphical virtual world wagon (in particular, World Inc.) the big question was “How do we control what people do?” It’s coming from both ignorance about the medium and also a video game mentality where you usher the player through various branches to get to an end. In this case, it’s the customer, and they keep thinking linearly like a regular marketing campaign — we send out controlled messages and brand the product. Thing is, the Internet changes this completely. There is no such thing as controlled messages and in some cases even branding is wobbly. You can control things on your end in the marketing department, but that’s the end of it. I wish people would learn how to built partnerships and take away lessons from the online communities about their product. Disney (for whom I’ve worked a great deal lately) does this with Mouse Planet and other independent communities about their product. Believe me, Disney employees are always on those sites, scanning for feedback and to see if initiatives are taking with their most loyal customers!
Adam Crowe - links for 2007-08-07
Aug 6, 2007 at 8:45 pm
[…] Behind The Buzz - Golden Jigsaw and Control John Gilmore said “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” (tags: internet networks censorship navigation information web) […]
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