My inspiration blog - by Eline Kwantes

Mobile & social: show me the money

This was the title of a presentation by Volker Hirsch from Scoreloop. Past week at the Gaming Conference Casual Connect in Hamburg, I've had the privilege to listen to his story. Here's a summary of what was quite interesting...

A lot of people seem to think the money is in social gaming. Easy, you would think, just find a social network and do something with it.

According to Hirsch from Scoreloop, that’s not the right answer. A social network is not automatically a community! It can connect you to a community though, but just being there is not enough. Where to find a community? Hirsh is confident it’s on mobile.

Mobile is: BIG, POWERFUL, PERSONAL.
Some examples:
Big – more than 4,6 billion phone subscriptions in the world!
Powerful – you always have it with you, most of the time in arms reach and has a built in billing system
Personal – people are not eager to share phones with someone else, it is your own phone

To utilize the power of the mobile community and make money out of it, Hirsch introduces the concept of “Object Centered Sociality”. This means you should see your game as a social object and lever it towards the community. Easier said than done? Look into human value drivers, they will enable you to do this.

Human value drivers that drive people to buy games:
- hope
- belonging
- feeling important
- security
- getting more out of life

In the end you should make sure to “Connect with Fans (CwF) and create “Reasons to Buy”. Together, they will give you a “Business Model” that sticks, he is convinced.

CwF + RtB = BM

To connect with your players, you should drive engagement:
- interact
- see your game as social object
- turn your players into fanatics
- connect with them IN the game
- connect players with each other

So what should you do?
- create fanatics
- provide avenues for passion
- incorporate community
- allow your players choice
- keep it in context

And how can you do this?
- reward: highscores, but make customizable and relevant
- connect to their community
- add person to person challenges/tournaments (playful contextual interaction)
- award & reward fanatics
- use in game transactions and virtual currencies (contextual monetization)

Finally, make sure you use real cross promotion. Turn your fanatics into ambassadors. Make sure people recommend your game to their friends (74% of send-a-friends get opened & clicked on), Try to make this possible on the platforms available.

See the full set of slides on SlideShare.

Inspirational kids websites and stuff like that

As you know I also write for Dutchcowgirls.nl, about my area of expertise in kids & online. Here's some stuff I've posted up there lately and links to the articles (in Dutch, sorry!) and also to the sites for your inspiration.

A somewhat older site, but still inspirational is the Dutch site "Het Grote Ontbijtspel". It is a site that teaches kids that breakfast should be part of their daily routines. Developed in 2007, I still find it a good example of how you can bring across a certain message to kids. Visit the website or read the Dutch article here.

Very recent: we (Nickelodeon Netherlands) have launched a new game for the Dutch series Het Huis Anubis, together with the Media Monks. Read the Dutch article here or play the game (which is more fun anyway).

Another recent Nickelodeon launch is the website for our live studio show called SuperNick. The website has been something we've wanted to improve for quite a while, but now we finally had the time and manpower to invest. The new site is a big hit already. Mostly connected to the TV show, it brings kids all kinds of (interactive) content around SuperNick and it's hosts. See the website here or read the article.

Also a Dutch website I wrote an article on is "Spangas De Film" (Spangas the movie). As online is an important part of their communication strategy, they've built a whole new website for kids to get into the world of Spangas. The 'regular' TV show is a big hit in Holland btw. Visit the movie website at Spangasdefilm.nl, the other website at spangas.nl or read the article at Dutchcowgirls.nl.

I seem to be clinging to Dutch websites lately, since another one I wrote about is also one of them: Taptoe - a magazine in Holland that is distributed through schools. It has chosen for a more crossmedia approach lately, so was quite an interesting one to look into. Visit the website via this link.

Some US / international ones from a while ago...

Postopia (website | article) 

Beverly Hills Puppy Club (website | article) 

Yahoo Kids (website | article)

MTV Sticky - interesting news, trends and ideas about youth culture that stick

My collegues at MTV in the US have finally created a site out of their inspirational project called MTV Sticky.

It tells you all about trends and new stuff around youth and their culture. It's not only about their favorite music, but about everything in their lives that makes a difference or has changed over time. Art, Brands, Music, Online, are all examples of topics that the platform touches.

Definitely worthwile to take a look and be surprised!

SpongeBob was lost... WoistSpongeBob.de

My collegues in Germany just finished a great Nickelodeon project called "Wo ist SpongeBob" (where is SpongeBob). For people working for kids on the internet, this is a great example of how you can get them actively involved by embracing the power of media and actively engaging your audience...

As you may - or may not - know, SpongeBob celebrates it's 10th birthday this year. As we call it, this is the "Year of the Sponge". Actually his birthday was last week, on 14th of July and hear he had a blast!

But... in Germany they had a little problem. SpongeBob was lost for a while... He disappeared in July and the Nickelodeon team asked kids to help locate him. What would Nickelodeon be without the big yellow sponge, right?

Kids immediately started responding to the request for help and through a blog they could send in their tips. The editors kept kids updated via the blog and also put markers on a (Google) map everywhere something SpongeBob was spotted in Germany...

A lot of photo's with hints from the editors but also sightings by kids were posted to the blog:

Kids have been responding like crazy and have been sending stuff to the editors via email, the blog, regular mail, etc. Very cool to see what they send and how actively they are involved!

Luckily SpongeBob was found just in time for his birthday... Luckily he explains us why he was lost and what he did in the meantime. He also thanks all the fans for their help of course... Finally, the nicest birthday card made by a child even made it onto the site:

Must say - this is exactly why I just LOVE working for kids as a target audience!

Inspirational office: Google Zurich

Everyone always finds our MTV Networks office in Amsterdam, very inspirational. It actually is very nice, but once you're used to it, you tend to forget how cool it is... Came across this office in Zurich, created for Google. This is totally a building I would LOVE to work in! Check it out:

 

Ola Waterspelen - the game

As you know, I don't write a lot about work, but this one I wanted to share... :)

With a full team we've been working on the OLA Waterspelen (Watergames) online game, which is ment to get kids enthusiastic about the brand and especially the mini events with the same name... Realtime, kids can enter a competition in swimmingpools all around Holland. It's a great concept by the big ice cream brand (probably the biggest there is in the world?).



Anyways, just wanted to share this game with you. The concept is an 'interactive boardgame'. A bit similar to 'ganzenbord' or 'monopoly', only then we added interactive elements such as minigames... Not only am I really proud of what the illustrator has accoplished, also the minigames are very well done and the game is fun to play as well...

You should play it to get the feel of it, so why not just try? Check out: www.olawaterspelen.nl

Inspirational campaign from Dutch Government: SIRE - "geef kinderen hun spel terug"

In the Netherlands it seems to be a serious problem that parents are too enthusiastically involved in their kids sports activitities. They seem to be shouting like crazy when their kids are playing soccer. Their kids don't do the right things, they need to run faster, the other team is a bunch of idiots... All kinds of things are mouthed around at the playing fields. And that's not all. Sometimes parents even fight with each other and the kids hate it.

That's why a very interesting media campaign has been launched, supported by the Dutch government and set up by SIRE. For the Dutch readers amongst us, check out an article on the SIRE campaign at Communicatieonline.nl or visit the site Geefkinderenhunspelterug.nl

Dora & Diego day for fans

Okay, I don't blog a lot about my work. But this one I still wanted to share with you, because I'm very happy with the creative and animated style that came out of this one.

For Nickelodeon Netherlands we created a (micro)site to promote a special day for real Dora & Diego fans. It's taking place on 30th of September this year. Since Dora & Diego are Nick JR's most popular characters, we thought we'd create a very cute site that appeals young kids and their parents:

Take a closer look at: Nickelodeon.nl/doradiego

The biggest part of this site is created by one of our designers called Massimo, who also seemed to have the skill to build this thing in flash and html :-)

Free photocopies for students - interesting sponsoring

At Springwise.com (image also from this site) I came across this interesting idea to sponsor photocopies. You probably remember as a student, it cost you quite some money to make all kinds of photocopies. I even copied very big parts of books to save some money (thus not buying the whole thing).

The company doing this comes from Japan Check it out at Tadacopy.com (I'm not able to read these scribbles, but maybe you are)

Springwise: "This free love is made possible by printing ads on the back of the copy paper, which is slightly thicker than normal to prevent ads from shining through. For JPY 400,000, advertisers can have their message printed on 10,000 sheets of paper."

Might be an interesting opportunity for a company or brand mainly focussing on students... I definitely think this is a good idea. Student have to spend less money and someone else gets an enormous blast of exposure amongst it´s specific target audience...

Loads of inspiration at my new job

This monday I started a new job at MTV Networks (dutch link) in Amsterdam. I've left IBM to join Nickelodeon (yes, that's part of the MTV house) to work as 'Kids Online Engagement Manager'... That sounds flashy, huh?

Of course I don't know very precisely what I'm going to do in my new role, but it's got to do a lot with online marketing and kids :-) There's a lot of ideas and many projects and initiatives to pick up or start with... I already love it a lot! - Sorry IBM, it seems I'm not coming back any day soon...

The MTV-building not only looks very cool, it's also bursting with creativity and enthusiasm. I must say it's very inspiring to work in the middle of all that!

Anyways, this was just a short personal - and hopefully also inspirational - piece I wanted to share... Keep taking a good look around you every once in a while, to enable yourself to discover new things, people and surroundings. You never know what can come out of it!