Age of Respondents

University of New York in Prague

European Business Administration

Research and comparison of online and offline word of mouth strategies of Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.

Herbert Mianowski

2018

Mentor: William Pattison

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. THE THEORETICAL PART ...... 4

2.1 BACKGROUND AND EVOLUTION OF WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ...... 4

2.2 WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ...... 5

2.3 TYPES OF WORD OF MOUTH ...... 5

2.4 INFLUNCER MARKETING ...... 7

2.5 CONTRASTING OFFLINE AND ONLINE WORD OF MOUTH ...... 10

2.6 FAKE WORD OF MOUTH AND CONSUMER CONFIDENCE ...... 15

3. ELECTRONIC ARTS ...... 18

3.1 ELECTRONIC ARTS – WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ...... 19

4. ACTIVISION BLIZZARD ...... 29

4.1 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD – WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING ...... 30

5. THE PRACTICAL PART: THE PRIMARY RESEARCH ...... 37

5.1 SURVEY ...... 37

5.2 SURVEY DISTRIBUTION ...... 39

5.3 THE FINDINGS ...... 41

6. CONCLUSION ...... 60

Works Cited ...... 63

Abstract

People have always discussed between each other their opinions about products and services which could in turn benefit or damage someone’s business by creating positive or negative opinions. However, the introduction of the Internet and social media has led to the birth of new type of word of mouth – digital word of mouth. As a result of that more companies have started to invest more in digital word of mouth. The paper discovers the most popular word of mouth techniques used in the gaming industry. To do so, it analyzes and compares online and offline word of mouth techniques of two key players in the gaming industry – Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Firstly, it covers word of mouth marketing theory with the emphasis on the online and offline perspective. After that it talks about the specific techniques that both of the companies use to promote new products and the brand in general. To support my findings regarding the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing I have conducted my own primary research which was a survey. The results showed that nowadays word of mouth is a crucial marketing tool in the gaming industry.

Moreover, the study discoverers that majority of marketers expect to incorporate more online word of mouth techniques into their marketing campaigns within the next year.

Glossary of Terms

WOM = word of mouth

WOMM = word of mouth marketing

WOMMA = Word of Mouth Marketing Association

Offline WOM = type of word of mouth activity that occurs offline

Online WOM = type of word of mouth activity that occurs online

Digital WOM = online WOM

Traditional Word of Mouth = face-to-face communication

ROI = return on investment

Social Media Sites = online sites that enable people to communicate between each other

Blog = a website run by individual or a small group that is updated regularly, primarily containing written content and pictures

Blogger = a person who runs a blog

Vlog = a blog conducted primarily in video format

Vlogger = a person who records video content to a vlog

YouTuber = a person who regularly uploads content to the “YouTube” video platform

Influencer = a person or group that influences behavior or believes of others

Instragrammer = a user of a social media platform called Instagram

Streamer = a person who streams his gameplay online for others to watch

Easter Egg = a reference, joke or message hidden in a game

Online Review Communities = sites where people exchange information and ratings about different businesses

Gamer = a person who plays video games

EA = Electronic Arts

1. INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, word of mouth was the oral way of exchanging information between humans. Thus, it can be said that word of mouth is as old as people’s ability to communicate between each other by the use of the vocal cords. As the time passed simple sounds that people firstly used to communicate evolved to complex languages that people use nowadays. As a result of that people now are able to pass information between each other with extreme level of accuracy about any topic imagined. With the development of sciences such as marketing and consumer behavior people have realized that word of mouth communication has enormous impact on customer choices and their habits.

According to a study an average person is exposed to up to 1300 commercial stimuli every single day, whereas back in 1980 it was only 170. (Perrey et al, 2013) Due to this fact, marketers have to stay creative and open to innovative techniques of marketing to keep up customers’ attention. Among these methods, there is one that has been getting a lot of attention recently in the marketing industry due to constantly increasing digitalization of people’s lives, which is word of mouth marketing.

The power of the word of mouth marketing has been known for a long time now, however the introduction of the Internet has had enormous impact on the WOM marketing and allowed it to reach new heights. Blogs, vlogs, social media sites, online review communities, online forums all have created a technological infrastructure that led to the creation of online word of mouth marketing. There are many studies proving that word of mouth has much more power in terms of influencing a customer on the final decision regarding a purchase than other types of advertising such as: prints, radio or the TV.

According to a study by Nielsen Group, 78% of respondents trust more in recommendation 1

from other consumers, more than a commercial message passed through mass-market communication. (Ray, 2008)

The biggest difference between traditional and online word of mouth is in the fact that businesses have more ways on how to control and encourage it. Also, in the traditional word of mouth the information takes more time to spread as it can only occur from person to another person or between small groups at a time. Whereas, online word of mouth can reach thousands or millions of people at a time via social media sites, forums or other online services. The superior range, speed of the online WOM and the improving methods of measuring its ROI, have led many businesses to adopting online WOM strategy more eagerly than the traditional WOM over the recent years.

However, the degree to which marketers rely on WOM is highly related to the industry. As a gamer, myself I have been exposed to various marketing techniques of many different game publishers and developers for more than a half of my entire life. I know which methods work well for me and which do not. In my perspective WOM is the most effective way marketers can reach the customers and influence their buying behavior. The study made by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide seems to agree with my opinion as can be seen on the figure 1, below.

Figure 1: How Gamers Decide What to Buy (Fahey, 2009)

In addition, for some time now, I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of influencers and how they affect consumer behavior. The reason for this is that I had an opportunity to notice the importance of them in the gaming industry. Along my gaming ‘career’ I have seen many Youtubers gaining millions of subscribers only by playing games. As I got older I started noticing that these people were very often a creation of the companies, generating for them millions of views from people scattered around the world. I realized how powerful tool that was for marketers and this is the reason why I wanted to research word of mouth in more depth as my bachelor thesis. To do so, I have decided to analyze online and offline word of mouth marketing strategies of two key gaming companies –

Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts and assess which one does better job at their word of mouth marketing campaigns. The final verdict is going to be supported by own primary research which is designed to establish how important word of mouth marketing is in the gaming industry.

2. THE THEORETICAL PART

2.1 BACKGROUND AND EVOLUTION OF WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING

According to Harvey Morris, Executive Vice President at WOMMA, the beginnings of word of mouth marketing can be traced back to 1970 when a psychologist named George

Silverman created, so called ‘teleconferenced peer influence groups’. In the study, doctors had to discuss effectives of new medicines which had no research history backing up back up their successfulness. During the research Silverman observed that opinions of people who were skeptical about the usefulness of the medicine in the first place were impacted by the positive endorsement coming from other people involved in the experiment. In addition, the phenomenon had such a big impact that even the medicine users themselves – who had bad past experience with the drug prior to the study, started changing their minds after consulting peers who reckoned that the medicine was effective. This study showed what kind of potential word of mouth can have and also guaranteed Silverman a title of a pioneer in the field of Word of Mouth Marketing. (Brysha, 2013)

Since then there has been hundreds of other studies done on WOM marketing, only strengthening the belief in its effectives. For instances a study done by Nielsen group shows that 92% of consumers trust in recommendation from friends and family over any other type of advertising. (Whitler, 2014) or another study says that 64% of marketing executives claimed that word of mouth marketing is the most effective way of marketing.

(Whitler, 2014)

2.2 WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING

Before I discuss word of mouth marketing in more depth I would like to cite Word of

Mouth Marketing Association’ definition to provide a basic idea of the concept, which later will be expanded on. According to WOMMA (2007) word of mouth marketing means: “Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications.”

Despite the fact that word of mouth phenomenon has been known for hundreds of years, marketers are still studying word of mouth phenomenon to understand better, control it and improve its impact on customers. According to WOMMA, the main objective of word of mouth marketing is not about creating WOM, but about how to make it work with company’s current marketing objective. Nevertheless, stimulating and encouraging word of mouth activity has become a standard procedure incorporated in marketing campaigns by majority of businesses in almost all industries around the world. Overall, Word of mouth marketing is mostly about enabling and encouraging people to share their opinions about company’s products or services. It is about controlling and making use of the voice of customers for the overall benefit of the company.

2.3 TYPES OF WORD OF MOUTH

First of all, it is important to explain the difference between organic and amplified word of mouth. The first type – organic happens when people are content and satisfied with the brand or product and start to exchange information between each other about the company or its products. Thus, marketers tend to describe this type of word of mouth activity as natural as it occurs as a side effect of successfully run business. The opposite of organic

WOM is amplified WOM. The difference in this case is that the word of mouth activity is

consciously studied and acted upon to increase the level of word of mouth activity in already established or new communities by implementing various techniques.

There are various techniques of amplified WOM that businesses can be used to encourage people to talk about the brand, its products and services. The following paragraph will introduce all of the types of word of mouth marketing and briefly explain them. This paper is going to analyse few of these techniques in more depth as they deserve much more attention due to their effectives in the gaming industry. Also, it is vital to highlight the fact that in some instances it is not easy to draw a line between WOM marketing and other types of marketing techniques as sometimes they overlap to some extent. Thus, some marketers might disagree with following list.

 Viral marketing – it is done by creating high profile content which is shared

between customers in an exponential fashion. It mostly occurs online, especially on

social media.

 Community marketing – occurs when companies create communities, in which

members are likely to share interests about the company. For example, fan clubs or

discussion forums.

 Buzz Marketing – it is created by providing high profile news or entertainment to

customers in order to make them talk about the company

 Evangelist marketing ¬– happens when companies develop their own evangelists

who are encouraged to spread word of mouth about the company

 Product Seeding: Occurs when companies give the product for free into the hands

of right people at the right time and those people will talk about the product. For

example, a streamer who receives a copy of a game slightly before the release.

 Influencer Marketing: occurs when companies find a person or group that

influences behavior or believes of others and supports them to spread the word.

 Brand Blogging: When companies create their own blogs, and share information or

content that the blog community will want to talk about

 Cause Marketing: Occurs when companies choose to support social cause and by

this they earn respect from people who agree about the supporting the cause.

 Referral Programs: happens when companies make sure that customers have tools

to refer to friends.

 Strategic leaks marketing – when companies leak some information about their

products or other content to make people talk about the company

 Conversation Creation: occurs when companies use unusual promotion, advertising

that is designed to create word of mouth activity

 Brand Blogging: When companies create their own blogs, and share information or

content that the blog community will want to talk about

2.4 INFLUNCER MARKETING

Influencers in the gaming industry play a huge role and due to this reason, I have decided that this type of WOM deserves in depth explanation. As a result of today’s digitalization of human lives, people tend to educate themselves more about a product or service before they decide to buy or use it. As a result of that today’s customer has become more resistant to traditional commercial channels such as the TV, Radio, Newspaper. (Perrey et al, 2013).

Due to this fact more companies start to incorporate influencers to their marketing campaigns. WOMMA (2017) defines influence marketing as “the act of a marketer identifying and engaging influencers to share information with influencees in pursuit of a business goal.” (p.6) A study done by Schlesinger Associates proves the increasing popularity of the influencer marketing. According to its results, 84% of professional

marketers and communication specialists expect to incorporate a marketing campaign involving influencers within the next year. (WOMMA, 2017).

Businesses have been aware of the fact that people are affected by other peoples’ opinions for a long time. However, what is more important is that some groups of people can have much bigger impact on customers choices than others. According to WOMMA (2017), influence means “the ability to cause or contribute to another person taking action or changing opinion or behavior.” Thus, an influencer is a person who has better than average ability to influence others’ opinions and views. The widespread use of the internet and social media has made influencer marketing more effective than ever before, as Tomoson

Company claims businesses can make $6.50 for each $1 spent (2016). Tomoson Company conducted a survey about the influencer marketing, in which 125 marketers participated.

The survey showed that 59% of them expected to increase their budgets on influencer marketing, 11% decided to keep it at the same level and only 10% wanted do decrease it.

Figure 2 (Tomoson, 2016)

Moreover, the study also found that 22% of respondents chose influencer marketing as most rapidly growing online channel for obtaining customers, followed by ‘organic search’ which gained 17% and Email placing third at 15%.

Figure 3 (Tomoson, 2016)

Lastly, the study also points out that influencer marketing is the most cost-effective technique of obtaining customers. 22% of all responding marketers chose influencers, placing at first place, along with Emails that also scored 22%, followed by organic search which got 19%.

Figure 4 (Tomoson, 2016)

Another example that reflects the increasing popularity and effectives of influencer marketing is the beauty products industry. According to the article titled “10 Essential

Stats For Influencer Marketing In 2017”, 86% of the most popular beauty products videos were in fact made by the influencers. Whereas, only 14% of the videos were actually made by the beauty products brands themselves. Another study suggests that 57% of beauty and

fashion companies incorporate influencers as a part of their marketing campaign and 21% to add influencers as their additional marketing technique along the next year. (Burgess,

2016) Among the social platforms Instagram is considered to be the most powerful in terms of effectiveness of influencers. Instagram’s influencer marketing industry is rated be worth more than US$1 billion. (Mediakix, 2018)

2.5 CONTRASTING OFFLINE AND ONLINE WORD OF MOUTH

The word of mouth marketing industry is combined of two types. The first one is online word of mouth and second is offline word of mouth. Many marketers are advocates of the first type – offline WOM and put more emphasis on encouraging this type word of mouth.

This can be mainly achieved by focusing on customer relationship management, free product sampling organizing events, or even promoting company’s services or products in places like bars, parties or even restaurants. On the other hand, the widespread availability of the internet and social media sites in particular has led to creation and increased popularity among marketers of the younger version of word of mouth – online word of mouth. This type of WOM consists of: online forums, social media sites, review community services, video services, emails, streaming platforms and any other technique that takes place by the use of the internet. Marketers tend to have different opinions about which type of word of mouth is more effective. The ones in favor of offline word mouth argue that offline word of mouth is more genuine as the information comes directly to you by face to face communication or call from someone that you know – colleagues, friends, family. Whereas, online word of mouth mostly comes from strangers, which in turn should lead to less credibility of the information provided online. To understand which type of word of mouth is more effective, or rather when one of the types is more applicable in what kind of situations, the following paragraph is going to analyze both types of the word of mouth – online and offline by performing side to side comparison.

Which type occurs more often – online or offline?

According to a research done by The Keller Fay Group done in 2011, the majority of the word of mouth activity occurs offline. The study claims that face to face communication remains the most commonly used way of offline word of mouth communication which summed up to 92 percent of all answers. Of those 92 percent, 75 represented the old- fashioned face to face communication, followed by phone calls which equaled to 17 percent. The all of the online word of mouth communication summed up to only 6 percent, with chats and blogs representing one percent, text and online messages 3 percent and

Emails also 3 percent. The “other” types of communication consisted of written letters and notes and made 2%.

Thus, as can be seen from the study the vast majority of the word of mouth communication still remains in the offline segment of the WOM. However, Keller Fay Group highlights that the small share of the online word of mouth activity does not mean that online WOM is insignificant. It rather demonstrates how large word of mouth marketing is in general.

Figure 5: Online vs. Offline (Keller & Fay, 2011)

Demographics of online and offline word of mouth.

Another reason that some marketers choose to stick to either online word of mouth marketing or offline is because they think that different types of WOM should be used to aim customers of different age groups. For example, a company selling hearing aid products is going to mainly target elderly people as their primary customer base. Thus, according to some markets it would be unwise to choose online word of mouth to target that specific age group. The statistics from Talktrack, a survey solely dedicated to studying the word of mouth phenomenon, proves this conviction. According to the research people under thirty years olds made 75% of the all online word of mouth activity. To be more precise teens between 13 and 17 years old made half of those 75%. Therefore, online word of mouth continues to be a phenomenon of a younger generation and that is why it should be mostly used to target young consumers. Whereas offline word of mouth still remains more effective among older customers. (Keller & Fay, 2011)

Figure 6: Demographics of WOM (Keller & Fay, 2011)

Online and offline word of mouth by category.

There is no doubt that online and offline word of mouth will have varied levels of activity among different categories. It is logical to think that categories related to technology

should have higher level of word of mouth activity happening online compared to for example household products. The Keller Fay Group (2011) explored differences between online and offline WOM activity by different Industries., The categories in which online word of mouth activity was higher than offline WOM were: “media and entertainment”

“Technology”, “Sports, Recreation & Hobbies”, “Telecommunications” “Shopping &

Retail”, “Travel Services”. On the other hand, Offline WOM activity was more prominent that online WOM among following categories: “Beverages” “Personal Care & Beauty”,

“Automotive”, “Financial Services”, “Health & Healthcare”, “Children’s products”, “The home” and “Household Products” Moreover, the study found out that categories where online word of mouth is more prominent, are more youth orientated. Whereas, categories which have higher offline WOM activity are characterized by more varied age demographic.

Figure 7: WOM by Category (Keller & Fay, 2011)

Online and offline word of mouth in terms of positivity.

A lot of people try to damage the good reputation of word of mouth by claiming that people tend not to always appreciate positive things and spread a good word, but will 13

always make sure to spread a bad word if they happen to have poor experience with some business. For example, after eating a good meal in a restaurant, a person is less likely to put an extra effort to go online, find the place and write a good review, while another person who has extremely bad experience and feels that has been treated unfairly.

According to the Keller fay study both types of word mouth tend to be more positive than negative. However, when compared the two, the offline WOM has more positive activity that the online WOM. In the offline WOM 65% of all communication about brands was reported as being positive, whereas in the online WOM only 55% was positive.

Figure 8: Positivity in WOM (Keller & Fay, 2011)

Some marketers claim that the biggest advantage of word of mouth marketing over other regular types of paid marketing advertising is the credibility of the message which in turns leads also to more purchase decisions. This is because people trust more information coming directly from someone they know – friends, family or coworkers than from unpersonalized commercials in other type of media like the TV or newspapers. The

TalkTrack survey proved this conviction by displaying notably high levels of creditability

for both types of WOM. According to the results, from all the people recently exposed to word of mouth 50% valued the information as highly credible and that most likely they were going to buy the product or service. Most importantly, the study highlights that from the two, offline WOM is still perceived much more reliable than online WOM. In terms, of credibility respondents reported offline WOM to be 59% credible, whereas online was rated to be 49%. Moreover, the offline WOM is more likely to lead to a final purchase choice that the online WOM. Study shows that among the respondents 50% claim that offline WOM leads to higher buying intent. (Keller & Fay, 2011)

2.6 FAKE WORD OF MOUTH AND CONSUMER CONFIDENCE

With today’s trend toward digitalization of our daily routines more people decide to go to services such as TripAdvisor, Google Maps or Yelp to get advice from others. With just few clicks on their smartphones or computers they are able to see ratings, written reviews, pictures or even videos of other people about any business – hotels, restaurants, stores, bars and even other services out of gastronomy industry such as post offices, casinos or dental offices. Spiegel Research Center (2017) conducted a research on how online reviews influence sales. To do so they partnered with another service called PowerReviews, which works with more than one thousand global brands by improving their customer experience related to online reviews, ratings systems and Q&A systems. The research’s results were made out of more than one million of customers experiences for a period of a year from two different online retailers. The study found out that a product with only 5 reviews is 270 percent more likely to be purchased than a product without any reviews. In addition, Amy

Gesenhues (2013) wrote in her article that according to a study done by Dimensional

Research, 90% of people claimed that reading online reviews of other people influenced their final choice regarding the purchase. Both of these studies give an idea of how important online reviews are for the successfulness of increasing sales for a company. 15

Such platforms besides being extremely useful for people in terms of finding best possible options available to them, can also benefit businesses. Perfect reviews and ratings attract customers as well as increase businesses’ placement in the search engines results, further expanding customer base.

Unfortunately, this has led to creation of the fake word of mouth, which has a negative impact on the credibility of the real online word of mouth. Many businesses decide to improve their ratings by paying people to write positive fake reviews for them. For example, on a website called Fiverr, which connects freelancers with businesses, there is plenty of people who advertise themselves as “review writers” and charge around 5US$ per review. According to a study done by Gartner (2012) on the authenticity of the online reviews, fake reviews make up to 15 percent. A great example of a company which ruined online word of mouth credibility is the Yelp case. Yelp is an online service which was designed to help people find well rated businesses that they were looking for. According to a study approximately 16 percent of all reviews on yelp were fake. (Marketingland, 2016)

After the Yelp case went viral on the internet and other media people became more aware of the fake review phenomenon, which decreased online word of mouth reliability.

Building back online word of mouth credibility is a hard and very time-consuming process, which will not happen overnight. Human mind has tendency to remember things that are negative than good. That is why businesses around the world need to make sure that fake word of mouth is not accepted as it will hurt the reputation of online word of mouth to the extent that people will stop taking seriously online reviews of products or services. To prevent such situation from happening many businesses recently have started implementing advanced techniques to detect and delete fake ratings. For instance,

TrustPilot, another online review community service has put variety of different techniques 16

to combat problems of fake reviews. According to their webpage the service is “constantly improving measures to detect and remove fake reviews.” (TrustPilot, n.d.) Their techniques consist of: special software designed to detect and delete fake reviews, flagging option, a compliance team dedicated to exposing fraud, systematic monitoring, whistle- blower function, consumer alerts on suspicious profiles, and termination of contracts with companies who use fake reviews.

The WOMMA highlights the importance of keeping the online word of mouth clear from fake ratings and reviews. It explains that trying to fake word of mouth is unethical and can create more harm than good. The fake word of mouth can send wrong signals about company’s product and services, destroy the corporate reputation and in the worst-case scenario even put a company into legal troubles. According to a Forbes article 9 out of 10

American reported to think that companies have to do more than just earn profits, in their eyes all of the companies should function responsibly and they would refuse to buy the company’s products or use its services if it acted unethically. (DeMers, 2017)

Ethical marketing is about being honest with company’s customers. If properly managed it increases company’s credibility, brand loyalty and encourages people to spread the good word of mouth about services or products being marketed. Ethical marketers refuse to use all techniques connected to deception, infiltration, dishonesty and manipulation and thus all of the word of mouth marketing tactics should be rooted in concepts of customer satisfaction, flawless dialog between customer and a company and transparency.

3. ELECTRONIC ARTS

Electronic Arts, in short EA is a global interactive entertainment software company founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins in California, USA. In the early years of its life the company was producing games for Atari 8-bit family system and later it also started working on software and games for Commodore Amiga computers. They were responsible for creation of majority of programs that were firstly available on Amiga computers, such as Deluxe Paint, Instant Music and Deluxe Music Construction Set. Due the high success of these programs some of them were later introduced to other platforms such as

Macintosh. In 1990 EA Games started producing games for Nintendo Entertainment

System as well as other consoles. After nine years a CEO Trip Hawkins decided to leave the company to start his new business. He got quickly replaced by Larry Probst, who is still working for the company till today. His first several years at the EA Games were really bad for the company and the its stocks fell remarkably, which was met with serious criticism from the investors and the players. The main reason behind this was that Probst did not want to follow suit other video games companies to make mature rated games.

Instead, he desired the EA to stay family friendly, free of violence, swearing and nudity.

However, after increasing coercion from the investors and the public, he decided to allow

M-rated games to be published by the EA Games. This led to the release of the game called System Shock 2 in 1999. This title was met with outstanding approval by gamers from all around the globe. The game won over twelfth awards, including seven “Game of the year” awards. This game is considered to be the milestone for the company indicating the new beginning for EA Games to become one of the biggest publishers in the world.

One of the next moves of EA that contributed to the company’s advantage over its competitors for the years to come was signing a 15 years deal with ESPN. This licensing deal ensured all the rights to ESPN content for sports simulation games. Moreover, much of the Electronic Arts Games’ success can be explained by the fact that they always have 18

made sure that their video games were platform agnostic, meaning that every video game was developed for almost every system available such as Windows, Mac, PlayStation,

Xbox. Another factor that has led to EA success was the introduction of multi-year franchises. The company’s GAAP net revenue for fiscal year 2017 was equal to US$4.845 billion. The company has built its reputation on a large collection of blockbuster video game brands such as: EA Sports FIFA, Battlefield, The Sims and Madden NFL.

3.1 ELECTRONIC ARTS – WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING

With the extremely high number of new video games titles being released every day, selling games is not an easy task. In 2017 EA Games spent US$673 million for marketing and sales, which is US$51million more than in the previous year. Electronic Arts is investing this huge of amount of money in multiple ways to promote their products. In

2017 the company was advertising its games in the TV, on social media, via Youtubers,

Streamers and even by organizing special events about games. As mentioned before, word of mouth marketing has been becoming more popular over the last decade. This is due to the fact that thanks to the Internet, businesses are able to reach more potential customers through different channels and also it is easier for them now to measure if the money invested in WOM marketing is paying off for them. That is also the case for The Electronic

Arts Games, which has been actively seeking to create as much buzz around their new games releases as possible by traditional and digital word of mouth marketing. One of the methods that EA has been using to promote WOM activity around their products is by using influencers, mainly YouTubers to make them talk about the game. According to

Hollister, who is a writer working for The Verge, just before the launch of its new tittle

Battlefield 4 in 2013, the EA started a program called Ronku. (2014) The program was created to make it simpler for both Youtubers and EA to work together. In order for a

Youtubers to get paid to promote the game, they needed to follow a specifically stated 19

instructions on what to do and what not. If they managed to fulfil the requirements they were paid by the EA games US$10 for every 1000 views. The view cap assigned by EA was equal to 20,000,000 views.

Figure 9: Ronku Program (Hollister, 2014)

This method of marketing is extremely efficient as it reaches a lot of people within short period of time compared to traditional word of mouth or even other marketing techniques.

In addition, this method is also more accurate in targeting at the right audience, as the majority of people who watched these videos were YouTubers’ subscribers which means that they were interested in video game related content in the first place. Organizing events is another excellent way to promote the company in general and also increase awareness about its new upcoming products, which leads to increased level of word of mouth

occurring between loyal fans and potentially new customers. In 2016 EA organized its first event of such scale, called “EA PLAY”. Prior to that EA participated in events such as E3 where every gaming related company only has one booth. Since 2016 the EA also did the event in 2017 and is planning to organize another one in 2018. EA Play lasts three days and it is packed with various activities. The event starts with a recap of the last’s year best titles and also pays tribute to the best players in the entire community. The whole experience is designed in a way that it can also be watched live from comfort of people’s houses by the use of online live broadcasting which can be accessed on EA webpage.

Moreover, anyone who is interested in taking part in the event but can’t due to geographical limitations is also able to take part in the event remotely as the EA makes it possible for live audience to join the event too. The next day of the event is focused around the new upcoming video games. During this day, all content creators such as YouTubers, celebrities, streamers and other well-known media people participate in what is known as

“EA Game Changers Creators Cave”. This part of the event is closed from the public, as its purpose it to give an opportunity for all the content creatures to have a first experience with new upcoming video games and other products. The creators are expected to capture early game footage for future use on their channels of media. Except that others live stream games from the event so everyone can watch it at home. During the whole event, there is around 150 gaming stations where people can play together and test out some demos versions of upcoming titles. What is important is that participation in the event is for free for anyone. To get a ticket, people just need to reserve it online in advance. The sign-up time is revealed on social media and it works on the basis of who first, gets the ticket, which also increases word of mouth activity, as people tell their friends about the event so they have company. Thus, by creating events EA stimulates offline and online word of mouth, especially during the time of the event, however the effect is much larger and

longer after the event ends. This is because people start to talk about the new games and things that are mention on the events.

Another essential tool for increasing word of mouth activity is through enabling customers, fans to communicate between each other in an easy and safe fashion. This is done by creating official online forums. EA Games knows this very well and pay a lot of effort to make it as intuitive for the players as possible. Every video game has its own forum, where people can talk about anything related to the title. This allows people to keep talking about the game, thus allowing the word of mouth to do its job. Besides, this is also the place where developers can listen to the customers and improve the games accordingly to their wants. Moreover, on this forum players can inform the developer about any required changes or little tweaks in the performance of the game. And by repairing the most requested things they ensure that the good word about the company resonates in the gaming community.

Next thing that EA Games does to encourage people to talk about the game is a news section on their webpage. Keeping updated news section is a crucial aspect of encouraging word of mouth marketing. Electronic Arts is aware of this fact and is not scared to take advantage of this. Through the use of news developer can tell people about upcoming changes or updates in the game. Even when people who have become bored with the game might decide to try it again if the upcoming patch seems interesting to them. Moreover, if it does indeed seem interesting, it is very likely that people will tell their friends about upcoming new changes and encourage them to either buy a new downloadable content for the game or talk other friends into buying the game in general due to new exciting changes.

Thus, keeping an updated news section on the website is a crucial step in promoting word of mouth activity. EA Games does an excellent job at this particular task. For example, for 22

their latest battlefield title they

Figure 10: Screenshot of News Section (Battlefield, n.d.)

Next crucial part in EA Games WOM marketing is its presence on social media sites. EA is active on almost every most commonly used social media platforms such as Facebook,

Twitter and Instagram. On the Facebook page, they have 4.7 million of followers, on twitter they have 5.3 million and on Instagram 2.9 millions. In addition, a lot of people still follow the company on different subaccounts of EA that are assigned to each specific game or subdivision of EA such as EA Sports, which has even more followers than the main page. Social Media sites are arguably one of the most important channels to promote word of mouth. This is because unlike Gaming Forums on which you need additionally sign up for, people do not need to sign up to follow their favorite game developer and exchange their opinions on social media sites as they already have previously made personal accounts. This basically comes down to the fact that people get very often discouraged in the process of creating an account on forums and webpages due too demanding or complex process. In addition, social media has another advantage it is relatively cheap to use social media marketing. This caused by the fact that creating accounts and posting, even business-related posts or ads on social media is for free on almost every possible platform.

The only thing that needs to be paid for is people’s time and effort that needs to be accommodated in order to use social media as a useful and effective marketing method.

Another genius marketing strategy that is popular among interactive entertainment software companies is the use of strategic leaks. This type of marketing is officially not done by the companies themselves, however it is easy to deduct that the odds are very high that it is actually the companies consciously deciding to leak some information to stimulate word of mouth and create buzz around the company and its new upcoming video game title. Almost every blockbuster title of EA was leaked in some way or another. The leaks can vary in their significance and format. It can be in a form of a screenshot of unreleased gameplay, the poster for the future advertising camping, short video clip from the gameplay, some specific information about the game or even some parts of coding that developers of the game wrote which later can be interpreted by people who knows something about writing interactive entertainment software. According to the article wrote by Griffin Vacheron (2017), who is a known gaming journalist, leaks in the gaming industry have been a very important part of their marketing campaigns for a long time.

He gives an example of the company called Rockstar Games which is famous for producing many blockbuster titles such as Grand Theft Auto series and also Red Dead

Redemption. Both of these titles are famous for their extremely large open-world design.

Vacheron says that somehow every time before the release of their games Rockstar Games most likely leaks some of their content intentionally. In case of both of above mentioned titles it was the maps of the open-words of the video games. He claims that it is very unlikely for such a huge developer to simply turn a blind eye on such a big leak if it was unintended. In the real-life scenario, if the leak was unintentional, the company would do everything in its power to get rid of that leak from the internet as fast as possible. This can be done simply by contacting any platform that the information is shared on and asking them to delete the post due to the infringement of a copyright. He adds that if it happened only once it could have been simply either overlooked by the company or ignored.

However, if this happens with every game being released there is little chance that this is 24

done unintentionally, and most likely it is a well thought out marketing campaign that is designed to promote word of mouth activity around the company and its newest titles.

In case of EA this phenomenon can be observed pretty easily as well. For example, in

March 2016, a small Youtuber, with a nickname AlmightyDaq shared a lot of very precise information and details in his video regarding a new Battlefield title – Battlefield 1, that was released later the same year in October. As the game came out, to everyone’s surprise he managed to get correctly every single detail that he mentioned in the video, including: the game’s name, the time setting of the game, all of the weapons that were available in the title as well as the names of various maps. This year AlmightDaq also leaked very precise information, this time about a game coming from Dice Sweden studio which belongs to

EA Games. According to him a Battlefield game that is going to be released in 2019 is going to be called Battlefield: Bad Company 3 and it is going to be set in Vietnam War era.

Besides the title, he also mentions the map designs, the multiplayer experience and even more. All of the videos made by AlmightDaq that contain leaked information about the new games gained together 414 thousand of views. However, this is not where the impact of his leaks end. Many other Youtubers used his leak to create content of their own spreading the word even further. For example, Youtuber called “LeavelCapGaming” gained 398 thousand of views about the same leak, and “GhostRobo” 196 thousand of views. This are only few of the Youtubers that decide to make the video on the subject thus the impact of the leak is much greater. Overall, leaks are amazing way to stimulate word of mouth. It cannot be either confirmed or denied if EA leaks their content intentionally.

However, due to the fact that they do not try to get the leaked content removed from the internet only serves as a proof that EA Games knows very well about the leaks and probably plans them ahead of time as part of their marketing campaign.

Another clever method of that EA Games implements to increase word of mouth is through organizing special online events that encourage people to invite their friends to play. That was exactly the case with Battlefield 1 in 2017. Andreas Skoglund (2017), one of the game’s producers, wrote an article on battlefield news about a new feature that came into life to battlefield 1 for the first time in the battlefield history. The new feature is called

Premium Friends.

Figure 11: Premium Friends poster (Skoglund, 2017)

However, to understand this it is necessary to explain first what battlefield premium is. It is a special pass that has to be bought for extra money besides the price of the game. In case of Battlefield 1 it cost 40 euro when it came out for the first time and it included following content: new maps, game modes, and weapons. Introduction of battlefield premium was met with massive objection by the community as it leads to splitting of the player base resulting in empty servers on standard maps or extended waiting time needed for a complete number of players to play. To address this issue and transform the ongoing bad word of mouth about the split player base to a positive one, the feature – Premium Friends was created. This feature allows players without the premium pass to play the content normally only available to players who bought the pass. In order to do that, Skoglund explains that there needs to be one person who actually has bought the premium pass. 26

However, that person can invite his friends to his party and they will automatically become premium enabled players. Without a doubt, it was a genius move to address the harmful buzz about company’s decision of implementing the premium accounts to battlefield that turned around into positive WOM.

The last technique that EA Games uses to promote word of mouth activity is by including so called Easter eggs in their games. The whole idea behind it is supposed to be similar to the egg hunt that during Easter, where children need to find painted or chocolate eggs. In the gaming industry Easter eggs are hidden messages, jokes or other features implemented into a game by developers that are hard to spot on a first glance. The use of Easter eggs can be beneficial for companies in many ways. First of all, they establish better relationship between the consumer and the company as the company becomes humanized through showing its personality. Besides it creates a unique user experience for the consumers. It is because when a player finds an Easter egg, he feels like he is a member of a little elite secrete community that has managed to accomplish this. Overall, the Easter eggs increase the traffic on the company’s webpage, user engagement and improves brand awareness in general. However, most importantly, the use of Easter eggs encourages people to talk about the company, as Ramona Shukraj, a strategist and a writer at Impact writes: “They are a wonderful way of generating word-of-mouth for your brand and with the help of channels like Facebook, Twitter, Buzzfeed, and Reddit, they tend to spread like chicken pox through a kindergarten class” (Sukhraj, 2017)

EA Games has been including Easter eggs in their games for a very long time. One of the recent examples is the Giant Shark – Megalodon Easter Egg in Battlefield 4. It was discovered by a Youtuber called “JackFrags”. In order to trigger the secret feature 10 players, need to get around a lonely buoy in the sea at the same time on the map called

Nansha Strike. If it is done properly, a huge shark will jump out of the water and land on 27

the players swimming in the water, killing all of them at the same time. (IGN, 2014) The original JackFrags’ video on YouTube gained almost 6 million views. Besides him there are hundreds of other videos on YouTube regarding Easter eggs in EA Games. To conclude the use of Easter eggs is a really fun and effective tool in promoting word of mouth activity within the community.

Figure 12: Megalodon Easter Egg (IGN, 2014)

4. ACTIVISION BLIZZARD

Activision Blizzard is a company producing interactive entertainment software based in

Santa Monica, California. It came to life after a merger of two very large gaming companies. In 2007 Activision, famous for releasing games such as Call of Duty, declared that the company would merge with another games producer and publisher – Vivendi

Games, which mostly known for its big titles released by the Blizzard Entertainment studio such as World of Warcraft series, Diablo series, StarCraft series and Hearthstone. Both of the companies have a long history of making video games. and After the merger, former

Activision’s CEO – Bobby Kotick was picked as the president and also CEO of the newly merged Activision Blizzard. Currently, Activision Blizzard is composed of five different divisions, which are: Blizzard Entertainment, King Digital Entertainment, Major League

Gaming, Activision Blizzard Studios and Activision. In addition, the company also is working with several independents studios such as Treyarch or Sledgehammer Games. As for now September 2017 Activision Blizzard was third most successful company producing interactive entertainment software in the world in terms of generated revenue, just after Sony and Tencent. The company has over 500 million online users playing their video games every month from almost 200 different countries. The company holds multiple records in the gaming industry in terms of sales. The game called Destiny, which was released on September 9, 2014, made over US$ 500 million on the first day when it came out. It was the biggest and most successful video game launch up do date. Moreover, the next year Activision Blizzard released another game called Call of Duty: Black Ops III which was also met with extreme popularity. The title made over $550 million in sales during the first opening weekend, which was the biggest launch of the year in the whole gaming industry.

4.1 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD – WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING

Activision Blizzard is a third biggest company it terms of sales in the whole world and first in Europe and both Americas. Due to the fact that their sales are so high, it can be concluded that the company really knows what it is doing in terms of marketing its products and creating its brand image. One of the vital channels through Activision

Blizzard advertises its brand and products is by the use of word of mouth.

The first method that I am going to discuss that Activision Blizzard is using to promote its products by the word of mouth is through the influencers. The company is really good at finding the key people. As the article from DMNnews says, “Blizzard took a quality over quantity approach to its influencer marketing strategy for Overwatch. The company invited prolific video game live streamers, and seasoned first-person shooter professionals to test its game through to its release (Simpson, 2017) Before every lunch of the game the company invites most popular streamers and Youtubers from around the world to play games together. This is an opportunity for the Youtube creators and streamers to play the game before its official release. During that time, they can record clips of their gameplay which later can be used by them in their videos commenting the game. For example, the company invited many Youtubers to experience the company’s newest Call of Duty game

– Black Ops III. Among the invited were for example Ali-a and Driftor, who have respectively 12 million and 1.3 million of subscribers. Moreover, Ali-a has reached over 3 billion of views on his main channel and he has set two Guinness World Records as ‘Most

Popular Call of Duty Channel by views' and 'Most Popular Call of Duty Channel by subscribers' (Lynch, 2015)

Another way of increasing word of mouth activity that Activision Blizzard has perfected at is through creating its own Esports scene. Esports is another way of saying competitive gaming and its popularity has been steadily growing. Activision Blizzard is responsible for hosting many gaming leagues and championships in multiple games. Activision, a subsidiary company of Activision Blizzard has been hosting Esports League in Call of duty since 2016. The most recent league that Activision Blizzard established is the Overwatch

League and it similarly to the game it was met with huge success. According to John

Ballard’s article (2018) Activision Blizzard’s CEO – Bobby Kotick, expects in the long run to get a similar revenue from the Overwatch League as NLF or NBA. Over the first weekend the Overwatch League gained more than 10 million views and on the first day it was getting 408 thousand views per minute. According to the article “Normally, the most- watched games on Twitch receive about 100,000 viewers on a good day, so with six months to go and 456 matches to be played until the playoffs, Overwatch will gain a lot of free marketing.” (Ballard, 2018) The full prize pool assigned for the Overwach League winners is equal to US$3.5 million. Activision Blizzard knows that Esports is an excellent way to promote their company. First of all, millions of people actually watch live gameplay of the professional players, who are influencers for millions of average players around the globe. However, more importantly Esports stimulates word of mouth activity, as people get attached to one particular team or player and then discuss with other players the possible outcomes of competitions. Melody Madhavan agrees with me as he writes

“Pro players stream their games and have large followings, and even some casual gamers have popular streams where they try new tactics or just have a fun time online.

Some players get into the community from just watching streams at first, and then later trying out the game – the perfect example of word-of-mouth marketing for the game.”

(Madhavan , 2018)

Another technique of keeping the buzz going about the company and its new video games that Activision Blizzard is very likely practicing are strategic leaks. As mentioned before strategic leaks are designed to create a buzz about a specific game, new feature or the company in general among community as players speculate and try to determine whether the leaks are real or not. As for Activision Blizzard, this technique can be observed on an example of Overwatch. When the game was released in the first place it had 26 different heroes to choose from, with more characters added later. Before adding new characters to the game the company wanted to increase the buzz about the game and its new potential hero. To do so the company anonymously leaked some of the information about the upcoming content to the internet. For example, according to Alexander Pan (2017), a writer for a gaming news website called Gamerant, claims that information about the new

Overwatch hero that were uploaded anonymously by some going by the nick

BlackwatchFiles to Imgur were in fact posted by developer within Activision Blizzard. The leak included concept art of the new character as well as comprehensive biographical information and its abilities. Intentional leaks are pretty common among game developers and publishers. If the leak was unintended, Activision Blizzard could have easily got it removed from the Internet by referring to infringement of copyrights. However, the company never did, which in turn most likely means that the company was purposely leaking that content to increase word of mouth activity in the gaming community. In addition, leaks also lead to other media such as gaming websites, magazines, and influencers to talk about the company’s product which extends the range of word of mouth even further. For instance, a Youtuber called ForceGaming gained over 530 thousand views on the video where he talks about leaked information regarding another new

Overwatch character – Sombra. (ForceGaming, 2016)

Another Strategy of Activision Blizzard to stimulate word of mouth activity is through including Easter eggs in their games. The company is known for putting hidden massages, jokes or cross- over references in all of their titles. For example, in one of the company’s recent game – Overwatch, there is more than 50 Easter games hidden through the whole game. For instance, on one of the tablets located in “Hollywood” map, there is a tablet on which can be visible the gameplay of Hearthstone – another game produced by Activision

Blizzard. The other Easter egg from Overwatch is a line “Why so serious” of one of the characters when he manages to kill an enemy. This is a reference to a Joker’s famous line from the Batman Movie The Dark Knight. (Overwatch Wiki, 2018) To show what kind of impact Easter Eggs have for Activision Blizzard it is necessary to check view count on some of videos on YouTube. For example, video titled “My Top 20 Call of Duty Easter

Eggs and Secrets” uploaded by a person whose nickname is FunwithGuru gained 7.8 million of views. (FunWithGuru, 2014) Another most popular video uploaded by a

Youtuber “Dorkly” about the Easter Eggs that the company hid in Overwatch game gained more than 10 million views. (Dorkly, 2016) I am giving example of only two few examples of independent Youtuber creators, however there are hundreds of them on

YouTube, thus the real impact of the Easter eggs is much greater.

Another way of encouraging people to talk about the company is by organizing Events.

Similarly, to EA Games, Activision Blizzard also has its own video game convention which is called Blizzcon. The company has been organizing the event every year since

2005. The main purpose is to promote the company’s most popular series such as World of

Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch and more. The event is full of various activities such as:

Esports contests, previewing of upcoming video games, concerts and even cosplay costume contest for the best outfit. The event takes places in the United States and last year approximately 35 thousand people attended it. Contrary to the similar event organized by 33

EA Games, in order to take part in Blizzcon it is necessary to buy a ticket for US$200.

Activision Blizzard takes organizing events more seriously than EA Games does. Besides the Blizzcon, the company also makes one event solely dedicated to Call of Duty series, called Call of Duty Experience. Organizing events is important as it if people enjoy themselves and spend good time, they will very likely become brand advocates and advocacy is proven to bring in more sales and new customers.

Another word of mouth marketing strategy that Activision Blizzard uses is through connecting its games to social media sites. This can of how the company did this be observed on Candy Crush Saga, a mobile phone game. Connecting games to social media sites is an extremely efficient way of marketing. Firstly, to be able to play the game it is needed to log in with a Facebook account. After that a person can play the game which firstly is relatively simple, however at the same time very satisfying. Later into the game, levels become harder and harder to the extent that they are hard to beat. However, what the game thought-out very well is the skipping method. A person can skip a level if he sends 3 invitations to the game to their friends on Facebook. This worked like a chain reaction and led to extremely large player base. Despite that people were inviting each other, they were also talking about the game. This is because a person who got invited probably was new to the game so he wanted to know what is what about and the person who sent it must have been really into the game so they told their curious friends how great the game was. This strategy has led to the creation of one of the most profitable mobile phone games in the

Industry.

Next way that Activision Blizzard encourages people to talk about their products is through organizing special online in-game events or some other features that gives additional incentive to people to play the game. Majority of these games are online 34

multiplayers game. Thus, by organizing such evets people talk to their friends or other players to play with them or to buy the game. An example of such a marketing method is well known to Activision Blizzard. A perfect example of this method can be observed in of their game called “Call of Duty: WWII”. From time to time, the company organizes special events called “Double XP Weekends” This means that during the weekend when the events is taking place, every player earns his experience points twice as fast as normally, which are needed to unlock items or abilities in the game. Implementing such events has multiple benefits for the company. Firstly, it keeps current player base more motivated to play, which in turn prolongs life of the game as there is more people on the servers. Secondly, it might bring back players who have become bored with the game. But most importantly it gives a reason for players to talk about the game, which increases ongoing word of mouth activity in the community.

Figure 13: Tweet showing Double XP Weekends in Call of Duty (Goldstein, 2018)

Activision Blizzard is known for its creativity when it comes to marketing. Throughout the years they have been using unconventional types of promotion to increase the sales and gain new customers. One of the recent example is the part of company’s Overwatch marketing campaign. Except standard marketing procedure that is common with every game developer and publishers, Activision Blizzard decided to do something new, interesting and odd that made people talk about the game even if they were not interested in gaming. The company placed massive statues of various characters from the game prior to its release in different areas around the globe with high level of condensation of people.

The figures were placed in Hollywood Boulevard, Paris, and Busan, South Korea, which were the cities in which the game had its official launch events.

Figure 14: Statue of a Character from Overwatch (Griner, 2016)

Besides already mentioned techniques Activision Blizzard also remembers how important is the constant communication occurring between the developer and customers. That is why similarly to EA, they keep their player base updated with any changes or new games by the use of social media sites and news subsection on their website. However, what is unique about them and where the company excels at is by uploading video content where the developers talk about the current events or upcoming changes. This is an amazing way to promote online word of mouth as people like to see that the developers try to constantly make the game better and they are given topics to talk about.

5. THE PRACTICAL PART: THE PRIMARY RESEARCH

5.1 SURVEY

In order to support my analysis of WOM marketing and its effectives among the two key players in the gaming industry – Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard I have conducted my own primary research. It was done in a form of a survey. The survey consists of twenty questions that aim to investigate the effectiveness of WOM marketing in relation to other forms of marketing in the gaming industry. Moreover, the survey is designed to analyze and contrast the difference between online and offline WOM marketing campaigns of the two main video game developers – Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. I have decided to conduct my survey only in English. This due to the fact that all of my friends on

Facebook know English well enough to complete the survey and also, I only shared the survey online within English speaking communities. Thus, the use of additional survey in different language was unnecessary. The number of questions was limited to only 20 to get the most accurate data as possible. This due to the fact that when people see too many question in the survey, they become bored with it and less focused, very often resulting in people choosing any answer at the end of the survey. Thus, my survey is designed to be 37

easy to read and complete, as the majority of questions are short and straightforward. Also, almost half of my questions are made in a way so a respondent only has to report how he feels on scale on 1 to 10. Thanks to this people are not getting overwhelmed by the survey format and stay focused throughout the whole survey, resulting in better quality of data for my research. Besides, the short and concise format of the survey was incorporated to ensure that minimum number of respondents (200) was collected, as many people are reluctant to filling out time-consuming materials without any reward. In addition, the whole survey was conducted anonymously to ensure that my respondents do not have any privacy concerns. In total, my survey has 3 questions that are obligatory, while the rest is optional. Firstly, this was done to avoid a possibility of some people leaving the whole survey when they did not like/understand one question. Instead, they had a possibility of skipping a question after the thirst three compulsory ones. The three obligatory questions were about age, gender and whether they played video games. The third question was designed to split my respondents between those who play video games and those who do not. The same question asked people not to fill the rest of the survey if their answer was

“No”. This allowed me to collect only relevant data and eliminate the chance of falsifying my results by people who were not interested in the video games, but still chose to help me and filled out the survey. 7 questions are designed to be answered on the scale from 1 to

10, 1 being the least likely and 10 being the most likely. The remaining 13 questions are regular multiple-choice type of questions. Despite the fact that it could result in interesting insight on my research, I have decided not to include the option of enabling people to add their answers as it would result in too much different data unrelated to the scope of my research. At the same time, it led to few instances where people decided not to choose any of the provided answers as they most likely thought of some other answer that was not included in my survey. However, I would like to highlight the fact that these were only few instances and by any means they had any effect on the overall results of my research. 38

5.2 SURVEY DISTRIBUTION

The data collection for the survey was conducted primarily digitally by the use of the

Google Forms service. Besides that, I have also conducted the survey myself on the grounds of the University of New York in Prague, where I handed out printed versions of the survey to UNYP’s students. The digital version of the survey was shared among my friends by the use of Facebook and also it was posted to several video games pages on

Facebook. Targeting the video games pages was done on purpose to ensure that participants are interested in video games themselves and thus have been exposed to various marketing techniques of the gaming industry for extended period of time. The collection of the data for the survey took one month and resulted in 220 respondents filling it out. From all the participants, 188 took the online survey and 32 completed the printed- out version. The first technique used to distribute my survey was by sending out private messages on Facebook. Every message was written to address a specific person. The messages included the name of a receiver, information about the survey and why I was conducting it, followed by a link to my survey on the Google Forms. Due to the fact that I targeted every person individually my response rate was very high, around 80%. However, there were still people who read my message and decide to ignore my request. In addition, to this I also created a post on my “wall” on Facebook. This post also included the introduction to my research, and an explanation of what the data was needed for, followed by the link to the survey. This type of survey distribution was much less successful than private messages. I believe this can be caused by the fact that my post was not shown to many people as I have not been using Facebook actively for a long time and it is known for a fact that Facebook is using precisely written algorithms to show people posts on their

‘walls’ of other people that they have been interacting with the most in the recent past. I did not have a tool that could tell exactly how many responses the link generated, however

only by observing my responses on google forms in general I believe the number was really small. I could not distinguish these people from the first type of survey distribution as it took some people several days to go on Facebook, see my message, and fill in the survey. However, I rate the effectiveness of this type of survey distribution as very low.

The last step of distribution involving Facebook was done by posting the link to my survey to several ‘groups’. Groups on Facebook allow users to share information, videos, pictures, links between each other only among members of the group. A group on Facebook can be started by anyone and it can be dedicated to any possible topic. To use this feature to my advantage I decided to target people who play video games. After doing a simple search of various phrases involving words such as ‘gaming’ and ‘gamers’, I chose to join several groups with the highest number of members in them. After some time, I was accepted by the administrators of the targeted groups and shared my survey within the members. To my surprise this type of survey distribution turned out to be very effective. I believe the reason for this is that these people were gamers themselves and wanted to help out a fellow gamer. Unfortunately, again I did not have necessary tools on my disposal to measure exactly how many people filled in the survey after being exposed to my link on the groups.

In addition, at this moment people were filling out my survey from three different sources at the same time as they response time really varied. First one – private messages, second – post with the link on my Facebook ‘wall’ and third – shared link within several gaming groups on Facebook. The last method of survey distribution was done in the old-fashioned manner, simply by handing out printed out version of my questionnaire in the library of the

University of New York in Prague. This type of survey distribution was the most effective as it resulted in 100% response rate., I believe that people tend to pay more attention and effort in filling out paper-version of the survey as I approached everyone individually and asked them politely to help me in filling out the survey as I needed data for my research.

Graph 1: number of the online survey responds in time.

Graph 1 represents data collection only of the online survey. The spikes of the graph show the moments when the new types of data distribution were added. The first on 31st of

March was when I sent out the survey for the first time in private messages, the next big spike shows when I added to survey to Facebook gaming sites.

5.3 THE FINDINGS

First question of my survey was obligatory and asked about the gender of a respondent. It is vital to know what gender a respondent is in the gaming industry as different sexes have different preferences to where they find out about new games. According to Newzoo, 39% of women rely on friends and family when they are looking for a game, whereas males are more likely to choose websites or videos. (2017)

Gender

Female 26% Male 74%

Male Female

Graph 2: Gender

As can be seen in the graph, male respondents made 74% of all the people who answered my survey. Whereas women accounted for 26% of the responders. I believe that the reason behind why my survey had much more male than female respondents could have been affected by one of the chosen survey distribution methods – individual messages. This is because when I was going through my friends on Facebook to send them private messages containing the link to the survey I was trying to pick the people who in my mind could know something about the gaming industry or preferably were gamers themselves as my survey was designed to research this particular group of people. After going through my friends list again it was clear that I had much more male friends playing video games than female. At first, I was afraid that this could misrepresent the findings about the gender of an average gamer, however this is not the case. Majority of my friends on Facebook friends are Polish, and they were primarily used to collect data. As it turns out Polish average gamer is different than an average gamer in general. According to a research done by Newzoo, a provider of marketing data in the gaming industry, 63% of all Polish gamers are male, resulting in 37% of female gamers. (2017) The difference between official data

and my results on the male gender equals to 11 percentage points. Therefore, I reckon that such a difference can be still accepted.

The second question in my survey asked about the age of respondents. It is also a vital demographic statistic as it helps to establish what group age makes up the biggest proportion of the gaming industry. This in turn allows markets to target the right audience and producers of video games to create games containing the right type of content.

When designing my survey, I decided to create six different age groups. As can be seen on the graph, the age group containing the most number or respondents is the one of composed of people aged between 18 and 24 years old (44%). The second is composed of people aged between 25 and 34 which makes 20% of all my answers, followed by “Under

18 years olds” category that adds up to 18%. The category that got the least respondents was the one containing people aged between 55 and 64 with only one person. My research reflects the available data of an average gamer in terms of age.

Age of Respondents 55-64 years old 45-54 years old 0% 8% Under 18 years 35-44 years old old 10% 18%

25-34 years old 20% 18-24 years old 44%

Under 18 years old 18-24 years old 25-34 years old 35-44 years old 45-54 years old 55-64 years old

Graph 3: Age

The third question of my survey asked whether a person plays video games or not. This was the last obligatory questioned in my survey. After completing this question every respondent was either asked to fill in the rest of the survey or stop, depending on the answer. If a person chose “Yes”, he was asked to continue and if “No” to stop. This question was a crucial step in terms of collecting valuable data for my research, as it split respondents between those who play games and those who do not.

"Do You Play Video Games?"

No 11%

Yes 89%

Yes No

Graph 4: Do You Play Video Games?

This very important question because it eliminates people who are not into video games and leaves me with people who were exposed to various techniques of WOM marketing of gaming companies for a long period of time.

As can be seen from the graph 4, 11% from all targeted people reported not to play video games, leaving me with 89% gamers. After this question only people who reported to play video games were asked to complete the rest of the survey, thus the number of respondents answering the following questions decreased from 220 to 195.

The next questioned asks about how many hours respondent spends playing video games per week. This is also very important as it shows marketers what kind of a gamer you are.

For example, a person who spends more than 20 hours a week on playing video games should be paid more attention than a person who plays from 1 to 2 hours a week. This is because such a person treats gaming much more seriously and thus can be expected to buy more new video games or other in-game content such as skins for characters or season passes.

How many hours do you spend playing video games per week? 30 or more hours Less than 1 hour 21 to 29 hours 9% 10% 7% 1 to 3 hours 13% 16 to 20 hours 15% 4 to 6 hours 12%

10 to 15 hours 7 to 9 hours 19% 15%

Less than 1 hour 1 to 3 hours 4 to 6 hours 7 to 9 hours

10 to 15 hours 16 to 20 hours 21 to 29 hours 30 or more hours

Graph 5: Hours Played per Week

As can be observed from the graph 5 the distribution of hours is quite equally divided between 8 different time frames. However, category of “10 to 15 hours” was the most popular answer, making up 19% of all respondents. The second most commonly chosen number of hours played per week was 16 to 20 and 7 to 9, both making 15% each. The least popular answer was 21 to 29 hours, making 7% of all respondents. The

The next question asked whether people were familiar with The Electronic Arts or

Activision Blizzard. This was an important question as it reflects two things. The first one is how good the company is at marketing and the second is the size of the company.

Are you familiar with - Electronic Arts or Activision Blizzard?

No 11%

Yes 89%

Yes No

Graph6: Familiarity

Graph 6 illustrates the division between people who were aware of the existence of the companies and these who were not. As can be seen 89% of respondents knew about the companies and only 11% did not. This reflects the actual large size and popularity of the firms as one of the key players in the industry.

Next question of the survey asked the respondents where was the last time they heard about Electronics Arts’ game. This is a vital question as on its basis I will be able to establish which of the companies is doing better job at their word of mouth marketing.

Moreover, it also allows me also to contrast the online WOM with the offline WOM. The answers included all of the most typical channels used to target customers in the gaming industry.

Where did you hear last time about Electronic Arts Games' video game? Never heard of this Gaming magazine company 4% 5% Online Forum 6%

Social Media Sites 29% Gaming website 14%

Friends/Family/colleagues 13%

TV Youtubers 3% 26%

Social Media Sites Friends/Family/colleagues Youtubers TV Gaming website Online Forum Gaming magazine Never heard of this company

Graph 7: Where did You Hear Last Time About EA’s game?

As can be seen on the graph 7 the majority of participants chose social media sites, making it 29% of responders, followed by YouTubers – 26% and Friends/Family/Colleagues –

13%. Also 5% of respondents never heard of the company despite its popularity. The graph shows that traditional methods of marketing such as the TV or gaming magazines in the gaming industry should be treated with less focus, as they got really low scores. Overall, online word of mouth is definitely one of the most used ways Electronic Arts uses to promote its products to customers.

Next question on the survey asked respondents to answer where was the last time they heard about the Activision Blizzard’ game.

Where did you hear last time about Activision Blizzard's video game?

Gaming magazine 1% Never heard of Online Forum this company Social Media Sites 6% 13% 26%

Gaming website 15% Friends/Family/colleagu es 13%

Youtubers 23%

TV 3%

Social Media Sites Friends/Family/colleagues Youtubers TV Gaming website Online Forum Gaming magazine Never heard of this company

Graph 8: Where did You Hear Last Time About Activision’s Game?

As can be observed from the graph 8 the most chosen answer by my responders was social media sites with 26%, followed by YouTubers with 23% and gaming website with 15%.

Surprisingly despite the fact that Activision Blizzard is currently considered the most successful gaming company in terms of sold product.

The following question was designed to find out how much money my respondents were spending on video games per year. To do so I created 5 different spending brackets. The graph 9 shows that the biggest spending bracket is from 40 to 80 Euro, making 31% of all respondents. The second most popular category among participants was less than 40 Euro at 27% followed by category of 80 to 120 Euro at 22%. Answer ‘more than 60’ was chosen the least making 9% of all responds.

How much money do you spend on video games per year? More than 160 Euro 9% 120 – 160 Euro 11% Less than 40 Euro 27%

80 – 120 Euro 22% 40 – 80 Euro 31%

Less than 40 Euro 40 – 80 Euro 80 – 120 Euro 120 – 160 Euro More than 160 Euro

Graph 9: Spending on Games per Year

The next question on the survey asked how often the respondents were buying video games. As the graph number 10 displays, the most common answer was ‘Once every half a year’, as it made 36% of all answers. It was followed by once every two months at 26% and once a year at 19%. Unsurprisingly, the least common answer was every week, however the answer still managed to get 3% of all answers.

How often do you buy new video games?

Rarer than once a year Every week Every month 9% 3% 7%

Once a year 19% Once every 2 months 26%

Once every half a year 36%

Every week Every month Once every 2 months Once every half a year Once a year Rarer than once a year

Graph 10: How Often do You Buy Games?

The next question seven asks respondents on how to they find out about new game releases. It is crucial for marketers to know where their customers hear about the upcoming game titles. This is due to the fact that with the today’s extreme number of commercial stimuli attacking customers, very often it comes to the simple rule of being seen first, before the competitors. As the saying goes, the first man gets the oyster the second man gets the shell.

How do you find out about new game releases? By talking to friends/family/colle agues Gaming websites 17% Gaming magazines 21% 4% TV commercial Social Media Sites 3% 22%

Online Forums Youtubers 8% 25%

By talking to friends/family/colleagues TV commercial Social Media Sites Youtubers Online Forums Gaming magazines Gaming websites

Graph 11: How do You Find Out About New Games?

Next question of the survey asked my respondents how they usually communicate between each other about video games. This in an important question as it finds out the channels through which word of mouth is occurring the most among the gamers. As can be observed from the graph 12, 54% respondents chose face-to-face communication, texting online and offline made up to 36%, followed by a phone call which made 10% of all answers. This proves the general trends of WOM, however I expected different results in the gaming industry due to its connection to technology

How do you usually communicate with others about video games?

texting = SMS/messaging software 36% Face to face communication 54%

Phone call (regular and online) 10% Face to face communication Phone call (regular and online) texting = SMS/messaging software

Graph 12: Communication About Video Games.

I am surprised that gamers do not tend to use more of texting and online calls as their primary way of exchanging information about video games. From my experience whenever I play video games with friends we are constantly talking online about the new games or other in-game content that is going to be added or fixed.

The next series of questions was designed to measure the likelihood of buying a game after being exposed to a specific factor on a scale from 1to 10. The first question from the series asked the responders how likely they were to buy a game after a positive recommendation from friends/family/colleagues. As can be observed on following page on the graph number 13, the most respondents chose ‘7’,’8’ and ‘9’ which makes up 21,5%, 27,5% and

10,5% respectively of all answers. The percentage values are visible in the Table 1.

How likely are you to buy a video game after a positive recommendation from friends/family/colleagues?

d 40

e b 20

0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – very unlikely likely Likelihood

Graph 13: Likelihood of Buying a Game After Friends/Family/Colleagues Recomendation

Table 1: linked to graph 13

Thus, my survey proves the statistics about word of mouth made by professional research groups such as Nielsen and WOMMA.

Question 13 asked the responders how likely they were to buy a game after seeing positive reviews about the game of other people on online forums.

How likely are you to buy a video game after seeing positive reviews of other people on online forums about the game?

45 40

n 35

n 30

e 25

o 20

b 15

u 10

N 5 0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – very unlikely likely Likelihood

Graph 14

Table 2: Linked to Graph 14

As can be observed from the graph 14, people trust online forums when they see positive reviews. Scores with highest frequency were ‘5’, ‘7’ and ‘8’ getting 14.1%, 22.6%, and

22.6% respectively. Overall people who chose 6 and above and thus can be assumed that they would buy a game made up of 69.8% of all answers. Therefore, online reviews are a vital channel of communication for word of mouth.

Next question asked how likely people were to buy a game after watching a positive review of a YouTube or Streamer.

How likely are you going to buy a video game after watching positive Youtubers'/streamers' reviews about the game?

t 35

d 30

p 25

r 15

e b 10

N 5 0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – unlikely very likely Likelihood

Graph 15

Table 3: Linked to Graph 15

The graph 15 illustrates that the answer ‘7’ was chosen most of the time among respondents at 19%. It was followed by ‘5’ with 17% and ‘8’ with at 15.5%.

The fleast popular answers were ‘2’,’3’ and ‘10’. Three of these answers got the same frequency of answer which was 11.

Next questioned was designed to get data about effectiveness of traditional commercials such as the TV, radio or newspapers. It is important because it allows me to compare the effectives of traditional channels that marketers use to the to WOM.

How likely are you going to buy a video game after being exposed to a paid commercial in the TV/radio/magazine?

n 35

n 30

s 25

b 10

u 5 N 0

Likelihood

Graph 16

Table 4: Linked to Graph 16

The graph shows that people find standard paid commercials are less effective than word of mouth recommendation. The majority of people are distributed between 1 and 5 on the scale, making 68,5% of all respondents.

Question 16 asked the respondents whether they asked other people about their opinions regarding the game before the final purchase. This is important question as tendency to ask other people about their experience with a product or service varies between industries.

How often do you consult anyone about a video game before you finally buy it?

s t 30

n 25

p s 20

o 15

b 10

N 5 0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – rarely very often Rarity

Graph 17

Rarity Number of Respondents % of All 1 – very rarely 31 15,6% 2 11 5,5% 3 12 6,0% 4 12 6,0% 5 15 7,5% 6 25 12,6% 7 20 10,1% 8 34 17,1% 9 20 10,1% 10 – very often 19 9,5%

Table 5: Linked to Graph 17

As can be seen from the graph the rarity that was chosen the most was 8, making 17.1% of all respondents. However, the second most common answer was 1 which is ‘very rarely’, making 15.6% of all answers. However, after looking at the distribution of people in 1–5

(40,7%) category and 6 -10 (59,3%), it can still be assumed that an average gamer tends to ask others about the game before the purchase.

The next 2 questions are supposed to contrast the likelihood of spreading word of mouth about a game after being either satisfied with the purchase of the game or not. After looking at the two graphs, it can be seen than respondents are more likely to spread the word of mouth if they liked the game, which reflects the data from the studies that overall word of mouth tends to be more positive than negative. However, the difference is very little.

How likely are you going to spread the good word about a video Graph 18 game if you like it?

50 45 40

e 35

o 30

r 20 e

m 15

N 10 5 0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – very unlikely likely Likelihood

How likely are you going to spread the bad word about a video Graph 19 game if you don’t like it?

35 30

d n 25

b 15

N 10

0 1 – very 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – very unlikely likely 58 Likelihood

The following question of the survey asked the respondents to tell where they go if they find contradictive information about the game. According to the graph 20, the most respondents (39%) go to online forums to remove any doubt about the game, followed by friends/family/ colleagues and YouTube scoring 20%. The social media sites scored surprisingly low, as I expected higher frequency there. The lest common answer was

Streamers as it made up to only 1%.

If you find contradictive information about a video game, where do you go first to remove any doubt? Streamers (Twitch.tv) 1% Gaming magazines 1% Gaming website Social Media Sites 12% Online Forums 7% 39%

Youtubers 20% Talk to friends/family/colleague s 20%

Online Forums Talk to friends/family/colleagues Youtubers Social Media Sites Gaming magazines Gaming website Streamers (Twitch.tv)

Graph 20

The last question asked the responders to choose the best way of promoting a game to them. As can be observed from the graph 21, YouTubers were chosen by the most people adding up to 38%. The second-best method was a recommendation from someone you know at 21% followed by social media sites at 17%. To contrast this result, it is important to show traditional channels of marketing. TV scored 9%, gaming magazine 5%, events

7% and radio got 0 answers and therefore it was not included in the graph.

What do you think is the most efficient way to promote a video game to you? Events Streamers Gaming magazine 7% 3% 5% TV commercial Youtubers 9% 38%

Social media sites 17% Recommendation from someone youknow 21%

Youtubers Recommendation from someone youknow Social media sites TV commercial Gaming magazine Events Streamers

Graph 21

6. CONCLUSION

To conclude, word of mouth marketing is an exceptionally important sub-division of marketing. Its effectiveness varies from industry to industry. However, there are some industries, which should pay particular effort to promote its word of mouth activity as it will simply sell the most of your products or services. That is exactly the case within the video game developers and many other technology related sectors. Many of video game producers should reanalyse their marketing budgets and invest much more in word of mouth marketing before it is too late and they run out of business because of the competition. According to a recent study done by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide on how gamers decide what they buy, word of mouth is the most effective way to sell video games at the moment. To be more specific WOM is 3 times more effective in influencing gamer’s

decision than traditional marketing, such as TV or adds on the internet browsers. (Fahey,

2009)

To prove this, I have conducted both – primary and secondary research. As result of my secondary research which was designed to study the online and offline word of mouth techniques of Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard I have come to a few conclusions.

The first one is that it is really hard to asses which company does a better job at their

WOM marketing without necessary data such as direct spending related to it, and the amount of word of mouth activity that the company actually generates. Thus, my finding whether which company of these two is doing a better job at their WOM marketing is speculative and not anchored in real data. However, I still believe that Activision Blizzard has advantage over Electronic Arts in this regard. This is mostly due to their extremely successful Esports scene as well as targeting and cooperating with key influencers in the gaming community. As mentioned before Activision Blizzard works with Ali-a, who is the biggest gaming YouTuber in the world at the moment. My primary research seems to approve my conviction about influencers being the most effective way to promote games.

The graph 21 shows that 38% of all respondents claimed that the most effective way of promotion a game to them is by Youtubers. Another conclusion coming from my secondary research is that companies should not either focus on online or offline word of mouth marketing, but instead implement both of them at the same time as they fill in each other, creating much more buzz. Offline word of mouth still is perceived as more credible, however due to the phenomenon of influencers this is slowly changing, as trust in them is constantly raising. On the other hand, online word of mouth has the ability to spread the word of mouth much faster than traditional WOM. Also, the increasing precision of online measuring tools allows marketers to estimate return on invested capital in online WOM, whereas doing the same thing with offline WOM is almost impossible. 61

Taking into account all of the findings from both – primary and secondary research it has to be concluded that online and offline word of mouth should be included into any modern marketing campaign. The increasing digitalization of our daily lives is only going to make online WOM stronger. What has to be considered is the current generation of children that have been exposed to the Internet since their very first day. These people are going to be responsible for either making online WOM stronger than offline or not. Personally, I believe that online word of mouth is the future of marketing, mainly because of the influencers. These people are a perfect solution for companies, as they get to millions of people while being relative not expensive compared to celebrities or other types of marketing.

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