EA Sports - A Tale of Two Tribal Strategies

[mjussawalla]

In my day-to-day work I am a partner at a strategy consulting firm which looks at how companies can leverage consumer tribes (i.e. core fans).

I have put together a blog post discussing the different strategies of the NCAA/Madden teams. Enjoy!

http://www.accelteon.com/blog/2009/0...al-strategies/

[cornbox]

Point on, very interesting. Why do you think they have evolved so differently?

[pfunk880]

Very interesting blog post. It will certainly be interesting to see how the two philosophies affect sales and customer response this year.

[JMD]

I'm a fan of video game football, but I do not belong to any "Tribe" .

[mjussawalla]

Thanks guys.

Not sure why exactly. Perhaps at some point one of the developers from Tiburon could explain (not sure if they can though). But we have seen this several times in various businesses. Think of Vans Shoes, Harley Davidson, Apple for example.

First, it takes leadership - you have to have guts to say - 'we are going to focus our efforts on the top 10-20% of our customer base.' Thus, NCAA's team is playing it safe by using the trusted formula of building slowly (which is understandable). Madden's team must have decided to gun it and say 'we are going to build the most realistic experience' (of course at the risk of alienating the masses who want something more playable and fun). For example, MLB 2K9 may be terrible for core baseball fans, but it maybe good enough for me.

Second, you have to have a long term strategy. We always stress, that this is a 2-3 year plan - not something that will make changes in 1-2 quarters or at the end of the year. I am not 100% sure, but I believe the Madden team has a better idea of what Madden 12 looks like than the NCAA team has of what NCAA Football 12 looks like.

[mjussawalla]

Quote: Originally Posted by JMD

I'm a fan of video game football, but I do not belong to any "Tribe" .

You may not belong to any official group; but you are interacting with other members of the community - and share a common passion with them. Otherwise you would not have over 600 posts on this site.


Also, please don't take it that the NCAA has not been supportive; as I blogged about earlier, I thought that the idea to enable Brad Nessler to add our name in the game was brilliant and was supporting the tribe 100%.
http://www.accelteon.com/blog/2009/0...ith-the-tribe/

[da ThRONe]

I think the key is to appeal to the tribe. A good marketing team should be able to market anything to the casual fan. For example Madden will market there game as "Everything on Sunday". Its a lot harder to convince the tribe. And alot of game buzz is not based on marketing its based on word of mouth. Especially when you consider that presentation is something that because it adds to replayability it is something both tribe and mass audience want in there games.

[mjussawalla]

Quote: Originally Posted by da ThRONe

I think the key is to appeal to the tribe. A good marketing team should be able to market anything to the casual fan. For example Madden will market there game as "Everything on Sunday". Its a lot harder to convince the tribe. And alot of game buzz is not based on marketing its based on word of mouth. Especially when you consider that presentation is something that because it adds to replayability it is something both tribe and mass audience want in there games.

Definitely agree with you.

In fact, you could say that Adam, Ian and the others at EA have done more to market this game (whether they realize it or not) than the marketing department has. I come here more often to find out info about the game than I do the official site.

No glossy magazine ad, slick TV commercial, or box design will convince us one way or another to purchase this game.