Pokemon Go: let's disassemble a viral PR campaign promoting this application without hysteria. ver 2.0

Knowing the professionalism of most of the inhabitants of the planet Habrahabr, I decided to publish my research here. In order to 1) get additional information about this interesting case, 2) try to find out through the trade union who is the author of this gigantic PR project? ( See the new research about the ideologist of this project of August 5 )

First of all, we must understand that behind this game from Niantic there are 3 corporations with huge financial and PR resources: Nintendo, Google (from 2015 Alphabet) and The Pokémon Company. They have the experience and resources to make a "world-interest bomb explode." And she exploded.
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Why am I interested in the case of this game? Because even the tentacles of this viral PR campaign reached me, and I live in the center of Russia, in a country where the game is still not officially available. All TV channels, Internet portals are full of branded content, and people are at a loss: “what kind of new miracle is this?”

I was particularly interested in the case when, on July 21, simultaneously on 2 channels (one local, second federal) I saw the news that “crowds of people are looking for a pokemon in Central Park”. And the same video was shown.

Here the familiar schemes of viral promotion began to emerge. This is exactly what those who wish to spread viral information do: they are all efforts to promote the central media asset (in this case, the video), put it in the center of media attention. But the secret is that the video is branded; it’s about the commercial game Pokemon Go, which the media will certainly say. Not always flattering, not always accurate, but there is no difference, because the customer received free access to the media.

Having started the discussion last week in the professional environment, I did not receive adequate support for my simple idea that the game is actively moving in the market using planned viral stuffing.

It was important for everyone to speak out about the innovativeness of the product, the natural increase in attendance, and talked about crowds of fans. But I am interested in the article exclusively PR-support for the promotion of this application . Obviously, not only is she a success factor, but it is the PR campaign that is in the focus of my scrutiny, because I am first and foremost a marketer and advertiser.

Drenched in misunderstanding from all sides, I sat down and in a few hours I found a certain amount of informational stuffing that was made from the date the application was launched. I broke them by day and analyzed how this campaign was prepared. The first conclusion I made is the work of professionals of the highest level, because such a scale and such coherence of simultaneous outputs can be achieved only with total control of the whole process by one person.

For such work, many hands are needed, in particular, to create a virus about CentralPark, they attracted the company - Jukin Media (“Viral videos are our world” - written on their website), it is listed in the description for the video .

But my question is to prof. community remains the same : who manages the entire advertising campaign? It would be good to know this, since I am sure that no one will draw a beautiful video for this case and will not go to Cannes with it. Because this is a lot of money spent on the PR campaign, and the impact of this hype on the value of Google shares (now Alphabet) and Nintendo. Here are the July charts:




See stock prices here: www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog/interactive-chart

The exact calculation of investors:

Why do so many resources flow into this PR campaign? Because investors were obvious plan for the success of the new application "Pokemon Go":

1. Based on the success of the game Ingress, which was developed by Niantic Labs and has been in existence for Android since 2012. Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)
2. We connect the multi-million audience of fans of the Pokemon universe (provided by The Pokémon Company)
3. We use all available PR-channels for large-scale entry into the market.
   And if you sum up the PR resource of Google, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, you get a huge reach.

Excerpt from Wikipedia :
“ In September 2015, it was announced that Niantic together with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are developing the Pokémon Go application. The following month, Niantic reported that Google, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are investing $ 30 million in the development of the company and its products. In February 2016, the company announced that it had received another $ 5 million in investment . ”

Below are data on the success of the game Ingress since 2012. Judging by the page of John Hanke (the founder of Niantic), he pays much more attention to it.

Now two important terms in the technology of creating media "viruses"

1. In any viral PR campaign, there is an overriding stage called “sowing”. Sowing is a paid (or barter, or by personal acquaintance) placement of a news story in the “seed media”, which people and other media must pick up for further distribution. Such “seeding” is usually called “Paid media”; placement in own info-channels is called “Owned media” (in possession); and received for free - Earned media (earned).
2. As well as the second term - "virus coefficient". This ratio indicates how much we get free views on the number of purchased ones. For example, if we bought 1 million views on Youtube, and the final number of views after a certain time is 2 million, then the coefficient of virality is two. This ratio applies absolutely to any information .

Signs of "seeding" are

1. Instant response . Those. information usually appears immediately on many resources in the shortest time from the date of the posting of the viral video (for example) to which all this news refers.
2. The media that hosts the information . Ideally, it is a reputable media outlet that does not post unverified and commercial information.
3. Headline It contains the name of the product being promoted and the exact information message that other media should pick up.
4. Content and design news . "Sowing news" is usually made out of high quality, it is inserted into it with pictures with logos and video.

On the other hand, the usual journalistic note (in Earned media) is much more concise, contains facts, different photos (and not one that is actively promoted, or video), in the usual news, mention of the brand and description of the facts with enthusiasm is avoided.

Further dissemination of information (through Earned media) is characterized by the fact that the reaction is delayed, the headlines are simpler, the news is short and dry, and journalists try to look at the informational occasion from the other side. This second wave of news, which follows the "sowing", is very easy to recognize by their "poor" branded content. But this is of no interest to anyone, since it's free.

We now turn to the analysis of the case.

For those who think that the virus originated by itself, I bring a chart from Google Trends, where you can see that the trend started in September 2015, and then continued from January 2016. The PR campaign was preparing very seriously:



We will start the analysis of the case from the “July Rally” of information sowing, which started 1 day before the game's release date, then we will see how it developed, and then we will dig a little into the history of how the campaign was being prepared. The peculiarity of this PR-campaign is that from the very beginning almost all the most famous world mass media were involved in it.

For clarity, the employees of TitanSoft brought the key PR campaigns from September 2015 to July 15, 2016 (before the launch of the “crowd in Central Park” virus) into the Table. You can get acquainted with her at the link: https://docs.google.com



Everyone can find the first stuffing when sowing. Just take the world-famous media and make a request to "Pokemon" by the date of the beginning of the intended seeding, as in the screenshot. And you see all the first, high-quality branded exits, and further on the dates there is already a wave of “gained exits” (earned media), but with a delay of several days.



Below is a mini-map of sowing info-occasions through the world's largest media by dates:

Viral history about Central Park, from July 15

How was this PR campaign prepared? We leave in history until 2014

And now delve into the story, because Such results of the PR campaign are difficult to achieve without good artillery preparation in past periods.

Results

You must understand that we have found only the very top of this PR campaign. But anyone who reads can dig out similar exits on other portals. The simplest way to search through Google I described at the beginning of the article.

I would like to draw your attention:

• On the speed and scale of information pressure (and we found only the tip of the iceberg);
• On the essence of informational messages, the majority have “viral” content in order to be picked up by other media.

It is early to draw conclusions and evaluate the game itself. In fact, I, as a marketer and specialist in digital-PR, are interested in the product itself in the second place. In the analysis given in the article, I tried to collect precisely the initial information outputs (seeding), not including the outputs in Earned media. So that you can follow the logic of the development of PR-campaign for this application.

The purpose of my article:

• to draw attention to the work of world-class PR-professionals and try to publicly analyze their work from a professional point of view;
• if someone knows the person who runs this campaign, I would appreciate the link (in the comments or in person) to his account, or the website, or vimeo channel, to follow his projects and learn from him. Thank!

Adding on August 5: read a new study about the ideologist of this PR campaign .