A Wider Net

What do you want?

In the era of always-connected digital marketing, are you taking the opportunity to really ask this question and listen? Here are some examples of ways to encourage feedback from customers that you may find inspiring.

Nintendo launches Wii Marketing Channel:
Nintendo just launched a new capability for their product-of-the-decade, the Wii gaming system. Launched only in Japan so far, the “Minna No Nintendo Channel” is a marketing outreach program that offers users tremendous value while simultaneously funneling volumes of marketing data back to Ninty headquarters. The “channel” (software and services on the Wii are largely grouped into “channels” to appeal to the general consumer TV mindset) appears to have three primary features: Delivering promotional videos, gathering feedback in the form of polls, and delivering demo versions of games for the DS Lite handheld gaming system.

The promotional videos look to be rather uneventful, but I imagine that Nintendo is capturing the viewing history of all of its users. You see, over the last year, Nintendo has been cleverly amassing data about it’s user base. Starting with registration data, they already know something about each user associated with the serial numbers of the consoles. From there, they have been pushing poll questions through the loaded-with-trivia-appeal “Wii Vote” channel for months now, and probably have been storing that data as well. Some votes were seemingly vapid, such as “would you prefer to travel to the future or the past” but could easily be used help make product decisions. A runaway preference for the “future” on this question would push a developer towards futuristic games rather than historical games, as obvious as that may sound.

The polling question part of this new service is, therefore, the real marketing panacea. The “Wii Vote” channel is delightful and fun, but the pure and obvious marketing questions may not have as much replay value, especially since you don’t get to see the results. The clever aspect of this implementation is that the system will check to see what games you own and ask you targeted questions based on them or their implied impressions. The diehard fans will answer them because they want to have a role in shaping the products they get to buy later. This community pool of highly focused users will be free to Nintendo and worth a fortune.

But what do users get for watching these promos and answering these marketing questions? The answer: Free demo downloads for their DS Lite’s. Something that, until this launches, they can get only by bringing their DS Lites to their local retail stores and McDonalds. You give, you get. Providing value in return for providing marketing data or watching an ad or promo is the best way to make people tolerate it.

Communispace: Focus groups on steroids:
I recently visited Communispace, in Watertown, MA. They will build and maintain a vibrant active community of passionate users to meet your specific research needs. They make sure the community is always busy with active discussions, polls, brainstorming, and other activities around a topic. This gives a product manager the opportunity to really get to know a large crop of users and rather than get simple polling answers, they get ideas and insight into where to take their product or service, as well as ideas for new products. The folks in the community tend to love it because they are hand-picked based on their enthusiasm and interest in sculpting the future of their favorite company/product/service.

Blogs: Two ears, one mouth.
A corporate blog is a great way to bring your customers closer to you and give them an opportunity to respond to your ideas and the way you think and do business. If you haven’t already gotten that message, please refer to these two great books that inspired me a little over a year ago to get this sucker going: Blog Marketing and Naked Conversations.