Branded applications and games on Facebook
There’s one thing which you have to realise…
A lot of Brand Managers work to impress their immediate bosses. At times its about perception management and times its genuine results. With ‘Social Media’ being used in almost every conversation…
Brand Managers now have Facebook+Twitter as 20% of their KRA’s.
I’ve written about this before. All they care about is numbers.
Guys who are working in this space would have gotten briefs like:
Apps: We need something big, something viral, something out of the box.
Games: We need something as big as Farmville but of course something different.
What you have to realise is that abroad (US + Western Europe) when a game or an app is being conceptualised…
20% of total costs = Building the app + game
30% = Maintaining the app + Scaling it up
50% = Marketing the app
That’s the biggest problem. People don’t understand the medium. They think they’ll make a simple app and then hope that since this is the social medium…the whole world will use it!
So if you have a 10L budget for your next social media campaign - keep aside 50% for marketing it. There are 550,000 active applications on Facebook at the moment (Facebook Stats). Yours will just be another drop in the mighty ocean. Probably you and your boss will be the only ones using this app.
Why are Zynga games so popular? Well even before you played Farmville or Mafia Wars they were pumping in $5M every month into marketing their games and what you don’t know is that they are still doing so.
