by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief

So you’ve probably seen the news that Apple, right now, is the most valuable company in the world, with the most valuable stock in the world. The generally-held view for their remarkable success is that they became exceedingly good at innovation — delivering products to you that you didn’t even realize you wanted — and not being afraid to charge a mark-up as a result of that successfully cultivated brand image. In short, owning an Apple product was as much a lifestyle statement as it was a piece of functional hardware.

This is what Lockwood does so well with PlayStation Home.

It’s astonishing to realize how broad-spectrum Lockwood’s penetration into Home is. Furniture. Clothing. Games. Estates. Public spaces. Is there a market segment of Home that they haven’t dominated? Further, they’ve actually gone on to invent a market segment in Home — gifting — which is only now starting to be emulated by other development houses.

And this is what makes Lockwood’s latest move, with the new Sunlit Meadow estate, so absolutely ingenious: it’s a status gift, and a brilliant piece of marketing for the Gift Machine.

Lockwood’s Gift Machine is already a megahit in Home. Its tokens are in a constant three-way battle with Mass Media’s tickets and Digital Leisure’s chips for the top spot on SCEA’s top-ten sales lists by number of units sold. Gifting was a heavily-requested piece of user feedback that Lockwood, utilizing the depth of their art team, was able to capitalize upon. And by periodically updating it with new commodities, including unique items that couldn’t be acquired any other way, Lockwood has driven sales in a very unique way: rather than simply going to the mall (or your Navigator) to buy something, you have to either have a friend gift it to you or create an alternate account so you can gift yourself.

Why is this so clever? Because with so much content now flooding into Home, the only way to make something exclusive is to make it harder to acquire. This in turn creates a sense of achievement when you do receive the commodity. And, interestingly enough, this is a great way to market personal estates.

Consider: the personal estate market is saturated. Sure, you’ll have your handful of completionists, but all it takes is one glance at the top-ten sales lists, year over year, to see that personal estate sales aren’t as hot as they used to be. This in turn has forced developers to innovate; nDreams’ Aurora Champions Apartment, for instance, can only be acquired by reaching level 100 in Aurora. Likewise, their Blueprint:Home estate allows users to build their own properties. Meanwhile, over at Heavy Water, they’ve reinvented the personal estate as an unfolding game unto itself with Avalon Keep. These are fantastic innovations to revitalize a sagging market segment.

Lockwood’s asymmetrical sales approach with personal estates has also been fascinating. Recall how the Midnight Glade — one of the most unique and interesting personal estates ever designed for Home — was a free giveaway for anyone purchasing Lockwood’s ultimate fireworks bundle. The key to this is that estates, in the mind of the Home consumer, are worth at least five dollars; thus, by offering it as a free inclusion with a completely different type of commodity, it adds tremendous value to the purchase. Even if you don’t use the fireworks (particularly now that they’ve been supplanted by Lockwood’s own far superior PODI), you still get a phenomenal estate out of the deal.

And now the Gift Machine has a halo product: the Sunlit Meadow.

You’ve seen this meadow before. You saw it in the recent ad campaign for the dinosaur companions, and you saw it in the Drey horsebomb video.

What Lockwood’s really good at is layered marketing; in that Drey ad, you have the clothes themselves. Then you have the horse. And then you have the space it was filmed in. In the process, interest for all three was generated. The best way I can sum the brilliance of this up is with a line from The Fast Show: “You know how, in chess, you’re supposed to think moves ahead? Right, well that bloke o’er there, see — he thinks games ahead.”

The Sunlit Meadow is a statement by Lockwood. It’s them saying that they are so dominant, so ahead of the curve, that they’re willing to throw an entire estate into the Gift Machine, and to hell with making it available to as broad an audience as possible via conventional means. That takes some stones. Christ, what next? A Gift Machine-exclusive updated version of Tank Top? Special Mercia-themed power-ups and gifts?

Lockwood. Damn, they’re smart.

The other reason why the Gift Machine is so brilliant: it pulls you away from all the other stores on the Navigator. Lockwood’s built its own mobile commerce point, making you go there instead of to the Lockwood icon on the Navigator, where your eyeballs, curiosity and wallet might veer away towards some other store on your screen. And now that the Sunlit Meadow is in there as a halo product, you’re compelled to spend more time looking at the comparative bargains in the Gift Machine, which leads to incremental revenue gains and increased visibility for the entire catalogue. Particularly since its pricing doesn’t line up precisely with the token packs you can purchase, compelling you to shop with your leftovers.

The Sunlit Meadow, in terms of social dynamics, becomes a hell of a gift to share with others. Gift giving is big business, and for many there is a correlation between the expense of the luxury gift and how much someone “cares.” Further, for those who want to gift themselves via alternate accounts, there is something to be said for the comparative exclusivity of owning the Sunlit Meadow. The very fact that it isn’t available for convenient mass-purchase may, ironically, help drive its sales — and over a longer period of time than the traditional Eiffel Tower sales curve for a personal estate.

I know that I’ve written extensively here at HSM about the brilliance of Lockwood, but the reason why I’m nursing a semi is because, dammit, they keep doing nearly everything right. What Lockwood has grasped, and it’s only now starting to become a bit more widespread as other parties catch on, is that simply creating a cool commodity and putting it up for sale isn’t enough. There also needs to be a thorough game plan for marketing and advertising, taking into account the behavioral economics of the target demographic. Just as Euro RSCG turned a cheap cerveza — Dos Equis — into a megahit with their “Most Interesting Man in the World” ad campaign, so Lockwood turned an unpainted prop horse into a sales sensation with their “So Much Horse” campaign.

Would the Sunlit Meadow have gotten attention had it been marketed and sold in the conventional methodology the consumer is used to? Sure. It would’ve gotten some oohs and aaahs, just as other pretty settings like the Tropical Bungalow did, and then quickly disappeared off the radar, underperforming as a commercial release. Instead, Lockwood has correctly and adroitly utilized all of the tools at their disposal to demonstrate why they have such a commanding grip on the PlayStation Home marketplace.

And the reward for this extracurricular work? It’s blatantly obvious. Just look at the top-ten sales lists from SCEA. While I doubt Lockwood tokens will take the top spot for August or September, what you might see — and we’ve seen this before — are two different spots on the list taken up with two different Lockwood token packs, with the higher-denomination pack occupying a lower spot on the list. Which, of course, would imply that in terms of aggregate sales volume, Lockwood won.

The real story isn’t about the Sunlit Meadow, as beautiful as it is. The real story is the subtle brilliance of their marketing techniques, which have elevated not just their products but their brand. It’s a business plan worthy of applause — and all the revenue it earns.

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2 Responses to “The Masterstroke of Lockwood’s Sunlit Meadow”

1. Gary160974 says:

   August 21, 2012 at 12:42 pm

   Thats some serious booty kissing lol, but unfortunately all too true, a good product is no longer the requirement in home because that area is so saturated, most product groups have they pinnacle items so developers got to come up with something to sell they wares, because most of the pinnacle items are as good as they going to get. Gifting is something that home is well behind on though because its competitors let you gift every item to anyone. Cucumber sofas still give me an immature laugh when asked to sit on one lol. More seriously if as before, good product doesnt get you enough sales, will it put off smaller developers.

   Reply
2. riff says:

   August 30, 2012 at 1:52 am

   Altruism Marketable- hum its almost like Ayn Rand quotes on Yoga wear. Its just so -um- wrong…but you know it happens. Live, learn and witness the oxymorons in life.

   Reply