Advertising Home: Where Is It?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
I’m not a football fan — or any other sports fan — at all. I just don’t find too much entertainment from watching people do these sorts of activities, and I have never really enjoyed playing any of them in my life either. Yet when the Super Bowl comes around each year, I find myself wanting to watch it: not for the game itself, but for the advertisements created for it.
The Super Bowl is an enormous money machine for advertisers. Each year, millions of dollars are spent coming up with the funniest, most clever ads that are released for the whole year. There are even shows that spring from these ads to showcase the best of them through the years, and through it all, huge amounts of money are made for the NFL, the network, and hopefully the companies advertising their products. In a recent survey, eighty-six percent of those polled said they look forward to these ads each year; this is for something that many turn their volume down for the rest of the year.
Best ads of the year!
How does this relate to Home?
Simple. Where the Super Bowl has millions of watchers only one day a year, Home has millions of participants every day of the year — yet you see very little in the way of advertisement, either about Home as a product, or in Home for other products. Sure, we have had a few through the years since Home was created — the Ford dealership and the other cars that have been represented quickly spring to mind — but as Cheeky pointed out in his brilliant articles about in-game advertisement, I think that Home and Sony are missing the boat.
How about Sony themselves? They don’t really have any big advertisements in Home for their own company. There is the Sony clip that pops up in some of the videos created in Home, but you see very little or no real presence for their own company here except during E3. Granted, Sony is not one giant monolithic entity — there are multiple divisions and departments, each with their own budgets, all somewhat interconnected — but can it really be that difficult for Sony to use Home as an advertising platform for PlayStation commodities?
Imagine such a store. In this store you would be able to link to the outside PSN store that is on the XMB and possibly also be able to link to another online store for bigger products, like televisions and PS3’s that could be purchased and sent to your home. This may seem like something that is available elsewhere, and it is of course, but the point I am trying to make is that the mere presence of a Sony store in the Mall here — or, better yet, in the Hub — will boost awareness of Sony products and make Home feel more connected to the rest of the PlayStation world.
I’m actually a bit surprised they haven’t done this already. In real life, many companies, Sony included, have opened outlet stores in malls across the country because they know that when you have a presence in the public’s sight it bolsters your company’s coffers through the simple fact that if you are out of sight, you are out of mind. Having a reminder in plain view is smart, so why haven’t they done this in what is arguably one of their most unique online marketplaces ever created?
Why not one of these in Home?
You could argue that Sony already has a presence in Home, through Threads and the other stores they run, but though they are owned by them, the only time you see their name is at checkout and in the descriptions of the items. That isn’t quite the same as an in-your-face store would be. Others have already done this — Billabong, for example. Why not Sony themselves?
This same principle would work for any company that could sell ads in Home. Second Life has many of these available, as Cheeky has said in his articles, and I think that Home would actually benefit, as would Sony, from the inclusion of advertisers. It would bring in revenue streams from outside sources which would allow Sony to keep Home open for business without riding on the backs of the people who inhabit it. We all know that the few pay for the many in Home already; it is a whale economy. This new stream of money would alleviate much of the cost.
(The question, of course, is whether or not Home is sufficiently attractive, numbers-wise, to bring in advertisers — including other divisions of Sony.)
I think that Home is a great untapped resource. No, it doesn’t have to have a Super Bowl ad — that’s way beyond what any ad budget would approve — but sell Home as a cheap alternative advertising solution and reward those in it, and you have a win-win situation that will continue for years to come, even into the next generation consoles, if that is in the cards.
I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but I think brand awareness is important and I hope that the powers that be think about it and try something new. Home was barely mentioned at the E3 last year — aside from No Man’s Land — and treated like a side note to the bigger picture because it’s not “new.” And I believe it is worth much more than that. It has influenced people in so many ways for the good, both personally and even professionally for some. Anything that does that is ripe for outside companies to pick up and I think it would be a great way to get Home out there for more people to see and participate in, which in turn brings more profits for all involved.
February 9th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 3 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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Well I personally Would love to see some more ads in Home like building ads and billboards, but what can I say I love that type of stuff.
I’m sure there was a point where Home Square (in EU) was a sea of adverts and billboards, enough complaining saw a reduction of them after a time. But this question of why Sony don’t advertise their own ‘other’ products is beyond me still. I’ve kinda been expecting it if I’m honest. Image being able to walk into a Sony shop and not only browse for Sony branded Home items, but be able to order hardware from Home to your real home.
Imagine viewing -- and then buying -- a PS4 from your PS3! Amd to be able to do that with LOTS of Sony stuff can only increase sales. There are a lot of idiot self-proclaimed Sony fanboys running around inside Home that think all they make are Playstations. Imagine what they’d do when faced with a new world of Sony stuff!
Not just that, but even little things. You just realised your Dualshock has a broken L2 trigger? You’re already in Home, go to the Sony Shop and order a new one! They’re missing a trick not advertising themselves in their own world, well raised point Burbie.
Nice article. It echoes a post that I wrote on the Sony Forum a couple weeks ago. Copied and pasted here for your reading enjoyment…
“The first thing that Sony needs to do for Home’s future is to redefine the platform’s mission statement. What is Home’s main function and why does it need to exist in the future?
From what I understand, Home was initially conceived as a gathering place for video gamers to meet and launch their games from the relatively new PS3 console. While Home may have been designed as a conduit for gamers and a promotional tool for the games themselves, it grew into a self-sustaining entity with its own massive library of content. The more that the emphasis has tilted towards “Home” content, the more it began to fail as a promotional tool. If Home had been more successful as a hub for gamers, we wouldn’t be seeing the current controversy regarding core features being made exclusive to PS Plus subscribers. Home’s hard-core users and PS Plus subscribers would be the same group of people but that really is not the case. As such, the features in Home being made exclusive to PS Plus subscribers come off more as coercion to buy the service than merely promotion of the service. It’s just a poor way to build or reward customer loyalty…but that’s been covered ad nauseum elsewhere.
Third-party developers have tried to create their own tent-pole games for Home with mixed results. Recently, the prices associated with Home games have reached or exceeded the levels of stand-alone games. Unfortunately, the games themselves pale by comparison, tend to be riddled with bugs and generally wobble during their early stages due to strain on Home’s servers. SCEA has essentially turned their segment of Home over to the third-party developers for games, content and even special events at this stage. For these Home games to succeed in the long-term, the games need to have better quality control to reduce errors, regular updates to keep players engaged and some cost-containment to avoid unflattering comparison with disc-based games.
SCEE has done a better job of maintaining Home’s promotional drive. The EU region regularly sees more game-related events, free rewards and public space re-skins to introduce new products, much to the chagrin of NA users. Still, so many obvious potential promotional opportunities have been missed. Sony likes to say that the PS3 “only does everything.” Guess who else does everything? Sony Corporation themselves. Their electronics and entertainment divisions are massive, yet we see very little Sony presence on Home anymore. Remember the old “Make Believe” quests at Central Plaza? Seems like a long time ago.
Consider this. Last year Sony Pictures released the 50th anniversary James Bond movie, Skyfall. The movie went on to become the highest grossing movie that Sony Pictures ever released (the highest grossing movie in UK history). Adele’s theme song on a Sony record label was a top-10 hit. There was also Skyfall-related DLC released for a James Bond game. Did anyone see anything about Skyfall or James Bond in Home? Talk about missed opportunity.
How about cross-promotion with the electronics division? Why in the world do the televisions and radios in Home carry the Loot brand name? Sony could have slapped their logo all over Home’s virtual electronics. How about some sort of Home functionality for Sony Ericsson phones or Sony Internet-connected TV’s? I know that they can’t run the platform itself but some sort of application to link the platform to their electronics must be possible. Sony network and Sony electronics can provide mutual promotion to a built-in customer base. You surely see a fair share of Sony Electronics product placement in the James Bond movies. It sounds like preaching to the choir but it’s baffling that Sony doesn’t take advantage.
Maybe people do not want to see advertising plastered all over Home’s public spaces but it could help to keep prices down, sponsor more free events/games and provide long-term sustainability.
That’s more words than I was planning to type but I think that SEN has to decide what Home’s purpose for the future is going to be. Are they just leasing out space to third party developers? If so, then there has to be some mechanism to ensure quality and cost controls for their customers. Sony inevitably will take the heat for developers’ misfires and inadequacies. If Home is going to be more of a promotional tool, as it was originally intended to be, Sony must learn to promote themselves. In addition to free advertising for their own products, Sony can demonstrate Home’s advertising potential to other businesses seeking new avenues to showcase their products. Give Home a raison d’être.
In business these days, branding is everything and the Sony brand is among the best-known worldwide. The future of Home does not rest with handing the platform off to virtually unknown third parties, regardless of how important they are for providing content to the platform.”