• by Christine Champagne , December 1, 2009

NBA 2K10 pulls out all the stops

You can't rest on your laurels when it comes to sports video game marketing," says 72andsunny creative director Glenn Cole, whose agency, in collaboration with the sports branding firm Zambezi, launched an ambitious full-court marketing press this past September to promote the October release of NBA 2K10.

Well, can't you rest on your laurels just a little bit when you are marketing a highly anticipated release like NBA 2K10? After all, the NBA 2K video game series published by 2K Sports has outsold rival ea's more mature NBA Live title in recent years.

Meanwhile, LA Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant is this year's NBA 2K10 cover athlete and campaign star. It would seem as though 2K Sports has a virtual slam dunk on their hands. "It is easier to build on a success than it is to get somebody to switch from Coke to Pepsi," Cole concedes.

Still, while NBA 2K10 certainly has momentum behind it, Cole points out that there is a tendency for gamers to pass on the latest incarnation of any sports title that comes out every year like the NBA 2K games do. "Convincing somebody to drop $60 again when they feel like they've got a pretty good gaming experience already with [the previous year's version] - that's our biggest challenge," says Cole.

Especially in this economy.

Down-and-Out Ballers
If you think video games are recession-proof, think again. "Nothing is recession-proof, and video games are no different," says Jesse Divnich, the director of analyst services for Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. He believes the video game industry will likely see a 6 percent drop in overall revenue in 2009 as compared to 2008.

Chris Sanner, executive editor of sports video gaming news and review site OperationSports, agrees that the current recession has had an impact on sales. "I run a sports video game site, and I play every game I possibly can," says Sanner. "But even I've held off buying questionable titles this year just because I'm trying to save money."

So now more than in recent years when consumers were more flush with cash (or, at the very least, credit), 72andsunny needed to give gamers a reason to buy the latest game in the series, which happens to be marking its 10th anniversary this year. It was important to make this season matter - to convince gamers that they'd be missing out on something big if they skipped this version of the game, says Cole.

Solid Gold
To do that, 72andSunny worked with the game's developers, Visual Concepts, to enhance the product. "We asked ourselves, 'Is there any way to add value to the actual game over last year's game as opposed to just coming up with a marketing message?'" says Cole. "So one of our contributions, which I'm really proud of, is a feature called The Gold Room."

The Gold Room, which can be accessed by those who purchase the $100 10th anniversary edition of NBA 2K10 as well as those who buy the standard version and earn their way in through regular play and high scores, offers average gamers the opportunity to play online against VIPS, including NBA players and celebrities. It is entirely possible, Cole points out, that the average kid from Minnesota could find himself playing against an NBA pro, a hip-hop star or a fashion icon.

Add-ons like The Gold Room for which you have to pay a premium are becoming more and more common in video games, notes Divnich. "Generally, these packs are targeted towards the biggest fans of the game. If you think about it, everyone who buys NBA 2K10 will have to pay $60, but within that group, there are surely some that would pay $70, $80, maybe even $100," he says.

Other NBA 2K10 enhancements that are available with both the 10th anniversary edition and the standard game - 72andsunny didn't conceive the following ideas but floated them to the top, Cole clarifies - include My Player Mode, through which you can create a player that actually looks like you and put him on whatever team you'd like, and Crews, a feature that allows friends to form a crew and play as their own team against other crews or NBA teams.

The Big Takeover
In addition to playing a role in the development of the game's add-ons and special features, 72andSunny constructed a marketing campaign centered on the general idea of control, which asks gamers, "How will you take over?"

"Traditionally, in video game marketing, there is one nuclear feature in each game that a marketing campaign will focus on, but I think nowadays there are so many advancements per game that you do the games a disservice by focusing on one new feature," says Cole. "NBA 2K10 has a lot of subtle upgrades that essentially give you more control, which makes playing the game more fun - you can take over in more ways. That was the product insight."

The takeover theme is at play throughout all of the elements of the campaign: Online films directed by Matt Piedmont of the creative think tank Prettybird feature G4 host Chris Hardwick sitting on a couch playing NBA 2K10 and talking a little smack with cover athlete Bryant and other players; for the television spots, animation collective psyop tweaked the actual NBA 2K10 video game animation to make the players even more, well, animated; the outdoor ads in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco feature Bryant eluding a pack of the NBA's best players - and even a team mascot - to make a dunk; and print ads, which "took over" the bottom fifth of every single page in magazines like XXL, ESPN the Magazine, and SLAM to highlight a different feature of the game. "It was a really fun and disruptive piece and one of my favorite elements of the campaign," Cole says of the SLAM takeover.

All of the elements in the campaign, including the online ads, drive gamers to 2Ktakeover.com, which, in turn, redirects them to a Facebook fan group. "A lot of the kids who love hoops start and end their day on Facebook," says Cole.

NBA 2K10's Facebook fan page had more than 3,000 fans at press time and serves as a hub for the NBA 2K10 campaign's content and messaging, providing members with extras such as exclusive updates and information from the game's developers. Given the importance on online media in the lives of the young male target the NBA 2K10 campaign aims to reach, was it necessary for marketing effort and dollars to go into traditional media like television? Divnich says yes. "The best way to reach the mainstream audience continues to be television," he says. "The truth is, brute force marketing - television, radio, newspaper - continues to be the biggest driver of revenue."

"TV still works to a certain extent, but a lot of people don't watch tv that much anymore. I'd say the best way to target us is on places like Facebook," counters Sanner, who, at 22, happens to fall squarely into the sweet spot the campaign wants to reach. "It's getting to the point now where these games are becoming household names, and once they become household names, you don't have to get your brand out there so much, you just have to get people coming into the fold more and more through places like Facebook."