Institutionalized Havoc - boxing promotion for Electronic Arts' Knockout Kings video game

Brandweek, Sept 27, 1999 by Todd Wasserman

EA STAYS ROOTED VIA CHEEKY, GRASS ROOTS FORAYS

By all indications, a major welterweight bout was brewing. Atlanta was littered with posters trumpeting "Havoc in Hotlanta," a matchup between superstars Sugar Ray Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya. Scalpers had descended on downtown, and callers jammed the switchboard at the Georgia World Congress Center with queries about the event. The World Boxing Council, suspecting an illegal match, was ready to launch an investigation.

At the appointed day and time, the two fighters did meet, with referee Mills Lane between them. But instead of fisticuffs, they settled for a friendly videogame battle, helping Electronic Arts, a Redwood City, Calif., software game maker, launch its new title, Knockout Kings. All the buildup, from the deliberately misleading posters to the actors hired as scalpers, had been orchestrated by Electronic Arts at last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo software trade show.

Such cheekiness is quintessential EA. The company can afford to tap big-name sports stars; last year's media budget exceeded $13 million, per Competitive Media Reporting. Still, EA relies heavily on creative, grass roots marketing to maintain a hip, down-to-earth image that resonates with its base of predominantly young, male fans.

As marketers of athletic shoes and music know, that's no mean feat. What is red-hot one moment is passe the next. That's why EA focuses, as director of lifestyle marketing Glenn Chin says, where "cool incubates."

EA goes wherever young, hip people congregate, making sure those users are ahead of the curve. "When you're a kid, you want to know what's happening first, you don't find out what's happening through mass-market vehicles," Chin said. "By the time it hits print or TV, it's validating a buzz that exists or validating the fact that people don't think it's cool."

Michael Goodman, senior analyst with Yankee Group, Cambridge, Mass., agreed. "It's a hit-driven industry--you're constantly looking for what is the next, hot thing," he said.

EA's method of dispensing that information is foreign to most software gaming companies, but well-known in fashion, sneakers and hip-hop: street teams.

In 11 markets, teams of marketers in street clothes act as proxy sales reps, visiting gaming retailers and keeping them in the loop about upcoming releases, including dates and pricing, well before the news is made public. In addition, they hit record stores, clubs, athletic shoe stores, clothing stores and radio stations. Street teams talk up the games, hand out stickers and other tchotchkes and booklets with "cheat codes," that let hardcore users take advantage of hidden game features.

"We get hired to create a buzz," said Duk-Ki Yu, a street team organizer based in Washington.

"They give us the product, we just get it there at the right time," said Tracey Murrell, a street team organizer in Atlanta. Murrell's team often delivers new games and sets up demos at local retailers the weekend before it hits store shelves.

EA owes a lot of its success to evergreen titles like the John Madden football series, but the street teams have helped, too, said Mike Jannusch, manager of Famcom Games, a Bothell, Wash., retailer. "They do their own thing," he said of the street teams. "If anyone else is doing it, I'm not aware of it."

In an increasingly competitive category, EA has managed to maintain a strong No. 2 ranking with 12.1% of the dollar share for the software game category in the first half of 1999, down just a tad from 12.7% for the year-earlier period. No. I Nintendo has 19.6% for 1999, versus 16.5% in 1998, per PC Data, Reston, Va. EA's stock price has more than doubled over the past year.

This fall, EA is countering the hype blizzard around Sega Dreamcast by expanding its street teams and launching a similar program on 26 college campuses. EA makes games for the Sony PlayStation and PC formats, but not for Dreamcast.

Chin, a veteran marketer who has worked with the Continental Basketball Association, Hewlett-Packard and Pacific Sunwear, brought street teams to EA in 1993, a year after he joined. At the time, Chin was handling NBA Live. Noting a hip-hop crossover, Chin assembled a small-scale version of the teams that would grow in size every year--to a staff of about 200 this year.

Many of them are unpaid college students, working in exchange for real-world experience and free software. Paid employees don't break $300 a week, but many are independent contractors, juggling hip-hop and fashion accounts.

The synergy, plus EA's sponsorship of up-and-coming music acts and athletes (it supported both last year's Warped Tour and this year's Elite AAU High School Summer Team Tournament) makes sure EA's logo is never far from Chin's self-styled "incubation point."