The reveal of the name, an
invitation to get to know the game a little better and a personal
invitation to connect with the company and the other fans on
multiple platforms was the perfect way to solidify an emotional
connection with fans. They opened their doors and said, "We're not
quite ready but come on in, we'd love to have you and we want you
to be a part of this."
A lot of companies will wait to
build the community, and invite people to engage with their
creation, until the creation is finished. The belief is that you
don't want your customers to see the messy stages of creation but
rather the finished masterpiece. This couldn't be further from the
truth.
A perfect example of this, in our
current Internet space, is the website
Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a
platform on which creators can share their creations, most often in
a mock-up, model or idea phase, and receive investment dollars from
regular people around the globe. These investment dollars usually
net the investor a reward for doing so (first access to the
product, a sit down dinner with the creator, etc.) and because the
investor is coming in so early on in the process, they often become
emotionally attached to the creation even though it's not a real,
tangible thing yet.
Video game creators are fantastic
at doing this as they invite people in to the various stages of
game development by doling out alpha and beta invitations to their
games. For those of you who aren't gamers, this means that while
the game is being developed, they invite a select group of people
to play the game, report any bugs that are found and report on
their overall experience and opinion of the game. They invite their
testers into the mess so that they can help co-create the finished
masterpiece.
Inviting people to the party
before it begins does not always mean exposing your product,
service or creation to them early, though. It could simply mean
housing a Facebook group or a community forum where you can open up
topics of conversation that will help you gain insight into what it
is that your demographic wants.
Bungie did a mix of both. They
created the communities, as shown in their blog post above, invited
people to connect with them in those ways and they also did alpha
and beta test rounds (to the tune of 4.6 million
players) with their demographic to pull in that
much needed feedback.
For your particular company, think about the ways in which you
might engage your audience before you create your product or
service. How can you begin having the conversations now that you'll
inevitably need to be having later? How can you use the
communities' emotional investment to build momentum, create a
better product or service and ultimately, have a fantastic launch
day?
CHAPTER THREE SUMMARY
(TL;DR)
Invite people to your party before it begins so that you can
create emotional attachment to your creation, build momentum as a
community and gain valuable feedback to make a better
product.