Session Title: The Evolution of Habbo Hotel’s Virtual Economy by Sulka Haro (Lead Designer, Sulake) Overview of Habbo Hotel Age range is 12-17, with $74 million in revenue Offices in 13 countries They maintain 16 instances = 16 separate virtual economies 10 years old this year Sulka describes the 6 phases of change that the Habbo Hotel’s Virtual Economy ha […]
Friday morning’s keynote was from none other than Sid Meier himself, co-founder of Firaxis and the creator of the Civ series. Session Title: The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong) from Sid Meier Meier began his talk with the assertion that gameplay is primarily a psychological experience and player psychology is primarily based on [...] […]
Last week I sat through a couple sessions at GDC10 – excellent talks all around. Here’s a quick write-up of my notes part 1, but more detailed coverage also available here. Session Title: Achievements Considered Harmful – Chris Hecker Hecker classifies achievements as tangible – cash, gold star, trophy verbal – praise symbolic – achievements like on Xbox A […]
Folks in case you weren’t aware, there is a “War of the Birds” going on between El Pollo Loco, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and <insert your chicken joint here>.
El Pollo Loco CEO Steve Carley launched the first salvo at KFC by challenging them to bring their new grilled chicken offering to a taste test in California or Kentucky. Mr. Carley set up an 800 number for customers to call in and weigh in on both brands, and even had an option for an authorized representative of KFC to get set up in the system.
And call in they did. KFC reached into it’s bag of tricks and pulled out a notsocommoncents tactic of prank phone calls proclaiming that KFC has the best chicken. El Pollo Loco did what anyone in a “combat” situation would do, they laid an ambush. Not only were these phone calls traced back to Yum Brands corporate headquarters in Kentucky, but the callers were clearly using KFC jargon, i.e referring to the original recipe of 11 herbs and spices as “the OR”.
KFC, the next time you want to prank call the competition, I humbly suggest that you use a throwaway prepaid cellphone.
Mikal’s note: Taste test aside – KFC corporate headquarters should be busy trying to figure out how to staff up for Oprah’s KFC coupon.
So we’re in the first week of relaunching the blog. Complete with not yet altogether template – and devoid of course of content. Justin and I made the conscious decision to just get it up and running and observe how the blog evolves from there. I don’t want writers block to settle in, so I’ll kick things off from the first post.
What are the goals of this blog? Brandon, Justin and I all have different reasons for wanting to give the blog a go so I’ll speak to my own.
When we launched the blog in 2005 we were just some young braniacs who were on the tail end of a six year journey of matriculation having entered an accelerated MBA program right out of high school. Over time we completed a number of internships, excelling in each one yet we held loftier goals. We didn’t want to just enter the work force and climb up the corporate ladder, we wanted to be driving forces behind business success. Accordingly the goal of notsocommoncents was to apply our business acumen beyond coursework and to join the conversation buzzing beyond our campus. Worded another way our goal was to extend our academic experience (the teaching and learning from others) to the inter webs.
In the process I learned a lot about online marketing, corporate complacency, herd mentality, good enough, and even homogeneous thinking within corporations. We gained more and more readers and more than our fair share of kudos. So this blog really served as the launching pad to our realization that yes – there really is a better way to approach problems and do business. So why relaunch? Why now?
For me its probably for the same reasons. Over the past three years I’ve immersed myself in data, market research, competitive analysis, marketing books, consumer behavior and a host of other topics that peak my interest and while I have great colleagues who are extraordinarily helpful and insightful (one of the perks of working at Microsoft) I feel I’m fighting the onset of corporate glaucoma. Which is to say the narrowing of business vision – symptoms include difficulty separating out common practice from common sense (one is good, one is the enemy of good, guess which is which).
A business or an organization’s ability to keep fresh perspective, learn from itself, its customers, its competitors and other industries is directly correlated with prolonged success. Accomplishing this is a continuous challenge for any organization. Especially as we industry observers look to crown the next maven or guru.
But maybe we’ve been looking at it wrong, maybe it is less about the person, making decisions and more about their approach to the problem.
Doesn’t this sound like an area ripe for academic exploration?
It does to me. I’m glad to be back interwebs, I look forward to learning with you.
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