Mantic Jamplified Deadzone – How Much Was It Worth?

A lot of people like to give Games Workshop a hard time for what they perceive to be an old-fashioned or, at worst, even clumsy approach to handing their online and social media presence. Games Workshop’s decision to shut down their main Facebook-page is often cited as proof.

Whatever your view of GW’s online marketing is, it is – I would argue – more interesting to look at the companies that do it differently. Mantic Games in particular appears to me as a group of people unafraid to experiment with different social media. Their recent Twitter-based teasing and story-telling leading up to the Deadzone Kickstarter is a good example.

Towards the end of their Deadzone Kickstarter, Mantic Games launched another experiment: A Jamplify Campaign to promote the Kickstarter in its closing days. Jamplify is a frightfully effective marketing tool. I expect we will see Jamplify used more often in future Kickstarter-campaigns.

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What is Jamplify?

Jamplify is a start-up by a few former Bankers that launched last year. In essence, it works to (the now ubiquitous) promotional giveaways. Instead of giving the prize to a random winner, however, the prize (or prizes) go to the “top promoters”, the people who manage to refer the most internet-traffic to the campaign by promoting the campaign on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

There is also a hint of gamification added to the mix, as Jamplify-Promoters earn new “levels”  the more traffic (“hits”) they bring in.

Why do people promote on Jamplify?

REWARDS: Artists and brands offer unique rewards (“ScratchBacks”) to fans based on the number of referrals the fans drive to their content.

LEVELS: Fans can achieve greater levels of fandom based on the number of referrals they are able to drive, ascending the ranks from Fan to Diehard to MVP.

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Mantic’s Jamplify Campaign & Me

Mantic Games launched their Deadzone-Jamplify campaign (“Jampaign”) on May 24th with a twitter announcement.

Fans! Spread the word with @jamplify and you can win awesome rewards! Get involved here: t.co/JaSPDf938W

— Mantic Games (@manticgames) May 24, 2013

The prizes Mantic Games offered (who were also doing it for the first time) were a digital download for all participants, a free resin miniature for the top 3 and an extra Deadzone terrain-sprue for promoter numero uno.

I decided to jump in. Partly because I love getting free miniatures and partly because I wanted to write this blog post you are reading now. I manage to place all right (though far from the top), mainly thanks to all my loyal blog-readers who clicked links like mad and endured my blog being swamped with Mantic Ads (thanks everyone! I’ll try to think of something fitting).

But holy, it sure was a lot harder than I expected. The sheer amount of effort Mantic’s fans ended up pouring into this campaign to help the Kickstarter (and win free stuff) is mind-boggling.

I don’t think even Mantic Games themselves expected that kind of response.

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How Much Is It Worth?

The main reason I believe we’ll see more Jamplify-campaigns soon, especially related to miniature-game Kickstarters, is in how effective Jamplify seems to be.

It is impossible (for me) to compare Jamplify with “traditional” giveaways”. Obviously I cannot know how much traffic an old-fashioned giveaway of the same prizes would’ve gotten Mantic.

I can (with all caveats that apply, of course) compare it (roughly) to the equivalent in traditional online-advertising as Jamplify gives you the statistics on how many hits and referrals each promoter (and the top 10) have contributed to any given campaign.

A further caveat that I cannot account for is that advertisers on Dakka or Google likely pay for every click (incl. the same person clicking twice), while Jamplify filters for unique visitors (I think).

Ignoring this, the Dakka and Adsense pricing makes for pretty good lower and upper limits respectively. The rest is simple math.

It is anyone’s guess how much all of Mantic’s 94 Jamplify-promoters contributed in total.

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Thoughts?

It’s an imperfect comparison in many ways. Still, if my above caveat on unique visitors is correct (?), the true “advertising-equivalent” of this Jamplify campaign is likely closer (or even above) the upper limit than the lower limit. And it only ran for little over a week.

There is no denying that – no matter the prizes – there is something addictive to the Jamplify system of competing for the “highest score”. The system is as brilliant as it is simple.

The downside to Jamplify – of course – is that it pretty much shafts the “normal” fan who does not have an active blog, twitter-account, facebook-group, etc.. to mobilize for a Jamplify contest.

The “smart” thing to do for companies trying to hype a Kickstarter (or anything else) would likely be running regular giveaways as well as  Jamplify campaign.

Still, I am baffled by the amount of activity Mantic Games was able to mobilise with this in a short final week. Expect to see more miniature-game Kickstarter jamplify in the future!

Z.