Ouya Missing Social Media Marketing

I got all caught up in the Ouya Kickstarter campaign yesterday because I'm really interested in DIY initiatives, especially with things like personal electronics. In a world where a few big companies dominate the market, it's fun to see a group of amazing people come together and try to provide an alternative that allows individuals to expand the gaming platform.

Flush with the energy of the tens of thousands of backers pouring money into the project, watching the very well produced pitch video, and reading through the description, I pulled out my social media marketing hat and started to look at what steps that had taken to prepare their new brand for disrupting the video game console status-quo. That's when my jaw dropped in surprise...

THINGS THAT ARE MISSING:

1. OUYA.COM IS NOT REGISTERED IN THEIR NAME

I guess by the time that they registered their actual domain (http://www.ouya.tv), the other was already taken. Also, I'm really confused as to why they say "the revolution will be televised" when they're designing a video game console. I HOPE that I can play my video game on a TV. To be such a possibly large brand, its kind of a disaster to not own the top level .com domain.

The site is instead a photo blogger with the subtitle "CHINESE VALUES WITH WESTERN CHARACTERISTICS".

Moreover, there is no actually landing page website. It's just redirect to the Facebook Page.

2. @OUYA IS NOT REGISTERED TO THEIR BRAND

The twitter handle registered to Ouya is @playouya. It's not terrible, but the real @ouya handle is owned by someone in Paris who opened their account in 2008 and has 3 tweets. It's going to be hard for people to find and who knows what the actual user will do. I think some of the Kickstarter money or at least a free console needs to be given to this guy and get the real Twitter handle.

3. THE FACEBOOK PAGE HAS A DIFFERENT NAME THAN THE BRAND

The actual Facebook Page is Facebook.com/ouyas. What does the "S" stand for? I understand that the name Ouya was already taken, but why not stick with the "playouya" name instead? Now you have split social media profile (playouya and ouyas).

Something else that concerns me is that they didn't include any links to their Twitter or YouTube here. It's next to impossible to find their other social media platforms. Moreover, there is no direct email contact.

4. YOUTUBE CHANNEL HAS A DIFFERENT NAME THAN THE BRAND

They chose the Ouyas name again, which I can understand is trying to keep conformity amongst the various social media platforms. However, upon second look, there exists no Ouya YouTube channel. Again, perhaps it was already taken and/or deleted a long time ago.

I work in the social media/Internet video production world, so I'm not one to say, "Your video views are low," but since they raised $2.5 MILLION in less than two days, have amazing press, and have such a kick-ass pitch video on Kickstarter, I expected a lot more of their YouTube page. They're saying, "The revolution will be televised." Well, honestly, if it's anything like your YouTube page, the future doesn't look so great.

Moreover, with the amount of attention that has been drawn the the brand in only two days, why are there only 426 subscribers and 4.264 video views?

For a company as visually oriented as this, it comes as a huge surprise to me that more thought wasn't put into the marketing and publicity surrounding their product. If I was running the digital PR operation, there would be a lot more cool videos of behind the scenes, interviews, "how to" videos, and much more that would have been prepared weeks (if not months) ahead of time to whet the appetite of the fans. I'm sure no one guessed that the Kickstarter campaign would take off like this, but then again, that just seems to be the way of the Internet. Be prepared.

5. NO EMAIL CAPTURE OR UPDATE MAILING LIST

For new technologies, I always sign up for the "update email lists" that new companies have. That way I can be the first to know about beta testing or get my username first. Since there is no landing website or even a simple splash page with an email capture module, Ouya is losing the ability to capture a lot of important email addresses for marketing purposes. They will quickly discover that via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, nothing is more effective in giving people updates about something they really care about than a well made email update. People only delete the things they DON'T want. Moreover, as a company they get to control the names, resting the power away from Google, Fb, Twitter et al. I don't believe Kickstarter will allow one to download all of the usernames to be able to contact them independently in the future.

6. THERE IS NO DISCERNABLE GOOGLE ACCOUNT OR GMAIL ASSOCIATED WITH THE BRAND

I went on Google+ and tried to find their brand page. Nothing. I "think" I found it here:

There was also no Gmail account or company email to contact anyone.

IN SUMMARY:

I think that this company has a lot of potential and they have some amazing (and when I say that, I mean it with all my heart) people working on the project, but it is clear to me that there is no one behind the wheel running point from a social media marketing perspective. This is what I see happening at a lot of tech companies: not much thought gets put into the social media marketing because so much brain power (and money) is put into the actual development.

Moreover, I think there are a lot of die hard gamers out there who would want this, but where the big money is going to come in is from casual gamers too. In order to reach those people, there needs to be a story behind the product. Right now, there is no backstory about developing the name "Ouya", there is no description of what "Ouya" means (for example, I read a great story in WIRED about the origin of SQUARE from the founder Jack Dorsey). There needs to be personal connection to a brand. Again, what does Ouya mean and what does the company stand for? These are basic questions that are typically discussed when laying down the mission statement for any brand or company.

Nothing that has been done to this point can't be fixed or at least improved (they're not in a Netflix/Quickster position). While the media buzz is hot over the next 28 days (as of 7/11/2012) for the Kickstarter campaign, someone needs to step in to right this ship before this great idea fails to reach the full potential that I know it can achieve.

I see so much promise. If anyone at Ouya would like to reach me, you can find me at playouya@gmail.com (I will gladly turn over the account to Ouya. I just didn't want it to get taken and further complicate the social media marketing situation).

You can follow me at @rausch.

Writing a Blog vs. Hosting a Blog

I like WordPress (a self hosted blog service). I really do. I've worked on dozens of sites using the WP installation as the backbone for entertainers and software companies to non-profit organizations. At one time I also used the WP for my own personal website and portfolio. And that's where my love affair ended.

I know many great artists out there that have beautiful websites, but for the most part I think that a lot of people get caught up in the technical trappings of maintaining a WordPress self hosted site. Creative people who are not knowledgable to things like FTP, .htaccess files, PHP, CSS etc. find these foreign things are completely outside the realm of their understanding and often a major distraction from the art that they are trying to create.

For anyone that is self hosting a WordPress (or other CMS site), you have to ask yourself one simple question: is my site controlling me or am I controlling my site? If you are spending countless hours dealing with web hosting, fixing custom layouts and trouble shooting why an image won't load, your site is controlling you.

I remember one of my graphic design teachers telling the class, "You have mastered a program like Photoshop when you are using the tools to create something instead of letting the tools surprise you by creating something." For many creative artists, making the perfect site (i.e. a combination of graphic design and web coding) will never be something that they master. Often creative people try to make a site themselves and end up creating something that is not representative of their art and may even be a detractor for people who are interested in learning more about the artist.

In some instances, it is very important to have a website that represents you. Find someone you like to create your site for you or at least finding someone to guide you in how to piece together the "turn key" solutions that exist in parts across the internet (e.g. A singer: use a hosted blog solution with a SoundCloud account for playing back your tracks).

Like finding a contractor or a good mechanic, there is not fast easy way to make a personal website. It's a necessary things for many people, so take a moment to figure out what works best for you before you go down the rabbit hole of creating and hosting a website.

A New Beginning

Tagging from Paris, France

I have been been going back and forth on the idea of creating a blog for some time. Three years ago I started one as a professional portfolio. It served its purpose, but rapidly fell into disuse because a) I was too busy to keep on making updates, b) I was too concerned with constantly changing the appearance and c) self hosting a WordPress blog is great, but there is a lot of upkeep involved that was taking away from my creative process.

I actually started using Blogger back in 2000 around the time when it came out, but was turned off by it's appearance and also with the whole concept of blogging. Back then I was aware that I had nothing to say. To be more explicit: I had nothing worth sharing that other people could learn from. And now, to some degree, I feel that I have a few words that I feel others are interested in sharing as well as creating a forum for discussion.

Regarding the appearance, I like how the new Blogger allows you to keep the page bascially dynamic: the user gets to control the look and feel of the site as well as have a mobile option to read things.

Upon starting this blog, today, I am hoping that there will be a few interested readers along the way, but I'm more doing it to help me with my writing and to get some thoughts I've had out into the ether. Through this blog, I'm going to cover the intersecting subjects of technology, art and society. These three elements compose a cultural triangle in every community; each affects the other in a unique way.

Looking forward to writing.