RFI Studios - For This We Build - Right Brain

For This We Build

September 9, 2011 | Written by Dave Cannon

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Building an online community of fans or followers is really gratifying. It?s hard work at first, figuring out how to communicate with your audience and developing a sense of shared values. Once you reach that tipping point, the work pays off in spades. There?s nothing quite like watching a Twitter feed cascade with tweets, or a lively conversation pop up on your Facebook Wall. But what if you could watch a digital community come to life in the real world? How cool would that be??Well, look no farther than L.A., to a video game-inspired wonderland called?Call of Duty XP.

Activision, publisher of famed video game franchise Call of Duty, organized a gaming event of epic proportions called COD XP 2011. The main purpose of the event was to generate buzz around the release of their most ambitious title yet: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Activision rented a huge warehouse that they decked out with hundreds of LCDs, projection screens and Xbox consoles. In addition to demoing the brand new title, attendees could play paintball in an arena modeled after the game, explore an armory complete with replica weaponry, and compete?in a massive $400,000 grand prize tournament. In short, this event was no joke.

The community I mentioned isn?t the Call of Duty community. It?s the Mountain Dew gaming community. DEW has always been a favorite of gamers, so COD XP was the perfect time for the brand to announce their new Game Fuel flavors, which offer under-the-cap rewards to COD players. Our mission as Mtn Dew?s agency was to spread awareness about the ?Double XP? promotion onsite at COD XP. Three of us from RFI holed up in the ?DEW Bunker,? where we manned Twitter, Facebook and amplified event activity to fans and followers in absentia. We set up a dedicated handle (@dewxp), built a mobile app just for gamers, and even designed a limited edition Mtn Dew can to catch the attention of fans virtually and in person. As a result, we saw was the emergence of a living community with one foot in the digital space and one foot offline.

Consider @ApologizeLater, a DEW fan and seasoned Call of Duty player. While in the midst of a lengthy COD match, he tweeted:?@DewXP can you hook me up with a can? I?m handling the King of the Hill challenge. I need refreshed.? We responded in kind wishing him luck on his challenge, and promised him an ice cold drink when he finished. He found us soon after, introduced himself with a handshake, and we chatted about his performance over some DEW. He followed up on Twitter, broadcasting a ?Thanks, DEW!? to over 800 followers.

I couldn?t help feel a real sense of community after the interchange, and now I?m asking myself ? was that a digital experience, or a personal one? It was sort of a digital introduction with a personal followup. For me, situations like these (and there were many) really substantiate the effort we put into building online communities. It?s not just about collecting ?Likes? and blasting updates to thousands of followers. I?ve had plenty of genuine interactions as a community manager, but seeing the DEW community represented at COD XP really reinforced that payoff I mentioned earlier. Looking around the Bunker, one thought kept popping into my head:?This is why we build.

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Source: http://intra.rfistudios.com/blogs/right-brain/2011/09/for-this-we-build.html

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