SEER: marketing intelligence tool

Situation

During the development of the Xbox 360, SEER helped work with Microsoft on a “switching” strategy, focusing on Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo players and their key advocates online. The focus was to assemble a list of possible invitees for an event  around the Xbox 360 launch.

Approach

A series of console gaming sites were selected and closely monitored by SEER to
determine the affinity of each. While SEER was able to track authority and some content, much of the contextual work had to be done manually, not only with content, but with the tenor of that content as well. Each site was evaluated and assigned a “switching” score. In addition, the impact of E3 was calculated, since this would be the  location of the public announcement of the Xbox 360.

Outcome

Through SEER and team findings, the Xbox group brought 36 influencers – Playstation enthusiasts all – to its headquarters to give them a preview of the Xbox 360 prior to E3. When Sony began attacking the Xbox 360 concept, these influencer were on the front lines within the blogosphere, discounting Sony’s comments, and point out that no one had seen a working version of Sony’s Playstation 3! The results: $10.4 million in sales for the Xbox 360, $2.45 million in sales for the Playstation 3.

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