Lindsey is Back in the Great White North

After Sara's wedding in the Muskoka's (Canadians know where this is), Lindsey stayed back to visit her mom in London (as well as all of our friends) for the next 3 weeks. In under a week she has already done a ridiculous amount of activities (certainly more than the life of a luxury OC house wife).

It is weird not having her here. After a week away from home up in Agoura Hills, I come back to an empty home. I am so used to have her here waiting to welcome me that it is disappointing to come home to not have her here. But it is well deserved that she is having fun with her mother and her friends. I will just have to deal with the loneliness.

Wedding Over

Sara got married over the past week. Now, people who know me know I am not a guy who likes weddings, but this was a real fun wedding weekend. I have no pictures because Lindsey has our camera, but when she gets back I will post some great shots.

THQ Experience

Week 3 is over in my internship. My responsibilities are starting to pick up. One of the full time brand managers unexpectedly departed due to a personal issue (she moved pretty far from the office) and I was honored to be tapped to pick up her responsibilities to manage some of the Pixar titles. The experience has been a rapid engrossment of how a brand manager of a licensed property manages the license relationship. It requires alot of coordination with Pixar and Disney to keep everyone on the same page on how we are marketing the property (I do not want to announce the property due to confidentiality restrictions).

In addition to these new responsibilities I am now creating Creative Briefs for 2 new video games that will be released late 2008. A creative brief is a summary document that informs all key parties (sales, PR, and marketing) about the product, the competitive environment, and how we plan to market the title. I am sure in the grand scheme of things, the creative brief is only a small part of the marketing plan, but right now I am feeling the pressure to do a fantastic job. I am sure after a few are under my belt, they will soon seem routine.

I have also completed my research related to drivers for sales of video games based on licensed TV shows. I am not going to disclose my results (again confidentiality), but at first I was frustrated with the results of a comprehensive data set. After discussions with my supervisor, I began to see some of the benefits of my research and I will be able to pull a number of key lessons from my study. I think this is one of the benefits of deciding to work with a supervisor who has worked with marketing juggernaut Proctor & Gamble.

Another project on the burner: THQ is having a "take your kids to work day" on Aug. 10. Our other kids intern, Anthony, had a great idea to conduct a focus group with some of the kids. He took the initiative to submit a proposal for this study, but I am happy to participate in learning what makes kids tick when playing video games. At a minimum this should be a fun and great learning experience.

That's it for now, but I will try to keep you up to date on my internship experiences.

New Merage School Website is Up!

The Merage School has been diligently improving its website over the past year and phase I is finally ready for release.
I encourage anyone thinking about a MBA to check it out here.

My Fellow THQ Interns

I just wanted to briefly acknowledge the quality of my fellow THQ interns. I have met four others in total: 2 from UCLA, 1 from Ohio University (not State), and another from Virginia (I think the school is William Mary). All are ambitious, creative, and intelligent, not too mention pretty funny. I have really enjoyed working with them and learning from their experiences. It is great reflection on THQ that they were able to pick up such high quality interns.

Do You Need to Customer to Market It?

During one lunch the topic came up from a non-marketing intern, about how can you market to an audience you don't know. It came in the context that he would be unable to work in Kids Video games because he doesn't know the target market. I responded why would that matter?

While I acknowledge that it is essential for a marketer to know his target market, I do not believe a good marketer needs prior knowledge before accepting a position. One of the first things a marketer should do is identify his target audience and their wants and needs. Sure it helps, but you do not need prior knowledge of the target.

Marketing has very established stages:
1. Identify your target market
2. Identify your value proposition to this market
3. Identify the best marketing mix to reach your target market
4. Evaluate and improve.

By only taking positions with which you can relate, you eliminate a large part of what marketing is and, most importantly, you will be prone to skip step 1 possibly having your perceptions incorporate some detrimental assumptions about the target market.

Bottom line: It doesn't matter if you previous know the market, it matters if you LISTEN to the market.

The "Hardcore Gamer" Hurdle of the Industry

For most lunches at work, I go with three of the other THQ interns. Listening to their passion for video games, I was reminded of the "Hardcore Gamer" hurdle that video game HR departments throw up to potential hires. The "Hardcore Gamer" hurdle is one of the first questions that they look to your cover letter or resume to answer (or at a minimum for you to address in your interview). They want people passionate about video games. Hardcore games have no problem overcoming this hurdle as they seem to eat, sleep and dream video games (I slipped through on a discussion of how I love all types of games). Other people, who would still do a good job and offer a new perspective, often get overlooked by the hurdle.

But sitting at lunch and listening to these other interns talk the hurdle became apparent. All of these guys love video games. This is great, we should all be passionate about what we do everyday, but poses some risks for an industry that is changing like the video game industry. By imposing the "Hardcore Gamer" hurdle, video game companies are ensuring that they do not get the perspective of the customer segment that is growing the fastest in this industry: the casual gamer. The hardcore gamer and the casual gamer are getting two drastically different payoffs from their video game experience; and this is one case where I do not think a party can empathize with the other (see my next post).

The prevalence of hardcore gamers in video game companies delivers a big strategic blinder to these companies. Even if company leadership identifies new casual games as a target, if the majority of the company is filled with hardcore gamers where do you think they will focus the bulk of their energy. I think the evidence supports that they go after the hardcore gaming segment.

I think the video game industry is slowly seeing the removing the "hardcore gamer" hurdle. The question becomes will it come quick enough?

First Day at THQ

I am back from my first day at THQ for my marketing internship; Two weeks late, but ready to go. The THQ HQ is a huge, sprawling 2 level complex that is very easy to get lost in. You can tell that they have being growing very quickly as you find patches of one department mixed with patches of other departments in the pockets of cubicles found throughout the building. The good news is that the office is only 5 mins from my subleted apartment and I do not have to go near the highway.

The first day was more about meeting the team and the other marketing interns. The team is very nice. Most of the people are very new to THQ (the longest being not even 1 yr). The great thing is that they all have very diverse backgrounds. The other Kidz marketing intern is from Ohio University in Ohio. It is an incredible distance to travel to do an internship, but he is really passionate about video games. It is funny to hear his new perspective of California as if I am a wily veteran of this land.

I have been given two warm up projects: 1) to research the market potential of a couple of new licensing opportunities; and 2) start playing some of the upcoming video games from THQ Kidz (Yes, you read correctly - I am being paid to play video games). I get the impression that after the first week, the pace will increase. I made it very clear that I want a massive and diverse workload. I'm here for only 11 weeks, away from my wife, so I want to make them count.