With the increasing reach and availability of the internet, almost every computer the world over is in some way connected to another. This is a beautiful concept, as after the rail roads, nothing came closer to making the world a smaller place than did the internet.
New businesses started, many businesses grew, and yet many more businesses flourished. But not all businesses saw this as a welcome change. The industries related to music, movies and video games have suffered huge financial losses just because any computer connected to any other computer anywhere in the world can share a file. The problem is as simple as that. And whatever protection a company places over its hardware or software, there is always someone who can crack it open and violate copyright laws.
Music can be downloaded illegally, pirated movies are a very old phenomenon, and video games, the only form of interactive art, where human creativity is challenged the most, have not been spared the evils of the internet.
These industries have tried to fight against privateers, and spent millions more in the process. However, could businesses have maybe thought differently? Can the companies leverage the concept of piracy itself?
Here are cases of two successful strategies that used piracy to make their brand better known:
Arctic Monkeys:
This is an English Indie Rock music band that formed in 2002. As an independently performing band, they did not have much money to start out with in the first place. So, instead of going through the normal route of first trying to find a record label to publish their music, they decided to complete a full album, and release it over the internet. For free! They let their songs spread across the internet, and left it to any consumer who loved their music to go ahead and purchase physical or digital copies of their album.
If you are skeptical about the success rate of such a strategy, I would like to point out that my room mate from engineering days fell in love with their music, requested their albums be bought as birthday gifts, and even picked a post grad institute where he knew the band would perform live!
Batman - Arkham City:
Developers RockSteady have been in the video game business for a long time. They have faced issues of piracy, and know how dirty it can be. With the release of the second installment in the hugely successful Batman video game series, they did something different with their in-game code.
If they stopped piracy entirely, they knew that they would lose a lot of gamers who may turn out to be potential purchasers of their content. So, instead of stopping piracy entirely, they introduced a bug in the game that would let the gamers progress through a certain portion of the game.
There comes a point in the game where, as Batman, you are escaping a villain, and you come across a section that requires you to fan out your cape and glide through the air like a bat. However, you realize that you suddenly can no longer open your cape up anymore. The feature works like butter until this section of the game, and just when the story gets really interesting, you just can not open up your cape.
Though this may create frustration, the game developers were quite clever to introduce this bug in that part of the game that really drew you in. You really wanted to know what would happen next. And you may just go ahead and buy the game, because you were loving it.
Again, don't believe this works? My colleague at work experienced this exact same thing. He was stuck in the same place, tried to find solutions online, found a whole community complaining about the same bug, and there was no work around. So he just went ahead and bought the game.
Well, businesses can and should think differently if they want to survive in an ever changing world. Think about how they can over come difficulties in a different manner and flourish.
New businesses started, many businesses grew, and yet many more businesses flourished. But not all businesses saw this as a welcome change. The industries related to music, movies and video games have suffered huge financial losses just because any computer connected to any other computer anywhere in the world can share a file. The problem is as simple as that. And whatever protection a company places over its hardware or software, there is always someone who can crack it open and violate copyright laws.
Music can be downloaded illegally, pirated movies are a very old phenomenon, and video games, the only form of interactive art, where human creativity is challenged the most, have not been spared the evils of the internet.
These industries have tried to fight against privateers, and spent millions more in the process. However, could businesses have maybe thought differently? Can the companies leverage the concept of piracy itself?
Here are cases of two successful strategies that used piracy to make their brand better known:
Arctic Monkeys:
This is an English Indie Rock music band that formed in 2002. As an independently performing band, they did not have much money to start out with in the first place. So, instead of going through the normal route of first trying to find a record label to publish their music, they decided to complete a full album, and release it over the internet. For free! They let their songs spread across the internet, and left it to any consumer who loved their music to go ahead and purchase physical or digital copies of their album.
If you are skeptical about the success rate of such a strategy, I would like to point out that my room mate from engineering days fell in love with their music, requested their albums be bought as birthday gifts, and even picked a post grad institute where he knew the band would perform live!
Batman - Arkham City:
Developers RockSteady have been in the video game business for a long time. They have faced issues of piracy, and know how dirty it can be. With the release of the second installment in the hugely successful Batman video game series, they did something different with their in-game code.
If they stopped piracy entirely, they knew that they would lose a lot of gamers who may turn out to be potential purchasers of their content. So, instead of stopping piracy entirely, they introduced a bug in the game that would let the gamers progress through a certain portion of the game.
There comes a point in the game where, as Batman, you are escaping a villain, and you come across a section that requires you to fan out your cape and glide through the air like a bat. However, you realize that you suddenly can no longer open your cape up anymore. The feature works like butter until this section of the game, and just when the story gets really interesting, you just can not open up your cape.
Though this may create frustration, the game developers were quite clever to introduce this bug in that part of the game that really drew you in. You really wanted to know what would happen next. And you may just go ahead and buy the game, because you were loving it.
Again, don't believe this works? My colleague at work experienced this exact same thing. He was stuck in the same place, tried to find solutions online, found a whole community complaining about the same bug, and there was no work around. So he just went ahead and bought the game.
Well, businesses can and should think differently if they want to survive in an ever changing world. Think about how they can over come difficulties in a different manner and flourish.
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