10/12/06

“FUTURE PROOFING THE AMUSEMENT SECTOR! – Part. 2” (#525)

How Amusement hopes to survive in a changing world

Stinger REPORT Skinny!

(1/11/06) In the second of a five-part feature covering a series of questions posed to the Stinger Report on the future of the market, the question in this feature is: (b) what pressures, forces, and conditions are pushing this development; looking at the consumer impacts of the changing marketplace and the audience to target.

Main REPORT:

In this continuation of the observation of the future path of the market a more telling question has been asked:

(b) what pressures, forces, and conditions are pushing this development;

As stated previously, the amusement sector is coming late and ill-prepared to the marketing party. Where the big brands and associations clamber for the attention of the influential youth market, amusement has not even started to spend effectively -- let alone select its weapons!

When evaluating marketing viability, you have to define your audience. For many it is the youth player with disposable money, for others it is tempting players beyond home consoles; all laudable achievements but poorly misguided.

The new Out-of-Home leisure entertainments sector is not going to rake over the cold embers of past glories. The perception of a 'returning' audience is profoundly mistaken; what is being striven for is a NEW audience, fresh to amusements draws.

KWP, parent of the Stinger, has developed a market overview of what is the best opportunity for amusements return to dominance. It charts a player base of untapped 16 to 36 year olds. Many from the PSP and PS2 generation who play more readily with Joypad than Joystick. Who own, on average, three consoles (not including their PSP, DS or mobile phone). And who have only touched briefly an arcade machine when they were young and visited Chuck E. Cheese’s on their own or a friend’s birthday party, or in a cinema when they waited to see a film.

So what marketing tools will touch this demographic?

Seen as Generation-Y, they are mobile phone and WiFi-enabled. They are some of the best web surfers ever born. They are literate in Blog, WebVid and iPod, but poor in printed literature, radio, television and bandwidth. Send them an email and it may get junked, send them a Weblog and chances are it will get watched.

This is an audience that is bombarded by spam and Blog, but is now the first generation looking at turning off and tuning in to more visceral experiences. A new audience looking at physicality, through restaurants and clubbing than staying indoors; though the cinema may be in decline, the entertainment scene is still strong -- more compelling and less formulaic experiences striven for, (just look at the way Nintendo have captured attention with the visceral physicality of their 'Wii' console).

Never before have we come so close in to an audience’s orbit, and never before have we been so ill equipped!

The next part of this observational commentary will following in the next few days.