I know, everyone is talking about it these day, but it’s just impossible not to comment on this giant marketing operation. The recent release of Halo 3 (the third and final title in the Halo series), the new Microsoft game explicity conceived to boost sagging Xbox 360 sales, is like a huge wave flooding the whole mediascape.

With thousands of shops that expressly opened at midnight to sell it (at not only game shops!), it’s no surprise that Halo 3 has earned more than $170m in its first 24 hours of commercial existence, more than was ever made at the box office by any movie in history.

What we’re talking here about is a $10 million five-stage publicity campaign that started 10 months ago.

The first public appearance of Halo 3 happened in 2006 when a trailer was aired during Monday Night Football on December 4, in front of 1.8 million in-target audience, subsequently furiously clicked on by over 4 million people on YouTube.

In May 2007, the secrets of Halo 3 were disclosed to a few thousands people who could enter a multiplayer beta version of the game. This was followed by a viral campaign, both online and offline, the latter taking the game on the streets of various cities around the world.

In July a second trailer, commonly nicknamed the “Vermin Trailer”, was released with cross-product promotions involving other brands like Pepsi, 7-Eleven and Burger King.

Here are some Halo factoids:

- There are 15 million hardcore Halo fans in the world
- 11 million people own Halo 1 or 2
- More than 1 million people pre-ordered Halo 3
- Developing Halo 3 took 3 years of work
- 600 everyday players were used to beta test Halo 3 at Bungies Studios
- 3000 hours of beta play were analyzed and used to fine-tune the game
- The day after the release several parts of Xbox Live collapsed due to massive traffic by Halo 3 players

Some of the gamers are getting upset about this seemingly never-ending promotional campaign, and although they love Halo, they consider this marketing effort to be overplayed to the point of being sickening.

But Microsoft’s successful marketing stunt shows the virtues of taking your time to develop the product to the point of perfection (unlike, say, what happened with Vista) while tingling the expectations of prospective users with multichannel promotional messages climaxing in the enormously anticipated final release. What Halo 3 is saying is that you don’t have to be fast to cater to consumers: take your time, slowly build anticipation, and they will come in droves.

The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundation of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries. (Yochai Benkler)

Every year, 167 books per million people are published worldwide. Many of these talk about how Internet and digital technologies are changing society. One of these books is being considered a milestone to understand the social and economic effects of computer-based, decentralized, user-driven production and innovation. I’m talking about “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler, published in 2006 after a decade of research and translated for the Italian readership before the summer ( 8 chapters are freely downloadable ).

The question at the center of the book is straightforward: what are the consequences when individual and communities become more productive than profit-seeking companies?

Social production is reshaping markets to the point that the author sees the emergence of a “networked information economy” which is radically decentralized, peer-to-peer, and based on non-market incentives.

Borrowing his perspective, the assumption that without payment there is no incentive to produce may no longer be the rule, thus a understanding what the dynamics of production and sharing are inside communities is the way for companies to entertain dialogs with users and become serious about serving the long tail of consumer demand.

It’s not only about producing new content (UGC). It’s also about creating new services and products starting from community-woven conversations. The concept of “consumer” has become way too mono-dimensional in the networked society. Individuals are becoming multidimensional, by moving into environments where they can be buyers but also sellers, users but also producers, readers but also writers…

Opening a two-way (community-brand) flow of communication is the starting point to benefit from all the value brought by the network. Brands should engage more in opening up authentic conversations, in
order to create reputation and trust, instead of either remaining passive witnesses of this phenomenon or goofily entering the world of social networks.