Electronic Arts and how EA interacts with their audiences.
Storified by harrisb8 · Wed, Oct 11 2017 03:10:49
If you somehow haven't heard of Electronic Arts, you might be living under a rock. Electronic Arts, more widely known as "EA," is one of the premiere video game companies in the 21st century. With huge franchises such as FIFA, Madden, Sims, Battlefield, and Titanfall among others, EA is the creators of some of the most popular games with the most passionate fans on Earth (see tweet below). With passionate fans come a lot of love and maybe even more hate. With this feedback, EA has to interact with the fans.
There are multiple twitter accounts to represent and interact with the different branches of Electronic Arts communities. With twitter being so hands-on and so quickly accessible, this is where the millions of followers are VERY direct with the company.
For example, one of the biggest things happening at EA right now is the newly released Star Wars: Battlefront II Beta. EA owns the Battlefront franchises which while being a really niche game, is one of the most popular. I think this is REALLY smart on EA's part because they are using the strategy of "Real Time Marketing." Not related to EA, the movie trailer for the new Star Wars movie dropped to the public.
With knowing that the trailer was going to explode, EA figured this would be the perfect time to release the beta for the new game. They started promoting it on twitter on multiple accounts, all using the hashtag #StarWarsBattlefrontII
Because of the release of the movie trailer, the Beta blew up. People downloaded it with massive numbers and it got a lot of feedback.
Come on @EA fix the servers
@EA thankk youu soo muchh for the star wars battlefront ll beta its actually amazing big star wars fan ❤
I really fucking want Battlefront 2. But @EA seems to have fucked this up bad. I will not pay to win. Or get wrecked by people who do.
@EA yo at EA wtf guys ur ruining a perfectly good game like I liked the #BattlefrontIIbeta but this pay to win system is not good plz fix
@EA Thank you, I've been looking forward buying this game! :D
These tweets represent the average mentions (but A LOT cleaner, believe it or not) that EA would get at any average moment. But the way I look at it, EA did it right. They waited for a really relevant time using RTM and while feedback was both positive AND negative, they still got an INSANE amount of interaction.
Like other companies marketing on Instragram, EA is using popular tactics. With a combination of photos, videos, stories and live streams, EA uses Instagram to promote their content. They definitely embrace the point that was made in the Altimeter report. "The fans should be a means to positive business outcomes–not the end themselves." This meaning, companies shouldn't end their outreach once they reach their normal audience. They should go above and beyond to try to reach the people who haven't been in contact with EA products. EA does this through hashtags. If you look on EVERY single post, they end it with #videogames #games and #gaming. If you combine all the hashtags, there are 33 MILLION posts. To put that into perspective, EA has 2.5 million followers on Instagram. These hashtags will bring an almost unlimited new audience to their brand.
/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/files/2017/06/anp-51686482_hyperloop.jpg)
