Hasbro’s Scrabulous Problem
March 2nd, 2008
Here’s a little thought exercise for a Sunday afternoon.
You’re Hasbro and Mattell. You own the rights to Scrabble. You wake up one morning and something called Scrabulous has nearly three million registered users, about 700,000 of whom play it every day.
Choice A: Call in the lawyers, denounce Scrabulous as piracy and threaten legal action against its creators.
Choice B: Call in the marketers and work with Scrabulous to figure out a smart way to integrate Scrabble into a product that’s become a huge Internet craze.
As this article in today’s New York Times explains, Hasbro and Mattell have opted for choice A.
It’s a mistake. Instead of tapping in to the craze and working to amplify it to their own benefit (and, not incidentally, to the benefit of the three million registered Scrabulous users), they’d prefer to try and shut down the craze, create something of their own and recreate the craze.
Takeaway for marketers: Are you riding the waves or trying to create a wave of your own?
March 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I agree entirely. If Hasbro/Mattel succeed in closing down scrabulous, they will alienate many of the premium players that have been using it for the last 2 years.(Are there another 2 million new players out there) In my opinion they just have not got a clue. They have sat on their big fat corporate arses for years content to rake of the profits from a name that they bought , if they had any insight at all ~ they would have done what the brothers agwhalla have done~ but I guess they thought it would destroy the huge profits they have been making from selling the cheaply produced expensively sold board game