That's what I like about it - it's built on traditional media, but it's driven by the most extensive and integrated online campaign The Sims has ever done. That becomes effectively the most important piece of our overall campaign. If you look at what we've done relative to past launches, traditional media still plays a very important role, but the importance of online and social networking is dramatically more important than it was back in 2004. So we needed to build a plan to reach that target audience, when and where they wanted that media. So when we started looking at that audience it was clear that some things had changed dramatically since the launch of The Sims 2 - that's to say that 16-24 year olds are consuming media when and where they want it, whether it's on a laptop, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, desktop or through traditional television - and that's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That target was 16-24 year olds, both male and female - because the game does have such a broad audience in terms of gender appeal. When you look at 2009, for the launch of The Sims 3, the very first thing we had to do was identify who our target consumer was, and how were they consuming media. Traditional media still played a very important part of reaching those consumers. Online played a role, but it wasn't the primary vehicle, because the consumers were we targeting weren't necessarily consuming media in that way. When you look back what you find is that the marketing efforts in 20 were very much focused on traditional media outlets - TV, print, and so on. This is the third launch in The Sims franchise - 2000, 2004 and now 2009 - and historically those launches have all done really well. How has the marketing plan changed over the years for The Sims? Specifically he explains how social networking and ongoing online support is contributing to the game's appeal, and looks back at how the franchise's marketing has developed over the years.
#Sims 4 get together target series#
Continuing the series of features looking at world-beating franchise The Sims, here EA Play's senior marketing director, John Buchanan, explains how the label has gone to great lengths to try and lure new players and lapsed ones alike into the latest version of the game.