I spent a fair amount of time this christmas break playing Red Octane's addictive game Guitar Hero 2 on Playstation 2. Being a very mediocre guitarist for most of my life, i finally felt like I had made it into the bigtime while playing the game. Watching a buddy get stuck on a particular song led me to look at YouTube to see if anyone showed that it was possible to successfully complete the song
on the hard level. But what I came across interested me even more than seeing those caped badasses rock out to Iron Man on the 5 button fretboard.
What astounded me was that the video I was watching had gotten almost 500,000 page views. Another one is clocking it at over 250,000 views, and if you add up all the different fans video taping themselves play a video game, you realize that over a million people have watched other people like themselves (minus the wigs) express their passion about this game. This is what buzz is all about. This is the power of the CGM medium.
Passion mixed with a good product and a distribution outlet = community. Devoted community. And as we know it will backfire when the product does not live up to the hype. Brands need to figure out how to empower their audience to create their own media and share it with other loyalists and then they will have figured out how to make CGM work for them.
What more could Red Octane want, you can't buy loyalty like this. It also doesn't hurt that the game has gotten such good press (even to the point of the game being named responsible for changing the Major League Baseball playoffs). Well I am off to try and conquer Heart Shaped Box one more time.
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