Attention Researchers: Are You Ok With These Types Of Partnerships?
Lots of companies have partnerships. Done right, it is a way for each company to increase their revenue and establish a win/win with the right partnerships.
Recently, Peanut Labs–which provides access to members of social networking sites–has partnered with online gaming community Acclaim Games to enable the latter’s members to take market research surveys in return for in-game items such as weapons, clothing and character boosts.
At first, I must admit I was taken aback for a second when I thought about getting weapons for surveys, even if they are just for online games.
My kids have Webkinz and get points and items such as clothes and food for their stuffed animals by playing online games. Amazing that my kids are as good and fast on the computer…but I digress and that is probably a topic for another time. After thinking about it for a few minutes I am ok with the Peanut Labs partnership with Acclaim Games. Even though I have never heard of Acclaim Games, I am assuming it is a reputable company. I believe this is a creative way for Peanut Labs to reach a very difficult but important respondent pool and good for them for finding a way to do that.
The real question is what partnerships am I ok with?
- What if an online research panel company partnered with a real gun company?
- What if they partnered with a company that didn’t have a great reputation or all of a sudden fell on hard times? Does that affect your perception of the company in any way?
- What do you do when one of your vendors partners with one of your competitors?
Interesting questions for sure.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Acclaim was one of the biggest video game companies back in the 80’s and early 90’s. They fell on hard times and have recently remade themselves into a micro-transaction based MMO company. They are a reputable company, and I think this is a great way to incent their customers to take surveys.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Thanks for your insightful post Merril. Acclaim Games is one of the largest publishers of multiplayer online games, and very popular with the male / gamer crowd. Peanut Labs is excited to be partnering with them, and breaking new ground in online sampling.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Ali,
Congratulations - I hope the partnership is working out. I am sure the readers (about 1100 per week) would love to hear about anything specific that you are ok sharing.
Number of new panelists?
Response rate from this key group?
And anything else you feel comfortable sharing.
Thanks.
Merrill
July 30th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
While this partnership is interesting, I think we might need to think about the potential quality of the survey responses that they would be getting…
Take, for example, Joe Gamer who gets prompted to take a survey in exchange for a power upgrade in whatever game he is playing. Is it naive of me to think that Joe Gamer might not put a great deal of thought into his answers given that all he is really interested in is the power upgrade?
I applaud the creativity of the partnership, but I admit that I would be a bit skeptical of the results at first.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Hi Merrill,
If I may I would like to comment on behalf of Ali….
Number of new panelists who have have joined Peanut Labs, just from our partnership with Acclaim Games, has reached 250k. It is raining Gen Y here and we have more 13 - 34 year olds (especially males) than we know what to do with! We now have a total membership database of 1.9 million profiled people in the US alone.
Response rates across all of our Publishers (Social Network Partners) has been trended at 30%. Which is gives us a tremendous reach with US online populations in comparison to a traditional email panel, which is at best 5%.
We have over 75 Social Network partnerships (including the big guys; Facebook & Myspace). We are the first and only sample supplier to be directly integrated with these popluar online communities. We don’t even request an email address from our respondents - we can see in real time when they’re logged in to their preferred SN. Social Networks (SN’s) are our sole conduits for invititations/recruitment/incentives!
Pretty fancy stuff - feel free to check us out at http://www.peanutlabs.com
Many thanks,
Krista
July 31st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Bill,
I don’t see how this is intrinsically different than offering any other incentive to people. You have to be just as concerned about the people doing it just for the gift card or whatever other incentive.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:34 am
I agree with James. It’s why we take care in how our questions/surveys are worded and the data are analyzed.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Congratulations to Peanut Labs for making such an natural, intuitive, and visionary step! Talk about attracting bees with honey.
Although I now am moderator and ethnographer, I spent about a dozen years going to the bank each morning for incentive cash, to the tune of about $30-$40,000 per week if memory serves me. You do the math, quant folks - that’s a huge pile at the end of a year going to respondents for their opinion. And one could make the same argument Bill makes for them too, and trust me, I would have to agree sometimes they were hardly worth the sandwich and soda given them!
In the case of Peanut Labs, I have spoken with Alex Place (NY Rep) recently and I have to say this is such brilliance - a captive audience, interested in the product, using the product, and you give them what they really want, need, and will use right then or very soon — every marketer’s and manufacturer’s DREAM! Party on Garth.
The ability to do this is here and able to be used, so I say GO! The technology is also here to determine the analytics - what questions skipped, time spent on each, did they watch the video 100%, etc etc. so you really get a great picture of the event - In the words of Dylan - the time’s they are A-Changin’