Media Emerging

“That’s it, Dinah! If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

– Alice in Alice in Wonderland 

This was going to be a post about Disney’s marketing not measuring up to its usual high standards. Boy, was I wrong…

Hero Rising 

Something about the way Disney is promoting a project called “Hero Rising” seemed…odd.

Tuesday, 9 p.m. I’m hashing out blog ideas on my new HP laptop. The living room looks like a toddler toy kill zone, and “Alice in Wonderland” is playing on the television. I’m tuning it out, but a gruff, almost military sounding voice snaps me to attention. “Epic success can be yours,” it snarls.

I grab my remote and hit the rewind button. That’s right…I used TiVo to see the commercial. The short transmission was something straight out of Mission: Impossible. A shadowy silhouette, dark foreshadowing, a sense of urgency. The ad references a website for something called “Hero Rising.” The dark, futuristic look of the spot give it a stark “males 14-18″ feel — an odd choice for Alice in Wonderland. Marketing mishap, or something more?

I visit the website for Hero Rising. The site features a series of skill games — agility, combat, reflexes — all apparently in beta testing. The site design, graphics, music and sound effects reinforced the teen male demographic feel. But here’s the odd thing: The games feel clunky, old school. Less Halo 3 and more Ninja Gaiden from the original Nintendo.

Weird.

Marketing Irregularities

There was no About page on the Hero Rising website, so I did a quick Google search. Only 12,000 results. With so little competition in the search results, you’d think Disney would go to town to promote the game. User forums, feature articles, MySpace pages — the works.

You’d be wrong.

Most of the top 10 results were videos of a “transmission from Hero Rising headquarters” — the same ad that ran during “Alice in Wonderland.” But where were the hordes of snarky, uber-competitive teenagers? Where were the articles in popular gamer magazines? Where was the trash talk? I did a Google News search — zero results. Zero! What is the PR department doing?

Is Disney even trying to market this new game?

And then there were the testimonials. The site features testimonials that appear so manufactured I had to laugh:

“I can’t wait until Combat Training,” says Santiago, age 9.

“Try the Agility test,” says Cameron, age 10.

“Dear T. Abner Hall, this website is awesome,” says Conor, age 7.

Okay, maybe I overshot with the 14- to 18-year-old estimate.

No About page? No publicity? No user communities? Fake-sounding testimonials? Something smells fishy…

T. Abner Hall and the Thickening Plot

(Warning: Spoiler alert!)

The Hero Rising website includes a link called “About Hall Industries.” I clicked it expecting to learn about the game’s designers. Instead, this:

“Hall Industries has been a pioneer in the arena of technical arts for years. Established by T. Abner Hall and a small team of the world’s smartest minds, the company was challenged with solving the leading problems of our planet.”

Seriously? Even a Silicon Valley start-up wouldn’t write such tawdry marketing copy about itself, right? And who is this T. Abner Hall?

I googled “T. Abner Hall.” To my shock, only one website appeared in the results — a gamer forum. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I thought. This is where Disney is connecting with the gamer community.

No. This is where the rabbit goes down the hole.

On the Unfiction forum, I discovered a small community of gamers who had deconstructed the “transmission” videos. One forum member translated some binary code from the video and deciphered a message. Another freeze-framed the video and caught a distorted image of the date 02.13.09, which flashed for milliseconds on the screen (remember that date). Another forum member found a link to a press release titled “Hall Industries to take Gaming to the Next Level with ‘Hero Rising’.”

But the best sleuthing came from MrToasty, a forum member who discovered this and this.

Who is Aaron Stone?

Hero Rising, it seems, isn’t a gaming site at all — not in the traditional sense, anyway. It’s a plot element in an upcoming Disney Channel original series, Aaron Stone. 

Aaron Stone features Charlie Landers, the best player in the [fictional] online game, “Hero Rising,” who plays under the avatar Aaron Stone. A billionaire recruits him to become the ‘real life’ crime fighter Aaron Stone, and everything gets topsy-turvy.

Take another look at the Hero Rising website. Notice anything interesting about the Top Scores? There’s a familiar name at the top of every High Score list.

According to the Wikipedia and LiveJournal sites, Aaron Stone is scheduled to debut in February 2009. Remember that 02.13.09 flash? Have you put the pieces together.

Disney’s Diabolical Genius

“Tut, tut, child! Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”

– The Duchess in Alice in Wonderland

Disney didn’t botch their marketing. They’re setting the table — I just showed up to the party early. We’ll likely see more videos in the coming months, more pieces added to the Hero Rising website, more secrets revealed.

There’s a moral here, and it took me a while to find it.

Disney’s been in the marketing business for 85 years. I could learn a thing of two from their marketing team. Though I’ve been a writer all my life, I’ve been in marketing for just a few years. I write a blog, I Twitter, and I think that makes me a marketing expert. It doesn’t. And firing off a blog post about Disney’s subpar marketing strategy would have proven it. Peter Kim calls it an ego trap, and I almost fell face first.

Bloggers are infamously gifted at tearing others down. We did it to Matt Bacak. we did it to Motrin. We even did it to one of our own in Chris Brogan. Being critical is easy. Being right is hard. If we spent as much time on research and on thinking about fairness as we do on scooping each other and attacking others, we’d be a better class of people.

We’d be, dare I say it, heroes rising.

“You play to win the game.”

Former NY Jets coach Herm Edwards fired off that gem in the midst of a post-game rant. That quote should hang in every locker room and in every corporate boardroom and cubicle in America. Every business owner should say those words aloud to start the day.

“You play to win the game.”

Todd Defren’s fascinating observation that “Google is the new GM” reminds us that you don’t succeed in business by playing to survive. You must play to dominate. At a time when GM and Chrysler (and to a lesser extent, Ford) are desperately searching for ways to survive, Google is finding ways to beat crush its competitors in every aspect of the game.

“You play to win the game.”

Yes, PR is evolving, and marketing, too. There’s more and more focus on conversing with customers rather than talking at them. And this is good. But marketing still is, and always will be, about attracting customers, making sales, and beating the competition.

“You play to win the game.”

In business, there are winners and losers. It’s a COMPETITION, not a tea party. While co-opetition works as a situational play call, there is no room in capitalism for mutual survival in perpetuity. Somebody must close up shop. Somebody must lose the game. This game does not end in a tie.

“You play to win the game.”

Competition doesn’t make you mean-spirited. It doesn’t call for dehumanizing your opponent, or leaving him penniless. It simply means you play to win. Two opposing quarterbacks shake hands before and after a game. They may even get together for beers or vacation together with their wives in Tahoe. But between the hashes, the goal is total domination of the opponent.

“You play to win the game.”

2008 is drawing to a close. The off-season is here. It’s time to strengthen your business roster via free agency or the draft. What are YOU doing to make your team more competitive in 2009?