By now we’ve all seen them:

Those God-awful ads for Google Stadia.

Any of the 40 million watching December’s Game Awards, or the countless others in the cross-hairs of Google’s targeted advertising on YouTube, have by now had their intelligence insulted by Google’s inexplicably bad advertising for their game streaming service.

The ad, which features two poorly groomed morons floating around in a human canoe while pointing at things, has all the earmarks of being a product of individuals who are completely and utterly out of touch with the market with whom they want to connect. On another, more cynical level, the ads are borderline offensive; representing the obvious view by the marketing brains behind Stadia that the average gamer is a drugged up simpleton.

Stadia’s silly sales pitch is not alone in the annals of gaming’s greatest advertising fails. The history of the gaming industry is littered with terrible TV spots thought up by folks who were just as out of touch with their target audience as Google’s ad agency. Just look back to the year 2000 at the initial TV ads for PlayStation 2, which featured a voice-over going on and on about PlayStation 9. (Yes, that really happened.) Many of those past marketing faux pas were easily able to be brushed aside. Sony’s nonsense had no impact on PlayStation 2, which went on to become the highest-selling video game console of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry72b_fIKAk

The case of Google Stadia’s advertising is different.

The reason bad ads didn’t matter to Sony at the time was because their core audience was already well aware of what the PlayStation 2 was when it was launching, and why they wanted one. The U.S. audience had years of article features, previews, and the hype of the system’s Japanese launch, which occurred several months before the machine reached Western shores. (That’s right kids – once upon a time, the gaming industry didn’t do simultaneous world-wide product launches. We had to watch cool stuff hit Japan first, and we liked it that way!)

The history of the gaming industry is littered with terrible TV spots thought up by folks who were just as out of touch with their target audience as Google’s ad agency.

Stadia doesn’t have that same luxury.

Sure, most of the gaming world already knows and understands what Stadia’s streaming capabilities are all about; however, the core gaming audience is still highly skeptical of the viability of streaming games.

And it’s this skepticism which underlies the true scope of just how bad Google’s marketing has been – they don’t understand what their product is, or what it represents to the gaming industry as a whole.

On top of all that, Google is marketing Stadia to the entirely wrong audience.

What Google needs to first understand, is that gaming, throughout it’s 40-some year history, has been an exclusionary hobby.

Gaming is exclusionary in the sense that there has traditionally been a cost of entry, in both money and time, in order to begin enjoying interactive entertainment. Consumers have to purchase a device, which usually costs several hundred dollars, to be able to enjoy the games those devices play, as well as spend time their researching which device is most suitable for them.

Do I go with a PlayStation 4, or Xbox One? Or do I say fudge it, and buy/build a PC?

What games are available on the platform? What games am I missing if I choose this platform over another? How long is it going to be before they come out with something better?

Get the picture?

For the hardcore devotees of electronic entertainment these questions are inconsequential, as the solution to those questions is simple: you buy them all. However, for the more casual crowd that solution isn’t viable.

the core gaming audience is still highly skeptical of the viability of streaming games.

This is what I mean by using the term “exclusionary”.

The dawn of the streaming age has the potential to turn this mainstream audience dilemma on its ear.

Stadia, and game streaming technology in general, is an inclusive technology.

No longer does the mainstream audience have to worry about generations of expensive hardware. Games can just be delivered to them through the devices they already own, allowing them to now engage at the same level with those who have invested in fancy, more traditional hardware.

This is a massive paradigm shift for the industry, but it’s a point on which Stadia’s advertisements fail to capitalize. The drug-inspired loopy trips through various games are obviously geared towards a false generalization of what a round-table meeting of non-gamers think core gamer’s want to see.

Core gamers are not the audience Google should be targeting with Stadia.

Google should immediately have been going for the casual audience – one that is familiar with some of the industry’s biggest hits, but is intimidated by the expense of researching and purchasing a gaming console.

In that spirit, Stadia’s ads should not have been focused on games – they should be focused on lifestyle.

The introduction of the concept of the Nintendo Switch in 2016 was one of the most radical moves that the industry would see in the 2010’s.

Core gamers are not the audience Google should be targeting with Stadia.

The idea of a hybrid between a normal console hooked up to a television that could instantly convert to a handheld device didn’t just alter the public’s perception of what a gaming device could be – it also represented a huge risk for Nintendo, who no longer had the cushion of a successful dedicated handheld like the 3DS to fall back on should the Switch experiment fail.

Nintendo’s marketing strategy accompanying the introduction of the Switch brilliantly highlighted the potential appeal of the Switch’s groundbreaking concept. Initial ads featured a variety of twenty-something’s engaged in everyday activities and focused on the lifestyle aspect of the machine, The Switch’s ability to convert from television, to handheld gaming on-the-go, and how that fit in with a socially active lifestyle was front and center, while flashes of games being played provided a tantalizing glimpse of what was to come, which gave the hard core audience ample fodder for speculation and analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI&t=4s

The marketing strategy didn’t end there. Equally brilliant was the public debut of the Nintendo Switch.

The first time that a demonstration of real Nintendo Switch unit being played in public did not come at an industry trade show like E3, or via a Nintendo Direct video presentation. No, the first glimpse the world saw of the Nintendo Switch in action was in front of a world-wide, non-gaming audience when NOA’s then President, Reggie Fils-Amie visited the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

The utter perfection of Nintendo’s marketing strategy surrounding the initial debut of the Switch can’t be praised enough. It allowed the company to capture the attention and imagination of both the hardcore audience and the general public simultaneously. It also garnered the attention from a 30-something crowd that grew up with Nintendo in the 80’s, but had exited gaming as a hobby in the ensuing years of adulthood.

The arrival of streaming technology, and by extension Stadia, ushers in a new level of accessibility that is even more important than the Switch’s arrival.

Had Google and the undoubtedly very well-paid marketing team assigned to Stadia been more attuned to what the service and the introduction of streaming technology means to the mass market, they would have imitated Nintendo’s focus on lifestyle, if not copied the tone of Switch’s advertising outright. What’s more baffling about the tone and target of Stadia’s ads is the fact that Google has ample experience in marketing the way their technology impacts lifestyle. For years companies like Google and Apple have been extremely successful in creating campaigns that make new technology look sleek, sexy, and most importantly, accessible to the mass market.

Stadia’s advertising needs to focus on the inclusive nature of streaming technology –  the ability to stream the major titles that a person’s friends are talking about on any device. Titles should have been pushed to the background in favor of highlighting the act of playing titles, anytime, anywhere – and much like Nintendo, how that ability fits in with the active social lifestyle of today’s twenty-something instant-access generation.

While Google’s failure to target the correct audience and aspects of Stadia are concerning enough, more concerning is the fact that the current campaign underlies a lack of understanding of the paradigm shift that streaming represents to the balance of influence in the gaming market.

Stadia’s advertising needs to focus on the inclusive nature of streaming technology

As I pointed out at the beginning of this piece, the costs of entry into gaming has traditionally made it an exclusionary hobby. This means that the tastes of the market have been dictated by the hardcore elements of the gaming audience. A game or device becomes popular with the early adopters and those who spend the time and money staying current with the latest trends. That popularity then trickles down to increasingly casual portions of the audience, until it reaches critical mass-market awareness.

Think of it as a pyramid of influence, where the hardest core elements of the gaming world is at the top, and the mass-market (those who become aware of a title after it reaches the point of becoming a part of pop culture) acting as the pyramid’s base.

Most titles released never complete the journey to mass-market awareness, except for only the most wildly successful titles like Fortnight, or Grand Theft Auto; however, there are a number of examples of titles that have enjoyed the success of a wider audience as a result of a trickle-down effect thanks to the influence of the hobby’s hardcore taste makers.

2017’s Nioh and Nier: Automata are two excellent examples of this effect in action. These are two titles that enjoyed better than expected sales figures because they caught on with the hardcore taste makers first. Their popularity then trickled down to a wider section of the gaming world, which resulted in people taking a chance on those titles, when they normally wouldn’t.

This was a big win for both Tecmo-Koei and Square-Enix, as well as a win for the popularity of the genre’s that the two titles represented. The popularity of those two titles opened the door for other similar titles that the newly inducted audience may not have normally tried.

That’s the trickle-down effect of influence in action.

Stadia, and streaming in general, represents the inversion of that pyramid – eliminating the aforementioned barrier of entry that has existed for gaming since its inception. This means that the base, which normally sat at the bottom of the influence pyramid, now has equal footing in dictating the tastes of the market with those who have spent years of time, and thousands of dollars investing in the hobby.

A similar inversion happened with the arrival of streaming film and television content during the past decade.

Recently, acclaimed film director Martin Scorsese has gone on record decrying the rise of super hero films, and how they aren’t truly representative of the art of film making.

As he says this, the director is out trying to drum up interest in his latest picture, The Irishman.

Ten years ago, The Irishman, a film with the pedigree of a legendary film maker, nearly universal critical acclaim, and a cast featuring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino would have been a sure-fire hit. However, in today’s world, The Irishman debuted to a limited theatrical release which earned a paltry $7 million, before debuting as a streaming title on Netflix, which produced the film.

The films that now enjoy huge box office successes are now outlandish super hero movies – a genre that acts as sort of a theatrical thrill-ride, rather than (as Scorsese argues) an example of the art of film making.

What has happened is that consumers prefer to watch the big blockbuster experiences in a theater, while reserving other fare like Scorsese’s The Irishman for the intimacy of a streaming content platform.

The market has inverted the pyramid of influence for films and television, and as streaming video game content becomes more prevalent, the same inversion of who dictates the tastes of the market will occur.

The casual, mass-market will soon dictate the direction of the gaming industry.

For the industry as a whole, this means that games with a higher technical learning curve, like Nioh and Nier: Automata, will face a steeper uphill battle, while simpler games that offer an increasing level of instant gratification will be more successful.

I know that the idea of streaming having this big of an impact on the direction of the gaming industry is a hard pill to swallow; however, I can tell you from first-hand experience that streaming is 100% viable.

The casual, mass-market will soon dictate the direction of the gaming industry.

I have been fortunate enough to be involved in the beta-testing of all three of the currently announced streaming platforms, and I can tell you that all three are VERY impressive already, and offer a completely legitimate way to experience a number of games. As the technology improves, the experiences of streaming a game will improve as well. Any of the standby arguments against streaming game content –  issues like latency, etc, will disappear within 5 years time, thus opening the floodgates for mass market acceptance.

And this brings us back to Stadia.

It’s natural for missteps to occur for any pioneering piece of technology, however, usually those missteps are easily glossed over thanks to the messaging of the product.

Unfortunately, Stadia’s messaging has been so far off the target, that the service is in danger of failing within the first year.

Google needs to do two things immediately to mitigate the damage already done to the Stadia brand name.

First, they need to ditch their marketing team and those atrocious ads right away.

It’s obvious that whomever is managing the ad campaign is in over their head. Hire a team that can bring the tone of the ads in line with the rest of Google’s marketing, and stop focusing precious ad dollars on people who already have a PS4, and/or and Xbox. Focus on the lifestyle elements of being able to play on any device and hammer that point home.

Second, win over the skeptics by offering live demo kiosks at key retailers like Best Buy and Target.

After you’ve captured the attention of the masses through an improved ad campaign, it’s time to do the most important thing you can – put the product in people’s hands! This concept is so basic to the principles of marketing, and it’s unfathomable that a company with the reach and resources of Google is failing to do it. Even Nintendo, in the dark days before the NES was a household name and videogames had become a dirty word in the retail industry, had their top American executives in stores putting controllers in people’s hands. There’s no reason why Google shouldn’t be doing the same thing.

Hire a team that can bring the tone of the ads in line with the rest of Google’s marketing

There need to be demo kiosks, manned by Stadia experts assigned to preach the gospel of streaming and getting people to try it for themselves. Heck, even Sony had reps in various stores giving people the chance to try out PlayStation VR when that launched.

Providing a demo of Stadia in stores helps back up the veracity of an improved ad campaign and legitimizes the interest that a casual gaining consumer might have in the product, while also working to prove the skeptical hardcore gaming audience wrong  on whether streaming can offer a quality experience.

Streaming is no longer coming – it’s here. Google needs to act fast in order to change the perception of their fledgling service. Otherwise, Stadia will serve as nothing more than a stepping stool to allow a more savvy company to dominate as the technology becomes mainstream.