Reaching Your Customers With Social Media: Monopoly Tokens Put To Facebook Vote

January 15th, 2013 by Search Influence Alumni

Pass Go and Collect $200 — Monopoly is as good as it gets when talking about childhood board games, and I’ve played them all. Board games are an integral part of life in my family, and now a piece of that memory is being put to the social media test.

Growing up with three brothers turns everything into a competition. The biggest battle in Monopoly wasn’t who would win: it was which piece you got to play as. And let’s be real, with four young boys playing a board game, we never actually finished a match. Either the board got flipped or the power came back on before we finished. The boot, the dog, the top hat, the battleship: each had their own mystique and appeal. The real battle, the important battle, was which token you could barter, beg, or arm-wrestle for. Well, that could all change — and relatively soon for a game that hasn’t changed much in 75 years.

Monopoly has announced that they will be switching out one of the game tokens for a replacement that’s “that’s more representative of today’s Monopoly players,” according to Eric Nyman, senior vice president for Hasbro Gaming.

Everyone now has a chance to vote to save their favorite token, and you can even vote to select the next Monopoly piece. For a game that is available in 111 countries and 43 languages, it makes sense to do the voting where everyone already is: Facebook.

Here, Hasbro is providing an excellent example of using social media to engage their wide base of fans and make them part of the creative process. Additionally, it’s a revitalized presence for the Depression-era property in a new fast-paced media landscape. Board games have suffered a significant drop in sales in recent years as consumers turn to their smartphones and tablets for entertainment, and this vote is tailor-made to draw customers’ attention and keep it. There are two factors at work here: the instinctual impulse to defend your favorite piece, and the lingering psychological effect of the positive action, leading to increased brand awareness. Nearly everyone has fond memories of the game and its iconic pieces, and this is an excellent way to put the “outrage machine” of the Internet to work and churn up public interest to boot (if you’ll pardon the pun) in the game. Bravo to Hasbro!

So which piece will you be throwing your efforts behind? I wouldn’t want to sway your vote, but I would hate to see the battleship go… and I have to admit, that robot looks pretty sweet.

So go vote! Save your token! As Hasbro says, “don’t leave this one to Chance.”