PokerWorldNow

PurePlay Customers May Lose the Smile with Price Hike

A few weeks ago our CFO, Pete, pointed out that the PurePlay terms and conditions had their price point for a monthly membership at $24.95 rather than the seemingly industry standard of $19.99. When I checked their home page, however, the advertised price was still $19.99. Looks like their lawyers were ahead of their marketing folk because finally 2 days ago when I checked their site the price was indeed raised. They also lowered their prize pool from $150,000 back t0 $100,000.

It is bold, and perhaps desperate, for PurePlay to raise its price at this juncture, and I am not quite sure what it means. Perhaps they believe (or hope) that there is a low elacticity and that the percent decrease in demand will be less than the percent increase in the revenue generated. There is fault in this line of thinking because there are several substitutes, and competing products, for subscription poker. Users can go to SpadeClub, or one of the other handful of subscription sites, or they can take their $24.95 and play real-money online poker. I could understand their arguement to raise the price if they offered something more than the other sites, but they don’t. In fact, they offer less than SpadeClub, which has a full-fledged user community and all sorts of member benefits and promotions.

If I can figure the above out over my morning cup of coffee, I have to give them credit that they are smart enough to do the same. So, I decided to look a little deeper and think I may have figured out why they think they can raise their prices: they have added other revenue models into their product in hopes equalizing any negative impact from the decrease in demand.

• Incentive Marketing (Offer Pal): users can get play chips by submitting their email address to spammers, filling out surveys, or signing up for paid services. We tried this for a month but found that the overall cost to the customer was not worth what we were making so we removed it.
• Charge for chips: same as the above, but they can pay cold hard cash for play money chips. $20, $50, and $100 buys you 125,000, 350,000 and 800,000 in chips respectively.
• Pay-per-use of a rabbit cam: users get to see what cards would have come if the hand doesn’t go to showdown. Paid members get a certain number per month and then it is a buck per rabbit view. I gotta give it to them for the creativity on this one, but when I tried to test this product I could only use it once out of 20 hands because all of the hands went to showdown.

The expanded revenue models are analagous to the old Alaska Air commercial where passengers had to pay a quarter to recline their seat and a buck to use the rest room. In other words, PurePlay has implemented a nickel-and-dime revenue model. The first two revenue models are certainly not new to the Internet and seem to have worked well for Zynga, the Company that runs Texas Hold’em Poker on Facebook. However, there are several significant differneces between Zynga and PurePlay. First, Zynga has no other options, they don’t (and probably can’t) charge a per monthly fee. Second, users on FaceBook are accustomed to paying micro-fees or participating in incentive marketing for small rewards, like sending a friend a virtual flower, or in the case of Zynga getting 100,000 in chips. Third, Zynga has millions of monthly unique users and can therefore leverage a “freemium” model where a small percentage of the users are paying for premium type services and the rest are playing for free. From the looks of it, PurePlay gets a micro-fraction of the Zynga traffic.

As someone who runs a subscription online poker site, I understand the need to generate revenue, but I am not convinced the risk of losing customers by raising the price and adding pay-as-you-go fees will be less than the reward of increasing the bottom line. I will wait and see, but in the mean time if PurePlay customers want a better experience for a lower price, our arms are open.

Below is the uncut SpadeClub TV commercial. We have created this version in hopes that through a small call to action in the version that is airing that we will drive some addition traffic to the website. Secondarily, we are going to post it online on various sites, such as YouTube, CollegeHumor, etc, in hopes generating some viral traffic. This version is way more suggestive and drawn out. And, I love the music.

It is finally here, the final edited version of the new SpadeClub commercial. When all is said and done there will be 3 versions.

1. Racier TV version – 30 seconds (If the networks reject, we will go with #2)

2. Milder TV version – 30 seconds

3. Internet-only version – 45+ seconds. (Doing the godaddy.com thing and also hoping to get it going viral)

This is version #1. #2 and #3 are still being worked on and will be done within the next few days.

On Tuesday I was in L.A. doing the shoot for the new SpadeClub commercial. Originally we were going to do two different commercials, the beach scene and a green screen spot that promoted a Card Player magazine giveaway. I decided to hold off on the second one until Brittany is back.

The beach scene shot took place at a serene beach in Malibu called Leo Carrillo. I was thrilled at the prospect of being able to “work” on the shoot while at a Southern California beach in August. I even wore my swim suit so I could take a dip on breaks. Unfortunately, the reality was that I was freezing and needed a jacket. It was barely over 70 with 20+ mile per hour wind gusts. Too bad for my beach day and a pain for the commercial. The actors were continually getting sand in their eyes and many takes had to be reshot because Lalani’s hair was in a whirl.

The whole thing ended up taking about 12 hours (I can’t imagine what it’s like to shoot a feature film) and thanks to the professionalism and organization of the production company, Showreel, and the director, Eric Jackson we have a pile of good footage. Eric took our idea and script and put it into logical angles and cuts. He filmed so many different options, I bet there are a thousand possibilities for the end product. Eric is in the edit bay today and should have the first cut by tomorrow. It will be posted.

Here are some snaps from the shoot:

Lalani Reading the Pitch

Lalani and Josh Getting Direction from Eric

The Set

More Lalani (with boom)

I am on my way to L.A. for the SpadeClub commercial shoot and have a little extra time as I wait around for my flight. Instead of listening to the couple next to me fight, I am going to put on the headphones and give a brief review of a book on leadership by Seth Godin called Tribes. The book is definitely not your run-of-the-mill leadership book that you read in business school. Rather, it is a fresh look at what it takes to be a leader in the 21st century. Godin’s book is straight-forward, to the point and surprisingly inspiring.

Here is what I got from the book:

• Complaceny will kill you. Ok, that’s a little extreme and I don’t represents that Godin made that claim, but the strongest theme throughout the book is that the status quo is stifling, inhibits innovation and is basically the antitheses of good leadership. The status quo is programmed into us from years of education and corporate structure where we are taught there is a “right way” to do things and that way is usually to not go against the grain. The poker world is always changing–from  local, federal and international law to shifts in consumer behaviour to technological advances–and will reward leaders and innovators who are not afraid to disrupt things and go against the grain.
• There is no recipe for leadership. Godin argues that there is no archetype or specific personality traits that make a leader. We all have the ability. And, for this reason he does not provide a methodology to become a leader. Rather, he speaks of a general philosophy and tells inspiring  stories of individuals who have created tribes that change the world. The poker world is relatively new and there could be individuals hidinig behing the executive assistant’s desk, in the mail room or in the customer support center. Leadership and innovation is indifferent of titles. And to that point;
• Management is not leadership. Managing a team or a project does not automatically qualify that person as a leader. Godin states quite the opposite; allowing others to take control is more of a sign of a leader. This relates to the poker world as it relates to every organization from a ma-and-pa shop with 3 employees to Microsoft.

Tribes  is the first book I have read by Godin and it is a very fast read (not only because it is short) and thought-provoking. I am looking forward to reading his other books in the future.

Here is another, more detailed review of the book.

SpadeClub.com is in the midst of a major national TV ad campaign (at least to us, maybe not to Budweiser). Our commercial airs on the Game Show Network Sundays on High Stakes Poker and Monday – Saturday on NBC on Poker After Dark. Our current commercial has been up for over 3 months and it is time to freshen up.

For the last month, Brittany Giacolleto (also known as PokerBrit), our Spokesperson, and I have been working on the concept for the commercial. Side note: we are lucky in that our spokesperson is also one of our marketing project managers. Since we advertise primarily on 2 specific poker shows, and the viewers probably understand how we are different from typical online poker, we decided we could effectively move away from an informational spot to something that is more fun and content-based. With that in mind, PokerBrit came up with the concept “poker is not hard” which is a 30-second story of boy meets girl on the beach with high sexual tension that ends up to be tension from a poker decision (drum roll/cymbal crash). If all goes well in production, which it should because the crew we are using is excellent, it should be  funny and memorable.

Get well Brit!

With the script set, the production crew and director hired, and the Malibu beach reserved, we were ready to do the shoot on July 20th. On the 18th I received a text from a colleague that said: “Brittany in huge car accident last night just got operated at the Sunrise Hospital.”  The vagueness of the text really left too much for the imagination, and I feared the absolute worst. While the injuries were/are bad, I was relieved to find out that she was going to make a full recovery. Unfortunately, there were 5 days of hospital time and at least 2 months of recovery to come.   This left me with no choice but to find another actress for the spot.

Throughout the process of casting for a new actress I found myself feeling like bagging the whole commercial. The casting agent went through over 100 girls, but we just couldn’t find a good fit. Part of the problem was that I was trying to find another Brit and that’s not possible. However, towards the end of the search we found a very qualified actress for the part, Lalani. She has a slight accent, but brings a voice coach to all of her shoots so we should be able to hide it. The shoot will take place this Monday and I will update the blog along the way.

Here is the video of Lalani. The script they used for the casting is not the one we are using for the shoot. It will be way more subtle. I realize this seems like an audition for an adult film, but it’s not:

Two Months Two Million Stars

G4’s new poker show, Two Months Two Million, premiers on August 16th. The premise is pretty straight forward: 4 poker pros compete against each other to try to win $2 million in 2 months with various challenges and prop bets along the way. I am very curious to see how they are going to present real money online poker on TV.

I have been buying various national TV media for SpadeClub for the last year and am (way too) intimately experienced with the strict policies that every network enforces when it comes to .com advertising. The site I run, SpadeClub.com, is a subscription site and is of course not a real-money .com so the networks don’t really know what to do with us, but that is a whole post in itself. It is a bold move that G4 is even airing a show with a premise based on playing real money online poker. It is hard to believe they will actually show the stars of the show playing on a real money site. When we called G4 to advertise they rejected us with no explanation.

At first, I thought the reason for the rejection was the usual “we don’t take .com advertising,” but typically we at least get told that and have a chance to explain ourselves and provide legal support. Since they didn’t say anything, and were actually quite rude, I have concluded that they have some sort of exclusive with an online poker room. (It’s not like we aren’t in a recession and it’s not like TV ad dollars aren’t vanishing…TAKE OUR MONEY PLEASE.) This leads me to believe that the four stars Dani Stern (a beloved CardPlayer Pro instructor), Brian Roberts, Emil Patel, and Jay Rozenkrantz will all be playing on one site that paid G4 a sum of money for the privileged.

If my prediction is right and they are so brazen to do it, perhaps it will loosen up some of those strict policies in the future.