ONLINE-OFFLINE GAMING
Think global, act local T
he most successful consumer marketers know very well that not all corners of the world can be treated in the same way. McDonald’s menus change in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways when you cross a border; Coca-Cola sells
soft drinks you’ve probably never heard of like Kinley, Thums Up and Urge as well as the eponymous black stuff; a Malaysian Marlboro doesn’t taste like an American one.
And so it is with online casinos too. Not only do gaming
operators generally have to be licensed in every territory they accept bets from – which brings its own set of challenges that we’ll discuss in a future article – but the casino brand, and the casino experience, also must be fine- tuned for each country.
One drastic solution is to launch a completely different
gaming service for each market. They may share the same underlying technology, they may be run by the same people, but from the consumer’s point of view they’re unrelated Websites, and the only one of real interest is the one that serves the nation where they live.
This approach is not without its downsides, however. For
example, it means abandoning the opportunity to leverage existing strong land-based casino brands. It makes online advertising harder to target accurately, because there is no benefit in delivering an ad for Molvania’s casino to a resident of Ruritania. And it means that the online operations cannot benefit – in terms of public perception and trust – from each other’s size and success, because the consumer market simply doesn’t know they’re connected.
In short, the advantage of the one-operation-per-territory
policy in exactly matching what’s offered with what each market needs is offset by the need to create a large number of brands that are relatively small and weak (at least when
28 JULY/AUGUST 2010 The Internet is no longer an overwhelmingly English-
speaking place (you can even get domain names in non- Roman alphabets now), so translation is required – or indeed, something more than translation: what’s often referred to as “localisation”. Specialists in this field will help develop versions of your casino tailored to each market, retaining core elements of the brand while ensuring that it harmonises nicely with the culture of the country you’re targeting.
There are hundreds of ways to slip up if you’re not careful –
for example, colours, numbers and animals frequently have strong symbolic associations that vary around the world. Can you be confident that you’d spot all the potential negatives (or unexploited potential positives) on your own? A relatively small investment in professional localisation will help ensure that your casino does nothing to offend and much to please – which will not only keep players coming back and revenues flowing, but will help enhance perceptions of the brand everywhere you operate.
These affect not only in the choice of games to offer
(again something we’ll look at in a future article) and local variations in rules. Currency differences, as well as typical consumer incomes, affect the sizes of bets and jackpots. Preferred payment methods and means of withdrawing winnings are not the same everywhere.
they start out), rather than one umbrella brand that can become a worldwide household name.
And that, of course, is the diametrically opposed strategy:
the umbrella brand. It’s not, of course, a matter of launching a single Web-based casino and hoping that one size will fit all; regulatory requirements will probably prevent that anyway, and even where they don’t it’s essential to recognise differing national requirements.
Operating online casinos for different territories under the same brand can pay dividends – but it’s still essential to localise the player experience, suggests Barnaby Page
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