With a single tweet, Rockstar (owned by Take-Two Interactive) had captured the gaming worlds attention. This tweet from 2016, which got over 100,000 retweets, only suggested the notion of a new Red Dead Redemption game with the use of the color scheme over the logo. The most fascinating part isn’t what is told, but rather what isn’t. The tweet has no mention of Red Dead Redemption. This tweet showcased the ability short-form content can have.
Short Form Content has a love/hate relationship in the digital age. Because we as humans have low attention spans (around 8 seconds), it would make sense for the content that we consume to be as short as possible. However not only is long-form content more popular through SEO, but it also generates more shares (BuzzSumo). Even with this, short-form content can be a great way to engage the community. To ensure that your content provided is not forgotten among the sea that is social media, you want your content to stand out. Ideally, your content should short and simple, and provide images for the consumer to quickly process. As Robert McKee, an expert on brand storytelling, states:
If your marketing is really good, you realize you don’t necessarily need to put all the elements of a story in front of the audience, because the audience’s mind is a story-making mind. If you give them certain elements, they will supply the rest.
The Rockstar tweet stated above is a great example of this scenario used in gaming, as the tweet itself is cryptic, however, we as the consumer put two and two together. While it is difficult to tell the effect that one tweet had on the multi-million dollar marketing plan put ahead by Rockstar, we can say that Red Dead Redemption 2 has generated $725 million in its first three days and it’s the second biggest opening for a product in entertainment history, only beaten by Rockstar’s other major game: Grand Theft Auto V, which achieved over $1 billion in revenue during the same time period.
We most often see short-form content coming from social media, particularly top platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. As largely visual based channels, with twitter noticeably being only 280 words, the average length of short form content, it becomes clear as to why these platforms let short form content flourish. Another example we can pull from is a fresh tweet from Nintendo of America.
In this tweet, it announces a Nintendo Direct focused on the upcoming game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. the tweet itself only give small details such as the date and time of the direct, as well as how long it will take. As of right now, it generated 25,000 retweets in a series of 15 hours (as of this post). While this could have been a long-winded press release or breakdown, to market an announcement using short-form content was a phenomenal way to generate hype leading to the game’s release. It is important to not underestimate the impact that short-form content can have when given the right platform and can be beneficial to your end goal when used with larger brand recognition in which the consumer is familiar with the product or brand.
Austin Easler Game Marketing 