Thought Play: How do you sell an unusual and unknown concept

Thought Play is a startup company offering an innovative, novel and powerful and proven methodology deliver learning in a compelling fashion to its participants. The company designs virtual experiences using off the shelf computer games to make learning self driven and experiential. Thought Play designs learning modules that are designed for developing key skills such as critical thinking, decision making, creative abilities, learning from ones experience, working in teams etc. Though the concept has been successfully delivered to some pilot groups, the company is facing challenges on taking these offerings to a larger audience, and selling the concept to its target customers. This is because of a negative bias towards computer games and due to very little awareness of the effectiveness of computer games as a learning medium. Your task as consultants engaged by Thought Play is to design a marketing communications strategy that would help the company take their offerings to market, overcoming communication challenges they are currently facing.

Thought Play: Company Overview and Background

Thought Play is a company engaged in Thinking and Life Skills Development, and offers a portfolio of learning modules delivered using its innovative methodology, which uses social computer games as a platform for delivering learning. The company wants to change how people engage with learning by making learning self-driven and experiential. This is based on the principles that 1) for effective learning the learner must want to learn, 2) developing new realizations is a key to effective learning, as it gives confidence and a sense of accomplishment and joy and 3) when it comes to life skills experience is the best teacher. At present Thought Play is fielding products for developing life skills. Life skills are a set of qualities that allow a person to live life on their terms. Absence of life skills restricts what a person can be and can do and therefore limiting the persons ability to engage with life. Academicians define life skills into constituent abilities like decision making, communication, confidence etc. Seldom do life situations present themselves as a singular ability, and hence life skills are a combination of abilities. For instance making a decision, a person needs to have the below abilities

Needs to know what they want (being objective oriented) See if their choice will help them achieve what they want (critical reasoning) Have the confidence to go through the choice in face of resistance (confidence) Be able to pursue with it in face of setbacks (emotional quotient)

Functional promise of Thought Play life skills programs is: Practice facing life challenges and in the course learn how to face them well. The company has developed and is in the process of developing learning modules that build and sharpen key life skills such as critical thinking, decision making, creative abilities, working in teams, leadership abilities and the ability to learn from ones experiences. The learning modules are designed to be experiential and encourage participants to be self driven, for instance

Experiential: In dealing with disagreeable individuals, participants get multiple opportunities and situations, and over a period of time they reflect and learn on how to deal better with disagreeable individuals

Self-Driven: Dealing with disagreeable person is not pleasant and people may look to avoid doing so. At Thought Play participants look forward to understanding how to engage others as that would be a integral part of doing well in a learning module

The learning modules offered by Thought Play, with the various skills that are developed are shown below

Thought Play Methodology, Learning Module Creation and Delivery

Experience is the teacher of all things - Julius Caesar: Thought Play methodology is built on the process of experiential learning. In essence experiential learning involves making direct meaning from ones experiences as opposed to receiving instructions. Experiential learning is a cyclic process that involves going through an experience followed by reflection from which new realization or meanings are derived; these new realization changes our choices in subsequent experiences beginning the cycle again. In experiential learning, you practice a skill, reflect and learn, and transfer them to use in real life, and this happens in a cyclical fashion to make learning a continuous process. It is widely agreed that experiential learning is a very powerful methodology used to deliver effective learning. Using Computers Games as an experiential learning medium : Skill development needs a context to be engaged and repeatedly practiced. For instance participants would require a reason or goal to engage with other people to develop the skill of decision making, effective communication or negotiation. Computer games are a powerful medium that very actively engages a participant while they are playing the game. Within a computer game, participants make decisions, plan on what they want to do, and are forced to make choices in order to reach the given objective. Also, in a multi player environment, where a participant is playing with a group of say 20 people,

various elements of working in a group such as effective communication, being a team player, convincing others, trust and cooperation come into play. Given this, Thought Play designs experiences based on multi player gaming, which guarantee fun and participant interest and active engagement, and in the process making them practice and learn key life skills. Thought Play learning experiences are designed around multiplayer computer gaming, which create a context for participants to engage with others. In the course of this engagement various issues, such as communication, leadership and people issues emerge. These issues emerge as a result of the participants choices and actions and are therefore relevant to them. The engagement felt as a result of fantasy setting and role play within a computer game makes these challenges of interest to the participant. Being a group experience overcoming challenges is a source of recognition and appreciation. [Note: the games are not scripted and instead are a mathematically modeled virtual world where within the scope of this world the participant can have complete freedom to do as they please. Therefore issues that emerge are seen as a natural result of their choices and not one imposed upon them by the system. Real Time Strategy computer (war) games are used.] Learning Module Creation A very high level example of the way a learning module is created is described here. Assume that a module on effective teamwork and communication has to be designed. The research team at Thought Play looks at key aspects of the focus areas on teamwork and communication, such as group communication, influence, group problem solving, creative problem solving, leadership development etc. Post this, they select an off the shelf computer game for instance multi player real time strategy games such as Command and Conquer or Age of Empires that they feel would be best suited to for achieving module objectives. This would then be used to develop a multi round competition, where the participants in a team compete against another team, with the objective of winning maximum games to win the competition. There is a facilitator identified who would run the program and who is trained in de briefing and facilitating reflection through discussions for the participants after every game. How are the learning modules delivered: The program discussed in the above section is delivered for a group of 20 participants using the Do, Reflect, Transfer methodology as discussed below. 1. Play: The group is divided into 2 teams with ten participants each. They are given instructions on how to play the game, and there are a couple of practice rounds for the participants to become familiar with the interface and game rules. Post this the team plays the Round 1 of the game against the opposing team, with one of them emerging as the winner.

2. Reflect: This is the most important stage of the process where the Thought Play facilitator, a trained psychologist, facilitates reflection through discussions with the participants, as a team and individually. These discussions involve aspects like what worked and what did not, the issues they faced, what could they have done differently, their strengths and weaknesses, competitor strengths and weaknesses, essentially facilitating the participants to think and reflect on how they can become better. The way a participant behaves while playing a game (such as acting without planning, being very conservative, coming across as very aggressive, not being able to communicate ideas well to teammates etc) is similar to how they act or work in real life, and hence by reflecting the way one is behaving while playing, they are able to get insights into how they act and think; over multiple iterations of reflection they get better and more effective. 3. Repeat: Post the reflect stage, the participants get multiple opportunities (Round 2, Round 3 . Round N) to try out what they discussed, and to improve and get better over previous rounds. Essentially having multiple iterations with reflection between them allows participants to try new things, take risks, learn from mistakes and get better at the various skills that are being engaged in the process. 4. Transfer: As the participants have experienced and learnt the required skills by themselves and have had to opportunity to try and decide what works best, they would then vary on these skills to become more effective at work, school or in life.

Communication Challenge at Thought Play

The company feels that it has a compelling and superior learning platform and is confident about the methodology and their ability to deliver. However, they face the challenge of effectively communicating about the program and the value it delivers to its target audience. The way the company wants to position itself along with target group is shown below followed by a discussion on the communication challenge

Positioning: Sophisticated, upscale, new age and cool Target Group: Parents of kid between age 10 to 17 belonging to upper middle class and affluent back grounds Influencers: The consumer the child

The Communication Challenge at Thought Play Parents from the target group understand the need for developing life skills and recognize that it is not being addressed by schools alone. However these parents cannot articulate what life skills are and no imagery comes to their mind when the term life skill is used. They have no idea on how life skills could be developed in their kids and cannot explain how and when they developed these skills. Therefore parents have no action image associated with constituent terms like decision making, critical reasoning and others. In addition to this, parents understand at some level that the skills they developed were picked up in course of their life and lessons were learnt after the fact with no scope of turning back the clock and making new and better choices. They recognize that their kids can develop these skills in the course of their lives but are insecure whether their children will develop these abilities and what price they will have to pay to learn their lessons, thus making it a difficult task for Thought Play to easily market and sell their products to the target group. Also, computer games have a negative connotation about them as not being good for health, children being influenced or addicted and children being influenced to violence through computer games. Thought Play would need to come up with a powerful communication strategy that would overcome these challenges, and create an effective positioning in the minds of the parents, and be able to successfully sell the concept. Your Task: You are a team of consultants are engaged to help Thought Play come up with an effective communication strategy. The COMMUNICATION STRATEGY would extend to cover methodology, about Thought Play and elements of credibility (testimonials, external supporting research etc). It should be possible to use different sections of the COMMUNICATION STRATEGY as standalone abridged segments. The core of the COMMUNICATION STRATEGY is to establish life skills, Thought Play core promise of facing life challenges to develop life skills and repositioning gaming based solutions in mind of parents. As part of the communications strategy, you need to

Establish imagery in minds of parents of what life skills are Help the target group to understand visualize that Thought Play provides a platform for kids to face life challenges without lifes risks and in course of doing so they develop life skills. Reposition gaming in minds of the target group as a fantasy setting for experiences that provide greater immersion, richer and more sophisticated experiences than what would be possible if soccer, drama or outbound camps were used as a context and thereby establishing Thought Play as a new age, hi-tech, sophisticated and superior solution provider

Make parents think that their kid would learn from experience while playing games at Thought Play, and reduce the negative image that parents have of computer games Create a communication strategy that reflects Thought Play positioning of sophisticated, upscale, new age and cool. Not in terms of design or color more as in quality and sophistication of a very high level.

Note - Avoid making the communication strategy kiddy like Disney world type imagery. The tone of the communication strategy should be universal across age and one where the parents would find the program attractive for themselves (same as avoid kiddy language).

Deliverables: As a team you have to come up with the below deliverables 1. Thought Play Go to Market Strategy - This includes positioning, promotion, distribution and other aspects of marketing, and would show the thinking behind how you came up with the target group communication. (Word document) 2. Target Group Communication Thought Play value proposition in a manner that would connect with the target group. (Assume you are sending this document or presenting it directly to a group of target customers, thus make it as if the someone from the company is talking to the target customer. This can be a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation)

All the Best!

Note In case you feel you have any questions or require any clarification, please feel free to reach out to Karthik at Karthik.Kamalakar@Cognizant.Com. Questions from all participating teams would be answered within 24 hours.