PLAY METER: what was your first consideration when
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you took over the helm for Sega Centers?
ISAACSON: The first thing I did when I joined Sega
Centers was to try and determine who the market was.
We decided that we had to find out what our market was
because then we would know who our players were and
could then direct our marketing toward them.
PLAY METER: Why was this the first consideration?
ISAACSON: Our feeling was that the more often you get
a player into your place, the more likely he is to spend
some money with you. Up until this time, the theory was
that a family amusement center was an impulse place
only, that it would only appeal to people who were
walking by at the moment. The theory was thaf you
could not market to the outside, that a family amusement
center could not become destination oriented. So the
only promotions that were being done at the time ,
consisted in passing out coupons for free tokens in the
mall. But there was no effort to go beyond the mall itself
and into the home in the form of advertising or any other
marketing effort.
.
We felt there must be a way to make the arcade
destination oriented. But to do that we first had to find
out who our customer was. That's why determining who
our market was became such a high consideration.
What we did was put some money into a promotion
called the Sega Summer Sweepstakes, and we took out
some radio advertising on youth stations, and we raffled
off some equipment. We ran the promotion for an entire ,
month. Players coming into the amusement center could
sign up, and we had them give us a lot of in(ormation such
as how old they were, what their game interests were,
how far away, they lived, and so on. It turned out after the
promotion that we got something like 15,000 lo 20,000
responses across our chain of ten locations.
PLAY METER: How did this response help you?
ISAACSON: We learned from it that the average player
at our amusement centers was a 14·year·old male. But
we realized a lot of other benefits from this promotion.
For one thing, we found the players at eadr ofour stores
had different game preferences. We found that we had '
driving stores, flying stores, pinball stores, and that shot
down a myth to us that all arcades are the same. So,
based on that, we rearranged all our equipment to suit
the desires of the clientele at the various stores, and that
resulted in an immediate boost in revenues.
But, more importantly, the promotion supplied us with
a mailing list of players, and that meant we could do some
direct marketing to that group of active players and try to
get them to come into our stores more regularly.
'We found we could do some
direct marketing to that group
of active players and try to get
them to come into our store
more regularly.'
PLAY METER: Is this where the Sega Centers
newsletter, Extended Play, came into existence?
ISAACSON: Yes, we started sending out a newsle_tter to
our mailing list. The first one highlighted the winners of
the sweepstakes contest and had some free play
PLAY METER, June 1, 1981
coupons in it that could be turned in at any of our stores.
We were amazed by the cfmount of free play coupons
that came back from these players from this newsletter.
And that told us something significant, that our market
was responsive to direct marketing, We realizea that we
could, in fact, make our stores destination oriented for
these players.
'Our market was responsive to
direct marketing. We realized
that we could, in fact, make
our stores destination
oriented for these players.'
You see, the theory was that if you can get them into
your store, you carr do business with them. You can't do
business with them if they aren't there, So we had to give
them a reason to keep coming back. That's why we
developed the Sega Card. It was a - plastic card,
beautifully done, that entitled a player to two tokens ech
week at each one of our stores. That meant players could
actually go from one store to another and get two tokens
at each store, and we found this approach very
_,.-:,,
successful.
The Sega card became something of a status symbol in
Los Angeles area high schools. The reason was that our
main audience of 14-year-olds didn't get any mail, and
our marketing approach flattered them by giving them
mail. It also gave the players something that looked like
Dad's credit cards, and so it was a good status symbol.
PLAY METER:How did the players get these Sega
Cards?
ISAACSON: We sold them the €ard, and that I think is
the best way to go about it. That way the players look
upon the card as an investment.
PLAY METER: And so the newsletter and the Sega
Cards helped pick up play at your arcades?
ISAACSON: Definitely. The newsletter, which came out
quarterly, would always have more coupons in them to
keep players coming in for even more free plays. But I
should point out that a promotion like this is a costly
proposition. So I wouldn't advocate that everybody go
out and do everything just like we did it. Sega spent
thousands and thousands of dollars developing this
technique. With all tbe printing and mailing costs.
something like this becomes quite an investment. But ·
paid for itself over the years.
Also, w~ were able to keep tracking our card carriers
because when they signed up for a card. we made
give us even more demographic information.
used this every month to run a computer analysis. of
playing public.