On one side you have Hasbro and Mattel who own the rights to Scrabble, and on the other you have an unauthorized Facebook application called Scrabulous, which has over 600,000 users and is one of Facebook’s top ten used applications.
If you were Hasbro or Mattel, would you:
a) Be extremely happy at the amount of free advertising?
b) Try and work out a partnership opportunity?
c) Send a letter to Facebook claiming an infringement on your rights and ask for Scrabulous to be shut down.
Answer: c
The Motley Fool makes a great point in an article addressing the issue:
Well, the Internet often seems to have a knack for irritating old-school companies. They generally don’t see situations like this as beneficial for their businesses or brands. They view something like this as an annoyance at best, and threatening or downright illegal at worst.
Just think about it for a minute – you have 600,000 people all merrily interacting with your brand online and you then decide to piss the vast majority of them off. Perhaps Hasbro and Mattel are planning to launch their own branded Scrabble as a Facebook application, but the question remains as to how much damage had already been caused by their heavy-handed Scrabulous tactics.
Of course they have every right to defend their brand rights; nobody is suggesting they should roll over and allow Scrabulous to take their online territory. But, Scrabulous does not have to be seen as a competitor. In fact, both Hasbro and Mattel stand to gain infinitely more by cooperating and partnering with the Scrabulous creators as the fans have already been gathered into one place.
They could actually sell Scrabble boards through the application and even allow the name to be used. They could then roll out different Facebook applications for their other board games. Also, how do you think users will perceive Hasbro and Mattel by partnering and opening up their games online and adding to the fun they’re already having?
As it stands, most people currently regard them as yet another clueless corporate numbnut.
And nobody wants to buy from clueless corporate numbnuts.
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