Word of mouth: The Scrabulous way

With every craze, there comes a moment when the magic starts to fades. Facebook is no different. The social networking site still handles 600 million searches and more than 30 billion page views a month but has received an increased amount of negative press recently. Fears are growing amongst its users that their privacy is no longer their own and the possibility of identity theft is all around them. Now, the site's most addictive application Scrabulous is under threat from a take down order issued by Mattel, which owns Scrabble in the United States and Canada, and Hasbro, which holds the rights for the rest of the world. The loss of Scrabulous due to trademark infringement would chip away a further edge from Facebook's appeal and set a benchmark for future disputes. But has Mattel completely missed the point? And more importantly, is it giving up an opportunity to tap into the advocacy an online platform is creating for its brand?

Facebook hasn't really got a leg to stand on. The Scrabulous application is after-all a complete rip-off from the board game. But for physical companies to thrive in a world dominated by new media, they should focus on the opportunity before reacting to the threat. At this point there are more than 600,000 active users of Scrabulous. Dozens of Facebook groups have been created to “save Scrabulous.” The biggest had more than 23,000 members.

The board game prospered in the 1980s. But with advances in computer game technology and the growth of the internet, many board games now only come out for Christmas. Surely, Mattel should first look at sales of Scrabble in the past 12 months and decide if Scrabulous has reinvigorated interest in the game. The marketing boys should then seek to buy the application. If they can't buy it, then sponsor it as the official Scrabble game on Facebook. Failing that, allow the scrabble brand a new lease of life as the game of choice amongst online communities. Then, seek out the next branded content opportunity. Brand reach across online platforms is limitless. And word of mouth advocacy has seen the scrabble brand back in everyone's vocabulary.