Cheeze Blog

It’s a 0:0 draw in the (mis)match between social media and big brands, as both seem to have lost out. Quite why brands are in a battle with social media in the first place is the question. There are doubtless going to be posts and comments all over the online world saying how Mattel / Hasbro have missed an open goal here (and I’ll stop the embarrassing footie analogy while I’m behind).

Scrabble was a bored board game, languishing alongside the Yahtzee in your Mum and Dad’s caravan in Yarmouth, and Scrabulous revived it. It should be hailed as the hero of the board game, revitalising a stagnant market and making games companies sit up and take note (we could even play games online, although I’m not sure there’s a market in it). Mattel / Hasbro shouldn’t be pulling it, they should be buying it, branding it, and sticking it on lunchboxes all up and down the land (or at least the digital equivalent of lunchboxes, like Bebo, Facebook and Messengers across the world). My point is simple (thankfully), Scrabulous was the most successful Facebook app of all time and ad space on or around it should have been like gold dust given the amount of time people were dedicating to it.

The transition from traditional board game to engaging, up-to-the-minute success has always been a tricky one. McDonald’s have tried the board game route with the ever-baffling Monopoly-on-your-food-carton giveaway, numerous other board game-style offerings are successfully launching themselves into mobile gaming and the Nintendo DS is doing sterling work with Brain Training in getting the Countdown Conundrum generation hooked on more numbers and letters than Carol Vorderman could shake a board rubber at.

So scrapping Scrabulous is a missed opportunity (no surprises to this ramble I’m afraid), although it would be interesting to see what people are going to do with their time now. Productivity levels are going to increase. Maybe someone’s going to have the time to come up with the next brilliantly simple Facebook app? Or maybe everyone’s sitting their revising their two letter words and Bingos for when Mattel / Hasbro realise their mistake, write the Scrabulous guys a cheque and get them to re-launch with some media support in the form of Scrabulous-branded lunchboxes…