OVERVIEW
Potato Pirates combines potatoes, programming, and piracy into a carbo-loaded card game perfect for the classroom, family day, or even game night with friends. It teaches anyone age 6 & up, 10 hours worth of programming concepts in 30 minutes, all without a computer!
MY ROLE
Marketing & Outreach
Potato Pirates raised over
S$258,000 on Kickstarter!
The Challenge
Computer programming has become an essential 21st-century skill and we wanted as many people to learn this valuable skill. However, we don’t need another mobile application encouraging kids to be glued to their iPads. Moreover, computers may not be as easily accessible to children in other parts of the world and certain schools lack the resources to give students access to these computers to learn programming. As such, we wanted a social medium to bring kids and parents, students and teachers, beginners and experts together to have fun while learning from one another without dealing with the complications of syntax in programming.
Why Potato Pirates?
Pick up computational thinking skills seamlessly
Learn the fundamentals of programming with concepts such as For Loops, While Loops, If-Else Conditions all through an unplugged card game to reign terror on the high seas!
Social fun with no screens attached
Ditch your iPhones. Bond with family and friends over a round of Potato Pirates and have fun while learning programming together.
Universally applicable programming languages
Potato Pirates covers fundamental coding concepts which will ease you into most programming languages.
My Contribution
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company's product or service. Some examples of lead generators are blog posts, giveaways and online content. The end goal is to convert leads into customers, and eventually promoters.
When running a lead generation campaign, the first step is to identify your target audience. In the case of the Potato Pirates, we were trying to attract the following demographic:
One of our key lead generation techniques was to conduct workshops for our target audience groups. This included conducting Potato Pirates workshops with our neighbours in our buildings, friends, family as well as some educators we’ve previously worked with. This not only gave us a good indication of the effectiveness of the game, but it also gave us great feedback in terms of product development for further iterations.
Public Relations
Being the first product we were launching, gaining some sort of social proof from the press was essential for credibility. Public Relations (PR) is one of the most effective ways to build on marketing strategies and create a solid online reputation. PR is an area that can transform the future and profitability of a business.
Upon reaching out to selected journalists, we also sent them a deck way ahead of launch for them to be able to review the product at their own time before writing a press release or a review. After some pain-stacking efforts, we managed to get hold of some major press outlets to cover Potato Pirates. This included Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Mashable, USA Today and many more.
Potato Pirates has been featured on the following media outlets
Shipping & Fulfilment
Upon completion of the Kickstarter campaign and manufacturing, we had to facilitate the shipping and fulfilment of our backers’ orders worldwide. This meant that we had to find the best and most promising routes and shipping rates for our dear backers to ensure that both parties were happy as we all know, shipping to certain parts of the world can be expensive.
Key Takeaways
This campaign was on of the firsts I was part of in terms of putting my Marketing and Outreach skills to the test. I realised Marketing will never be the same for everyone. Some things that work for Company A may not always work for Company B. There are a numerous ways to succeed, it’s just about finding what sticks.
Reaching out to the press and getting them to cover our game was such a fulfilling task. Up till today, Potato Pirates has over 100,000 decks sold worldwide and it has been translated to over 27 languages!