Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 17:46:06 08/13/01
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On August 13, 2001 at 13:47:16, Roy Eassa wrote: >On August 13, 2001 at 13:18:04, Kevin Stafford wrote: > >>winning doesn't really matter, and perhaps may hurt potential sales. This may be >>twisted logic, but here's why I think this: the media is jumping on this match >>as a rematch between man and machine. If machine beats man, no one is shocked, >>because its the general publics viewpoint that the best chessplayer is already a >>machine, so this isn't really news. Man beats machine on the other hand, and you >>have an epic comeback story to put on the news, one that restores faith in our >>dominance over our creations, blah blah blah. Fritz beating Kramnik gets a >>byline on the backpage. Kramnik beating Fritz is front page news, once the media >>puts their spin on it. Front page news = more copies of fritz 7 sold = >>chessbases ultimate goal. >> >>Of course the opposite side of this is that if they win they can put a big label >>on the box saying so, which is great advertising in itself, so I could be >>totally off base. Something to ponder at least. >> > >You are not totally off base. A big label on the box will sell a small number >(call it x) of additional copies to a mostly-existing audience (where does the >public see the box?). The bigger news story you hypothesize from Fritz's losing >will get the attention of a much larger potential audience. Even if only a >small percentage of these "new people" buy, it will result in selling y >additional copies, where it is reasonable to expect that y is significantly >greater than x. Don't forget the 'creative spin' that marketing people sometimes use. For instance, if a chess match went like this: Human +9 =1 -1 Computer +1 =1 -9 They could say: "In an international competition between the world champion and best chess player of all time, our computer not only managed to tie but even to defeat him!" It's not a lie. Just a misrepresentation of the facts. The computer did win one game and draw one game. It also happened to lose 9 of them.
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