Pokémon Go Unova Tour – Los Angeles has concluded, but the event followed the LA Fires that raged through the area at the start of the year, and it’s clear that running the event brought a unique set of challenges to the Niantic team when planning the festivities in Pasadena.
While the event ended up going ahead from Feb. 21 to 23, a lot of the information about the event didn’t arrive until the last minute, making trainers frustrated with their plans. Niantic was fully aware and prepared for this to happen, however, as we sat down to talk to the team at the event over the weekend. Angela Ferguson-Martins, marketing manager of global live events for Niantic, talked to Dot Esports about how the company went about working with the LA county to the end to see if the event could still be run and why information was so late going out this year.
“We announced this event roughly a month to two months before the fires broke out. So we were in this spot come January of the event was announced. Folks have bought travel. We’re trying to make the most of the situation, but we also want to be hypersensitive to what’s happening in the area, and not impose ourselves on a community that’s not ready for us or that doesn’t want us.” Ferguson-Martins told Dot. “We made the kind of the determination that… we were going to do more good than harm being here, right?”
Ferguson-Martins went on to say that she thought Niantic was bringing jobs to the community through the event, hiring locals, bringing lots of tourism to the area that could help small businesses that were impacted by the fires. According to her, the decision to continue having the event in LA was all about helping those that were impacting. Niantic and Pokémon Company also made a joint $1 million donation to efforts after the LA fires happened.
The choice to continue the event obviously had an impact on the event’s messaging and marketing, with lots of information about the event not appearing until a few days before it began. This led a lot of trainers to feel disillusioned and unsure of what was going on, which Niantic acknowledged.
“We wanted to make sure we were very certain about our decision before we continued communicating details about the event,” Ferguson-Martins told Dot, noting that that the team also wanted to be sensitive around that time, even if it meant leaving it to the wire. “I personally totally stand by our decision to pause some of our comms and kind of hold till it felt like we had a better grasp on the situation, and we had the full backing of local authorities, and I’m really glad we did.”
Ferguson-Martins also acknowledged some of the wider complaints about the last-minute bag policy, for which she thanked trainers on behalf of Niantic who took the time to read the comms and react at the last minute to make sure the event went smoothly, saying that when working with an iconic stadium like Rose Bowl, “sometimes you have to abide by their rules they put on us.”
The next time trainers can take part in Go Tour is this weekend, when the global event starts on March 1 for those who couldn’t make it to LA to catch ’em all.
Read the full article here