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April 2007 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

PlayStation's Matt Levitan
He's starting to roll out his hard-won Canadian website

by Annette Bourdeau
page 23

Matt Levitan knows his target inside out. He is his target. He lives and breathes videogames, and that serves him well as the marketing and PR manager at Toronto-based Sony Computer Entertainment Canada (SCEC).

From a quarterly magazine highlighting gaming news to a discussion group on the popular social networking site Facebook, Levitan excels at anticipating gamers' needs. His most recent project is the launch of Playstation.ca, which will be rich with content like exclusive concert footage.

"It's something we've been fighting the U.S. office on for quite some time. We finally got the green light," says Levitan of the Canadian-specific site. He eventually won the necessary approvals by tirelessly lobbying the U.S. marketing department, citing unique market factors like different price points, a large French-speaking population and a separate retail environment. And, some changeover in the U.S. marketing department didn't hurt, either. "What .ca will be about is content. I'm not going to sell product.... Our retail partners already do a good job of selling our product online," he says.

PlayStation.ca soft-launched in March, accessible to gamers via pre-registration. The official launch is April 1, but Levitan doesn't expect it to hit its content-heavy stride until closer to the summer. He says PlayStation

may sponsor a summer concert tour and film it, likely with up-and-coming bands. "We want it to be really grassroots," he explains. He also plans to include footage from some higher-profile PlayStation concerts, too. "We like to throw our own proprietary shows. We'll probably shoot in late spring," he says. Past PlayStation concerts include Wyclef at the PS3 launch, Metric at Toronto's Masonic Temple last fall and the Black Eyed Peas at a private show in Whistler in 2003.

Levitan also sees room to highlight copromotions on the site, like PlayStation's partnership with six NHL teams, or giveaways with Hershey, Coke and Energizer. In the meantime, he'll be promoting his own events. "To launch the site, we'll have a heavy Campus Cup message," he says, referring to PlayStation's annual gaming competition for students, which has a grand prize of free tuition. (Last year's Cup attracted 2,400 participants, this year's is expected to double). He also plans to upload footage from the "Gamer's Voice" promotion PlayStation does with Future Shop, which invites gamers to test out new games and report their reviews on-camera in a booth set up in-store.

Giving his retailers a little extra is a big focus for Levitan. Four years ago (while still VP at Toronto-based Segal Communications), he launched PlayStation Quarterly, a magazine featuring previews of upcoming game titles available in-store at big retail partners like Future Shop, Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

Levitan's passion for videogames is what drew him to Segal in 1997, upon returning to Toronto after a stint as a copywriter at New York ad agency Axis. He had joined Axis after graduating from Boston's Emerson College with a master of arts, marketing degree. Segal was still in its infancy at the time. But Levitan knew Segal had the PlayStation account,

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