Doug Walker, creator of the Rock, Paper, Scissors Society (RPS), presented “the doubest idea he ever had, but also the most successful.” Through purely Word of Mouth, Doug has become the authority on Rock, Paper, Scissors strategy. Doug outlined the four principles that the RPS Society is based on:
Building Authority: it transcends the world, and with the created fictional backstory (a lie) to give credibility and authority to an organization that had non, the the RPS society was born.
Mutation: The RPS Society has mutated to keep the idea fresh, and actually creating a real-world World Series tournament to leverage community interaction across the world.
Participation: Players in the tournaments became competitors, and the winners became full fledged C-level celebrities for the afternoon. Events also encouraged journalists to participate i the event, and also created tools for many acorss the world to create their own competitions.
Accretion: For the RPS Society, it is “how one by one, things build, and build mass.” The RPS Society used WOM to generate a centre of gravity for which people were drawn in as it gained momentum.
In this short video Doug shares how he was able to get Canadian marketers and attendees to the conference to get into RPS, and compete – Heck, I even challenged him. Watch the full video to see who won.
More photos from the Rock, Paper, Scissors event can be seen at my Flickr photo set.