Alex Brodsky - Avoiding Common Mistakes in building a Gaming Brand

foreign [Music] it's really nice to see all of you didn't you guys go to the party last night well I appreciate you wake up so early okay how many of you are on the marketing or published inside of the business raise your hands well many of you many of you I was thinking marketing people dance till the dawn okay uh look the topic I'm gonna cover today is about Brands and it's important not only for marketing it's importantly for everyone who

in video games business before I start let me let me introduce myself and the company I'm with and where my experience is coming from so I'm with places the creative Powerhouse where we produce marketing content for video games um we have a pretty unique story we were born around 10 years ago inside wargaming or gaming is a huge developer and publisher you probably know him uh by their well-known IP and Brands war of Tanks or World of Warships so we were working exclusively with war gaming as the in-house agency supporting all their gaming titles with the majority of marketing content from small Banners To full weight advertising campaigns around three years ago

we made a first step towards the industry and introduced our CGI Production service to the whole video games world and managed to work with different clients like Ubisoft and last year we we came fully independent and all our expertise and skills and services available to the whole video games world now we work with Riot games whereas Nikon with Ubisoft with war gaming with the sandbox we skin with other game developers and Publishers like and we enjoy it very much uh just to visualize what I just said I want to show you the latest displays and show real just press play these are the words I'm free to do my best

striving for the horizon at work everything is play in a sense sense of story and storytelling sense of wonder the ability to amaze and be amazed sense of adventure the right to experiment sense of urgency Focus speed and momentum sense of teamwork of team play and when playing bonus is allowed in hard work is given it just makes sense [Music] okay so as you can see we can we did very much and we can deliver more the soundtrack was uh customly developed in the UK so it took some time for us to

prepare it and I'm very emotional about what I just saw because like it's the very first time I see it on the screen too on the big screen uh we'll speak about emotions a lot uh So speaking of myself and myself look how cool I am um I yeah I've been with video games for about 10 years spent part of my career with war gaming where I had a lot to do and grew up to the head of In-House agency now I'm super happy to be with playstances the Ico okay that was an introduction part let's go with Brent um what what is brand brand in general is a unique personality or identity of your game I want to highlight the word personality here uh we'll talk about it a lot um brand helps company to be different from others and it helps people to remember and to recognize it and

speaking not only about game development game video games as a company but about titles as well so it helps you to stand out from the very tough competition we have on the market increase the players loyalty it increased the year uh trust and you know it's also in times of Crisis it's ensure a long-term success having a strong brand can give a company a sense of secure and in general draw like as I can see there are plenty of Publishers and marketing people here also you know that you have many ways to promote your game so for example you have a concept of Performance Marketing which is focused on short-term revenue and specific actions and you have brand marketing which is mostly about building long-term relationships with your audience so today I'm going to talk about brand

mistakes and how everything every game developer can avoid it if listen carefully so the first one is um thinking of the game exclusively as a product what does it mean it's thinking of the game as a source of Revenue just source of money like nothing meaningful or joyful just business and well what we have now in video games we have this issue yet an opportunity that is booming last year around 11 000 games were released on Steam so it's about 30 Games per day so the competition is tough it's really hard to stand out from the competition and well we here in in this room we compete we fight for free time for of our audience not only with other games

we fight with streaming platforms with TV like people have a lot to do like they watch Netflix they watch Sky Sports and English Premier League they have a lot to do outside gaming and even in games they do have a lot of choice they can easily nowadays switch from one game to another that's why we hear we need to provide something special to them and well um speaking of for the business point of view it's also like this Boomin it leads to higher acquisition costs so we just have to spend more and more Investments to our social media advertisement promotion just to have this small chance to grab an attention of of the audience

so having a solution is having solution of having a strong brand is pretty well it's pretty incompetitive tool to have its as I said it helps you you to stand out from the competition it's it's recognizable it also helps you to Define your core audience and well be more relevant to it um well um thinking of consistency of communication like when people like let's speak of a game title as a personality like when a person is changing his or or her like her mood or their behavior a couple of times per month like you could find it a bit awkward it's happened with your game title as well so brand helps you to frame your uh messaging your tone of

voice it just helps you to be consistent in this kind of communication it's also brand helps you to build strong not just emotional but strong emotional connections and increased loyalty I have an example as a place since we work closely with war of Tanks Blitz marketing team and um it's pretty unique experience and what this team has achieved through through all the operation of this game so war of Tanks Blitz is a mobile game and what brand team did they differentiate this game from war of Tanks PC because while war of Tanks PC is about immersion heavy vehicles feeling like part of something huge war of Tanks Blitz there have different audience they have different dynamic

they gameplay they gameplay sessions are shorter their visual style are brighter and it's hard work to stand out from the game which might looks like the same it's not the same at all and what they did what brand marketing team did they like achieved some result and just want to remind you that Blitz has been released in 2014 right so next year as they celebrating their 10th anniversary which is well few mobile games achieve that and it was achieved because Blitz has always put their efforts into a games brand well that's a fantastic result uh also what they did they brought a very loyal like they built a very loyal Community without loyal Community you

can't last long in this market the second mistake is game features and unique selling prepositions alone attract audience so this is actually a question can a good game sell itself well um I would say yes but it won't without good marketing won't release its full potential and where the here we introduce the concept of emotions so great marketing is not about giving people uh what they want it's about making people feel what you want them to feel and emotions that's what makes us all feel alive we're always in a look for emotions we pay for emotions and usually we pay premium for emotions they make us all fall in love it's the

same with with brands with our games we wanna people lover or game no not no less and you know it's very hard and to risky job to build this emotional connection because this is very thin line you give your audience fake or exaggerated creative or campaign it puts your communication on their own side and it may you you'll like those people will feel frustrated and they could potentially lose the interest interest and your job not only marketing job but everyone who in this room who works in this industry is to craft powerful emotions and what you need to do is to associate those emotions with your game with with your product this is actually the

process of building a brand first emotions then attributing those emotions to your product um I think it's also a very fair statement statement that the more individuals love your brand the higher the value of your game because people willing to pay premium for emotions right and you know it's hard it's very hard to love anything or anyone without a personality so you need to have this personality and what's also important emotional value has a limitless price tag Limitless great example um of launching battleborn so battleborn was developed by gearbox and published by 2K some time ago so the it was a hard game so it was FPS

it was mobile it was adventurous or like they had lots of like 25 different characters what not um so the agency amp came up with a very with a strong emotional solution how to launch this brand this game uh they came up with a message that this game is not just just for gamers it's for anyone who wants to feel like a badass because everyone has an inner voice that whispering like come out come out and play you are badass and they played on it um so these games this game LED you to unleash your uh in about us so they executed this message in message in a fantastic way so it was very consistent

across all platforms so each and every asset they produced in social media or in terms of video trailers they even had um huge activation Zone on history to us it had a feeling of badass and despite like at the end of the day despite serious competition who had higher budget it was a very busy launcher launch period well battleborn started on the top and was top one across all three major platforms back in the day so what they did they found this emotion they found a way how to deliver this emotion to the audience they nailed it third mistake titles Italian but not making a

conversation look um successful titles they don't tell you what to do like I release my game you go and play that's it my job's done I just sit and wait it's not like that so successful brands and game titles they start a conversation with their potential audience not just their current audience um this is like very it's also similar to how people communicate with each other first you need to listen and then you respond because Brands which don't listen then they won't be heard now like despite how loud they yells and in terms of business Laut yelling is just a huge spending in marketing and good brands they can

create an emotional value with just a whisper yeah in general video games marketing is a pretty and you think as uh like yeah we have many people many people from marketing here but you understand we are self-taught most of us are self-taught we just have this experience working with different companies uh with different products and we bring it to to this particular industry um so other other Industries like any other industry they their marketing is older and more experienced and in those those areas individuals have like this is a routine for them just to have a conversation with their brand it's it's super it's like a daily stuff for them

to have this opportunity to start a communication with their favorite brands and I think video games will lack of it at the moment and we need to reflect that um also um were listening means observing its ant understanding as a brand we need to understand what happens in society we need to understand people's Joys and worries we need to have our strong point of view like your brand point of view and if you communicate it in a meaningful way on a consistent basis you'll come a leader in people's minds and you know that people we all used to fall in love with salt leaders so um as said demonstrate that your game has a

personality has face and the soul and you let let your community in um be open and honest speaking of the community here like it might sound what I just said it might sound very emotional it is though it also has has the specific business results so if you have like if you built an emotional connection with your audience it also leads to well great like Sean and loyal Community it will actuate world of mouse where people will tell everyone how how good your game is how good is the how good the community is they are part of it and they retain they stay with your game longer and Sir at the end of the day it leads to lower acquisition costs so you'll spend less for bringing players into a game and also you'll increase your lifetime value

so you'll increase profits uh with this all future relationships with with your audience um also a great example how Brands communicate with with their community so when Marvel announced the Guardians of the Galaxy game like you know what's happened with Marvel funds to really there were Millions around the world they have their expectations they're always high and they also had some assumptions and this brand knows how to answer these expectations and the assumptions right so the community expect this game to be multiplayer it's they expect it to be very close to the original Marvel movies though the game is a single player it has original story and

working is is like listening to the audience and working with expectations is tough but they nailed it so they hum A Creative agency they came up with a elegant yet direct solution they just told their Community the truth so jump into star Star Lord's jet boots and command the Guardians yourself so it's just honest it's like a single player it just said and um it was like huge campaign whereas sir lots of channel of communication um but what's interesting that the audience match it like matter warmly met the game and also uh when they started this campaign the pre-order charts they um jump to the top so this like

Guardians of the Galaxy was always on the top after this campaign launched so you just you just don't try to pretend to be someone else be yourself let your brand be yourself be authentic we all have references though we are pretty unique all of us here in this room and all our games are unique but we just need to show it to people who are our target audience actually that's that's my favorite mistake Brandon is logo and key visual which is not far from it so as like continue comparing brand to personality identity is just close and branding is your game's personality

as said it's like more more than just a logo so when you develop your game's personality you start with your player profiling you try to identify identify your audience your find the portrait of it then you make a competitive analysis trying to understand who are those companies and games I'm complete with where my Niche is and also you continue with brand positioning answering how exactly is your brand different from others value proposition which is a statement what benefits players receives from you tone of voice how do you communicate with them what emotional tone you choose you should have your communication strategy which is actually a plan of how

the messaging is delivered through all these channels to your core audience naming the messenger and well it's also crucial you wanna this brand to stick to your target market and to your audience like for a long time identity well even identity is not just logo individual you should have your style guide with all the color schemes whereas typography it's a rally like Brandon it's it's a complex it takes time to build it and it needs you need to make self-research self-check do I understand everything about my game do you have all the information to let others to enjoy it and to be more successful just an example of how how the identity could be fluid so if you have a strong brand you can do

whatever you want to do with your logo and your brand is not just a commercial name or even like a seller logger like brand are the values we attach to our products our games and this process of attaching the values called marketing and this is example of a Warner Bros still celebrating their 100th year anniversary it's recognizable in any form in any form the last mistake is branding as an afterthought start alley start thinking about branding early if you ask me I'd recommend to um do at least your first steps at the pre-alpha stage because this is a stage where your community is born

this is where you have your chance to feel your audience to like make first steps of understanding what they like what they feel and what they what you want them to feel why you need to start early so as already discussed this is a very competitive market you need to have a chance to stand out and branding gives you this chance so at by the moment of launch you will you will come up with everything from this slide so if you start early um yeah um so you'll have your like value proposition your tone of voice you'll have your communication plan and honestly changing a brand or building a brand from scratch after after the launch is costly it will cost cost you

huge investment into new promotions into changing marketing material materials in turn advertisement campaigns so you'll you'll spend much more if you don't think about it on the early stage also yeah well it helps you on there this early stages to build your core Community your loyal Community who will activate the word of mouse and go everywhere and promote you for free right it has also and like this is an opportunity you'll you you risk your reputation when you change something after after the launch because it's like damage damaging your brand by being inconsistent too there are plenty of the exam examples how brain Brands changed um during like all their um been life though it's always costly you

could be potentially could be successful but you should understand there are lots of flaws in it so this is a list of questions that we as agency ask our clients it's just like short top what we ask our clients who want to start doing brands start doing branding to the game um I'm not sure I want to dive for deeper in into each each of everyone but this is a self house checklist this is actually and this like you ask yourself do you really understand all the aspects of your business do you understand the game you produced or like developing so actually I have an extended list of doses just six like we have about 20 25

maybe more questions and I'd be happy to share with all of you so you just drop me a line uh on LinkedIn and I'll happily happy to share because I really think that this self-check this is what we lack of we sometimes we just well I want to do something great and my great game will be fantastic and everyone will love it don't drop there are many aspect that we should take into consideration well uh just to sum it all up um today's marketing video games marketing balance between performance advertising and brands or marketing so performance is focused on short-term revenues and branding is about building long-term relationships and so in Ideal World you need to balance balls you need to find your own balance then there is no magic pill it really depends

on how you see your brand what strategy you have what results you expect but you need to have both um also my advice if you ever decide to cut costs in your company don't start with marketing if you wanna land losing long-lasting success if you wanna your brand to grow and to be recognizable and to bring additional value don't do that at least with brand marketeers um yeah Brands um also what we discussed the part of having a conversation with with the audience so you'll you first listen then respond and this is like the only way treat the brand as a personality this is a personality treat your game not just

source of money it's it has a soul it has a face and let your brand let your game influence others I I have a feeling like her that after that after after this chart there will be a huge change in there in the market itself in terms of how Brands build trade so um it's about all making full people making fall in love in Brands it's pretty the same how people fall in love with each other so you find something likeable you saw you find what you really love and you stay there that's the only way and um strong Brands they create emotional connections with audience and the more individuals love your brand the higher the value of game and people people really like think of

yourself we really want to pay for Meaningful emotions and if your game if your brand provided you'll be on top you'll be on top and if your brand if your product doesn't have doesn't provide like some emotional value it's it's just a product it's not a brand um yeah I guess that's it for today I really enjoyed what I just I um I had a conversation with couple of you during this these days and um I realized that very emotional topic and we don't think about this business from emotional standpoint of view I really appreciate you helped me to realize how how big it is and I hope you support me

in this continue expanding the word the word about Brandon thank you [Applause]