How Angry Birds reached the stars

Hello and welcome to the Pocket Gamer.biz podcast. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocketgamer.biz. And don't worry, the lovely Peggy is still around doing interviews, but I'll be taking on more podcast interviews in the year ahead as well. Today, we have some great guests on the show looking at the history of Angry Birds. We're going to go through some of the big marketing campaigns, partnerships, and game launches that Angry Birds has been involved in, focusing on Angry Birds, Rio, Space, and Star Wars, and how that helped with brand building and audience engagement, the lessons learned, and what marketing looks like today compared to those amazing stunts that we saw previously that we'll go into. So, to do that, we've got three guests. We've got Pascal Clarice, a longtime industry marketing maestro, who is now the CEO and founder of Big Karma. He has literally written the book on Angry Birds with the recent released book, The Slingshot Formula. There you go, Pascal.

It's a free advertisement which charts how Angry Birds launched their way from indie to global icon. We've also got two of the leaders who were right there at ROIO during Angry Birds's sharp rise to fame. We have Naz Amachu Quas who was the EVP of global consumer products licensing at ROIO. Since then, she's worked at Cybo, Scopley, and now has her own business 212 strategy consultancy. We also have Maria Continent, former marketing director at Roio, who later worked at Lighter, Flare Games, Hatch, Lockwood, and others. She now has her own consultancy agency called Transparent Eyeball. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thank you for coming on. How you all doing?
Thank you for having us, Craig. And I'm doing fantastic personally.
Excited to talk about some AU birds. I think you've got a lot uh
and excited to come back home because I used to write for pocket gamer.base. You you didn't mention that
way back when the time
the last time I was back on PG I think
it was under your helm already.
I can't keep away from here. You know

they keep bringing me back and I'm looking forward to the stories Naz Maria of of your time at Angry Birds and as I say some of those interesting stunts and partnerships. So we'll we'll jump right into it. So, I'm going to read an excerpt from the book uh from the preface of the book. It's very short. For listeners, don't worry. I won't read the whole book to you. It starts with in 2009, a small independent video game studio in Finland called Roio, was on the brink of bankruptcy. It employed 18 young people, none of whom had any previous corporate experience. By the time its 52nd game, Angry Birds, came around, it was make or break time for the company. Over the following four months, Birds was downloaded one million times on the Apple App Store and became the next mobile hit. And then we all know kind of the general details uh about what happened from there as the growth. Pascal, you go on to say that during that time you were keeping up to date with the latest developments of the market and look and looking for marketing tips and one name that kept popping up was roio and then a birds. You were skeptical. I'm remembering this from the book. You were skeptical at the

time about how Roio could maintain long-term success. In the end, as you detail in the book, uh you became a follower of ROIO through their major marketing campaigns like the Rio film and the partnership with NASA. So my question now is years later, why did you decide to write the book? Like it's been a long time since Angry Birds launched. Parts of this book occurred, you know, 10, 15 years ago. And then were there any parts of the Angry Birds story that you thought haven't been told? Were there any lessons you thought could still be learned? So there are two parts to your question. Why did I decide to write the book and how and that's a long one and then why is it really relevant still today? So I started writing it in 2012. Before that I had worked for a good 10 years in Hong Kong in uh making hardwares things like you know street fighter anniversary controllers and things like that with my good friend Paul Chen who was signing the limited editions at the time. It was 20 We was 28, I was 25, I think. And we tried to

get into mobile during the app store revolution. We had a lot of our ex customers and partners who were becoming indie game developers. And we were basically looking at Angry Birds hoping to replicate what they were doing in the marketing side, but not finding our hit. And if you can't be them, join them. Paul Chen was the first. He convinced Peter Vestabbaka during Peter Vestabbaka and Henry Horn during a show in Asia that he should be their first employee in China and he should open their China office. I became a consultant at the time working for other less successful but quite successful mobile games and we were all looking up to Angry Birds which was sustaining they had a lot of sustaining power which was unusual in gaming as you might remember. And then I kept in touch because Paul is a dear friend. And every time I was calling him, he was living in a movie. And I knew that this was not his life because I knew him from a decade. And I remember one vividly which was, "Hey, what are you doing?" "Hey buddy, I'm sorry. I'm

in Indonesia. I'm in a bit of a rush. What are you doing in Indonesia?" Well, we Angry Bros is launching on Facebook, you see. But does this have anything to do with Indonesia? Well, Jakarta is a Facebook capital of the world. Didn't know that at the time. Although I was a marketing guy who was supposed to know all these things and the prince and the prime minister inviting us to do a launch in a big shopping mall and was like hold on the prince and the prime minister. Yeah. And this was business as usual at Roio things like that everywhere around the world. And I was like I think you're living a movie and more importantly you might be on to the Ninja Turtles or the the Smurfs or the Simpsons of the time. There's going to be ups and downs, but you're launching a brand that's never gonna die and that's going to stay in pop culture and you're going to be the first from mobile game. I want to write this story because it's going to become quite interesting to look back one day. Introduced me to Peter Vabbaka. Since being fins, I was

welcomed inside the room and they shared everything with me. I tal to everybody. They shared data. They shared insights. They shared stories. I became a friend of the family and I kept in touch because I had this book in my drawer which I thought could have been released 10 years ago. But coming from the gaming world which is the fastest entertainment industry in the world and formula one of the space the book industry is proudly the slowest entertainment industry in the world. You have to prove that this can be sold for 10 to 100 years otherwise it's not worth even printing it. And so the first movie was not enough of a critical client. They needed to see the second movie, the Netflix deals, presence in Roblox, in Minecraft. They needed to see that yes, it's a brand and yes, it's going to stay around and know Sega bought it and put a price on it. And that's how it became a publishing deal. But I think personally it's almost as a 48 years old business

dad, it might be more interesting now because you have a generation of kids who grew up playing Angry Birds innocently. And for them, Angry Birds is what to me is Smurfs or Star Wars. It's their childhood. And they want to figure out like me with the toys that made us on Netflix. I want to figure out how the n the 1980s were were made and what was the marketing back then. And I'm blown away to find out that He-Man and Transformers were the animation were essentially marketing vehicles to sell the toys and that they were giving it to for free to the networks to proliferate the brand. That spirit that came about in Angry Birds in the digital world I think is very interesting for a new generation of entrepreneurs who are now vice vibe coding with AI and starting their first startup and there is a mindset and a few tricks and a few explanations about how the business world worked and still works today because some things don't change so much. I think it was a passing of the baton which through a brand that they

have experienced and loved was very interesting and I think that's where me and the publisher line in this day and age and so took it out of the drawer updated it to date and up until like two months ago I think and there you go it's out in store now and you can buy it from amazon.com
again again you know you got you got to make the plug and obviously as you're both you're both in the books and we're going to discuss all of that uh in some detail over the next uh hour or so. Thanks for that, Pascal. And uh so I was reading in the book uh as well as researching some old videos about Roio and Angry Birds. And the part about the Rio film partnership was was interesting. That was a partnership that was quickly signed with the ambition of hitting 50 million downloads. a notion that when I was reading it, I believe the it was the film marketing executives reacted with with disbelief and doubt about hitting 50 million.
Remember it was a paid world back then. So they were projecting 50 million times

0.99
and then the game was basically made also in 3 months. There's a bit of caveat to that cuz you said it was the work that was being done on the sequel that you were able to use.
They were preparing a sequel that became Angry Birds Radio just through assets sharing. Uh, and it came out just a few weeks before Rio's release. Uh, luckily, well, not luckily, but by design, impressively, I think. Uh, and it's worth noting that the game then hit 50 million downloads in one month. And then by January 1st, 2014, it reached almost 300 million installs across, I believe, free and paid versions. Uh, so pretty pretty significant number of downloads. in a talk at Pocket Gamer Connect Helsinki 2014. So I was looking back for I was actually looking for a specific talk and came across this one. Maria, you were doing that one and you mentioned the campaign and said one of the benefits of the deal was you got a Super Bowl ad that wasn't even in your marketing budget as in you didn't have to pay for it. And Pascal, you mentioned

in the book and you say at the time for a 30 secondond Super Bowl ads, you'd be looking at around $3 million. So that's a pretty significant save from that partnership. So my question for you Maria is uh I guess what was the marketing around Agub's Rio like? And can these licensing partnerships sometimes have those unexpected benefits or is that kind of thing that happened just never repeatable?
Well, I have fond memories of Rio. It was my first day at Romeo when the game came out. So I was invited to the party and there was samba dancing and everything like, "Okay, this is how it's going to be from here on." It was a great great first date and I ended up working on it for quite a few years. So I've seen it from the very start to to the second movie and how that came about. But that's a long story. Anyways, um I think the the start of Rio the game is actually quite funny because I think Fox was thinking it as a marketing tool for the movie, but I think it kind of very quickly turned around that the movie was a marketing tool for the game

and the game very much became a bigger thing. And well, we know that there's a couple of movies. So, basically, it was a good gateway for Angry Birds the IP to enter Hollywood and get some excellent uh people who knew what they were doing in the movie business to join Roia as well. But I I think like tipping our toes into that business was a good starting point for with Rio. I think it was a really cool game in general because it wasn't just the same as the original Angry Birds. We also had a lot of characters from the game and you're the the whole setup is slightly different. you are actually releasing birds from captivity. So there was a bit of a charity aspect as well and we played around with that later on too. We brought some partners to make awareness about the Amazon pink dolphins and things like that. So we were able to utilize the game to talk about different topics. We had access to all the fox marketing muscle and that was really amazing for a tiny indie game at that point having time squares ads. We had access to the DVD. We did these exit polls at the cinemas. And I think this was really interesting actually. I've

been thinking about this a lot, but back then we didn't have any analytics tools. So you really
seems wild to think about for mobile.
Yeah. In the first half a year, I don't think we had a lot of analytics. So the analytics we had was our t-shirt sales. What sizes we were selling from our own web shop and our first licensing partner from J. C. Penney. And we knew that it was Excel shirts. So it was dads and it was the areas where iPhone had been released. So we knew that this was the dads of kids playing maybe picking up this game for the first time. This is their first play like game ever on phone and we started seeing that as well that folks wanted to market the movie to kids. We were able to reach their dads. So this is more like completely different perspective to a movie marketing as well that you actually going through the parents saying hey let's go together to the movie theater and through those exit posts we were able to get that data point as well that they had heard about the movie through the game and that gave us leverage again to talk with
it was 80% I think it was 80% of the people who went to see the movie heard

about the movie because of Angry Birds Radio and by the way at the time Rio was a number one was the first in a new IP. It was not a sequel. So, it was expecting hopefully to open top 10 in the US. It opened number one against two sequels. And that was eyeopening for Andrew Stalo who was at the origin of the deal, but it was so impressed that he ended up joining Roville after that as head of North America. And
yeah,
you worked with him Naz on the Star Wars deal later because he's the one who picked up the phone and and get Lucas done. But so it was really eyeopening to him and for me later when I saw that data by the way how the video game was pretty much the the tycoon of the all IP train of the entertainment train what Stalbo said later doing Hollywood in reverse. You start with the small one and then you go big rather than going big and then doing everything else around it.
Yeah. And and this continues really

funnily because as the first movie was out it became DVD. was kind of out of the system already and Hollywood doesn't really do anything after that until they have a very clear idea that they're going to do a sequel or not. We pitched for the sequel because we were out of content, but we had tens of millions monthly active users in the game who were demanding more and we ran out of story lines, characters. We're like, we're going to keep coming up with stuff. So, I started pitching like different characters and stories to Fox and they said, well, whatever you want to do, we're we're happy just keep on going because we're able to talk to so many people. But we're keeping the IP alive. So we started pitching two. We went to visit Blue Sky Studios. We talked with them like what we've learned from the game, what kind of characters are working, the story lines. We got number two. And that was really good for us as well because they actually gave us a bit of timeline to work with the game. We had like couple years instead of couple of months to prepare for the next release and get those big ads going again. And a lot of really cool collaborations that happened. I was just

actually I think one of the most exciting things and this was really eye openening for me was to be quite brave with your demands. If you look at the first Angry Birds Rio trailer that was created by Roia Fox did their own version. We did our own version and our version has the fox logo. The classic trumpets and everything and the bird flies through the logo and just destroys it. This was not cool with most people. This had never been done before. you were not allowed to play around with the logo, but we were we demanded that the whole point of Angry Birds is that they fly through stuff and they destroy things. We should be doing this with your logo as well. And they said, "Okay, let's try that." And that was a good sign for us that we're collaborating with this guy on the other side, Andrew. And he's he's able to understand what we're going for. And and I think it was like 125 million views for that trailer still. So still going.
That's amazing. I didn't actually know that for the sequel. So basically you're saying that Roio in a way because it was a successful film in the end. So I guess the sequel was going to come. It you're

kind of part of the reason a key part of the reason that that was made.
Yeah, it was a lot of that was because of the game. There was a fan base that existed already. We already own the customer relationship. You don't need to start building again. Huge. And it's a global audience that is waiting for that second movie to come. So
it's the other way low hanging fruit. the other way around. Going back to your original question about the the superpower lad that came a lot from the emulation between Peter Vbaka who's a crazy energetic thick driving force and who said 50 million downloads on a call one day and there was this belief but then there started to be this emulation between him and his team on one side and the roio go spirit and on the other side Andrew Stalber but also Peter Levenson embracing that spirit and at some point it was like let me one up you stalborg clearly said to Fesbaka we're going to give you a taste of Hollywood marketing

and then came the Super Bowl thing which by the way Fox had to pay for because that's something I learned naively at the time even though you're part of the same Fox group it's different companies and they cannot play favoritism and get cards by different you know watchd dogs and so they had to pay the 3 million for the ad which was a real ad for the movie but then there was a hint about a a level number in the the ad which was referring to Angry Birds Angry Birds classic I think at the time it was the the original Angry Birds and you could find something so there was this collaboration done right this true partnership spirit which is by the way one of the things that amazed me the most as I got into the story there are several things but the partnership spirit the P all in. We go all in and then it pushes the partner to also go all in. I brought that to some of my campaigns later in in the creator economy. some awards nominated with pocket game or with Pagani I'm looking

at over there which has nothing to do with Angry Birds but that spirit of oh we can bring something really prestigious and really something cool and something somebody who has the distribution but not everybody wants to be around that somebody and that's something they yeah they amplify and eventually you go into virality which is and that's that's the world I'm looking for it's that proliferation and that resonance and you feel like it's everywhere and even if you don't know what it is you're missing out on something because everybody's talking about it. It's in NAC visuals everywhere
and we had zero budget. We had no marketing budget. So all of this is through partnerships and how we negotiated it was that they are getting awareness that they just cannot get themselves. We already working on it. We already number one. We're able to get you there too. But actually now Pascal when you're mentioning the Super Bowl ad, yes, it had this tiny quick clip of Angry Birds game. And if we went to that level and you figured out how you can unlock it's spelled Rio and it had the link to the trailer and that's where all the views are coming. So even though we

had no analytics, we were able to track the YouTube views. So how many people did actually find this crazy level, unlock it, click YouTube and watch it and it was really good numbers. We were happy with how much effort people put into unlocking secret eggs in the game. And we used this mechanic quite a few times afterwards.
It's it just shows it was a very different time for the industry as well. So no analytics and you had no marketing budget yourself which is the complete opposite of of how
it's our kind of marketing. It's our kind of marketing. Correct. Because as Maria as Maria is describing what was happening with Rio on the consumer product side we started to see a huge demand for the classic line. So this is one of the things that I think ROIO has been a master of which is to utilize whatever partnership is happening or whatever co-branding opportunity is happening to then always solidify our foundational brand which is Angry Birds Classic. Yeah. And I think that that is the definition of a good partnership. So while Maria is telling us what happened

at the Super Bowl and we are promoting Angry Birds Rio, our classic numbers are just st not just stabilizing, they're exponentially growing in the market and and we're attracting additional partnerships. So not just co-branding opportunities that we'll talk about in a minute with new partners and IP owners, but also new licenses and new retail opportunities because they're seeing if these guys can do that with no marketing dollars, what can they do with our brand? And there was some interesting kind of monetization tests that we were doing during this time as well and slightly later on. But like how can we bring more retention? So add more content in the game as in the tombs channel. So we started making our own animations because we saw our YouTube videos were so popular. People really wanted to hear more and learn more about the characters and backstory. So tombs was like a retention mechanic that was already building up on something we knew was working. My favorite how I ended up doing all the partnership was the pause screen because we noticed that there's players that either they go through all the levels with whatever stars they get

or they are the three star players who want to go back and perfect the level and whenever you want to go through it you're going through the pause screen and pause screen was something we were able to control and put our own messaging there. So we were able to talk to each of the players promoting whatever the news were put ads in there to tell them that we have a new YouTube video out. So, we were able to talk to all our gamers constantly through the pause screen, which was a I think very clever way of setting up like a in-game channel
and very ahead of the time because this is very trans media. Everybody over uses trans media today, but back then they really had this complete I was blown away by that that they had already in 2011 flywheel with plush toys, t-shirts, licensing, but the sales within the h the app were blowing up. Actually, there's a story I tell in in the slingshot formula where the plush toys was the eye opening moment because they kind of tried it. They put the plush toys, this was not one of those. It was one of the originals. They put the plush

toy I think in November or December in the app. They put few of them on sale with PayPal. Open the PayPal account for that because that's what you do as a startup. and it was $500,000 or $300,000 within a few hours. And so PayPal flagged it as this must be money laundering.
Mhm.
Is there this thing that comes from Finland and they were making zero sales yesterday and now they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars. That that that's not that's not right. Freeze their account. Freeze first, talk second. They eventually get it on frozen, but that was actually an eyeopening moment for them and kind of a blessing in disguise because they hadn't produced enough for that amount of of demand anyway. So, it's kind of good that PayPal posed it for a moment. But yeah, they were taken by surprise by how much demand it was for And there was another moment when they took it on a on a tour on San Francisco during GDC and they were taking one of these

sightseeing bus tour with one of the prototype and they were taking pictures with red bird. It is around San Francisco and some kids with their mom got into the bus and said, "Oh, that's cool. What is it?" They didn't know what it was Angry Birds. They never played it. And the answer was, "Oh, that's Angry Birds." And the mom said, "Oh, yeah, of course it's Angry Birds." because of the eyes and the perfect design of the of the character. And that's the moment when you realize we got something bigger than a game here. We got points of entry to a brand and we got a character that can live across platforms, across verticals, across industries. That's when where the trans media thing happened. Candy Cross has tried and tried and tried. It's hard when you don't have beloved characters because candy already exist in the world out there. So the storytelling and the character centric is a key component when you want to go brand and that's why obviously this amount of success is difficult to replicate but how to build a brand is kind of a formula and is not that expensive at first. It's about

hiring a few extra people who think differently but I've seen then Andrew Stalbo again replicated at best fiends at some point and I' and I think Naz you and and Maria you've seen it done and done again. There is a certain mindset and it's like esport you have to plan it right from the beginning before you become successful because otherwise you might be taken by the velocity of it. It's too late. Then
we're also very lucky, I think, with the actual character itself. The juxaposition of a bird who is angry. That in itself, you get a chuckle out of it, right? Just just out of the blue.
And then when you look at Yeah. And when you look at that that image of Red with the thick eyebrows and we always used to talk Maria and I and along with the rest of the marketing team, they they look like constipated old men, you know, and con, you know, when you look at Red, you look at constipated old men with the angry eyebrows and just without even playing the game, you wanted a piece of it. What is it? What what is this thing? So the cool factor

was there, the imagery was there, the color red, fantastic. uh was there with the big eyes. And it lended itself so well to all three mediums, whether it was the game, whether it was animation, entertainment, eventually became the movie, or it was anything that was the physical products, whether it being the location based entertainment in the activity parks or just a plain t-shirt or this plush animal, right, that we would be able to carry. And it lent itself really well also to our hoodies, which Craig and Pascal, you remember these really well, which I actually think the first consumer products and the first branding and the physical world before the the plush toys, it was our our hoodies that we wore so proudly. Yeah. And the hoodie was like a user research tool for me because whenever you went through any airport, people would recognize your hoodie and say, "Oh my god, you're Angry Birds people." like you just pass through and you had stickers to throw around. We went through Pascal tells this in the book as well, but we went to a Playboy party with our hoodies on. Totally got through

through without it get being on the guest list. People just recognize it immediately and they knew that you were part of the development team instead of a fan because they were not available for anybody else unless you worked. So obviously we would wear our hoodies as our work.
They became available but there was a yellow stripe I think. Yeah,
the original is a different part. We had to create a special
we had to create a special line because everyone but everyone wants wanted wanted them. All of our partners, licenses, retailers. I once had u a very important person inside Hasbro say to me, "Nas, what do I have to do to get this hoodie?" And I said, "Look, you got to quit your job. Come and work for us at Roio." Eventually, after the partnership was signed, we did create a very special hoodie for him and we shipped it to to the Hasper office. But it was it became the thing. And if you looked at the hoodie, you know, the zipper was in the middle, but it was half of a face on each side. That was also very iconic for us.
Now I'm trying to remember if when we opened the China office, if our future president, Alexander Stub, was there

opening the office, I don't remember if he wore the hoodie or not, but I hope he did because that would be very cool to have a picture of the president wearing the red hoodie.
The president of Finland for everybody out there,
obviously.
Right. Uh we're going to move on to the next topic, but as you you've risked a clickbaity headline with that comment about the eyebrows, I will say and uh I was also just amazed that you managed to put a link in on a pause screen to PayPal for for plushies. I didn't I didn't even know you're allowed to do that. So
there was no laws at this point. Come on. While when we were we were creating the playbook of how to do mobile games and what you can do inside them, there was absolutely no restrictions and App Store was happy with us.
Great. We're going to move on to the next topics. Uh we've done Rio. We got a couple of So, uh next thing uh so there was another major partnership Roio had famously with NASA. So that spawned Angry Bird Space and I think the stunts that NASA used as a way to kind of get people engaged with its own missions and

the exploration of space in general. And so in the book it looks like the NASA the NASA partnership among a host of other potentially interested licensing partners was one of the your first deals when you joined the company Maria which to quote the book you joined after dreaming about applying for the job and getting it.
It was meant to be. So my background is um marketing for a lot of the things and I was running global marketing for Nokia from the digital agency side and we were pitching my client at Nokia Phil Hickeyi a 3D mapping projection for South by Southwest and he was like yeah let's do it and I said I want to use the Angry Bird characters I've seen guys playing the game the ones who have iPhones I know we are not working with Nokia but these guys are really working on this IP and if we can get the game on Nokia that would be really huge and let's use the character So I I got in touch with Ravia, met with Peter and Matthew and we talked about it and they just sent me all the assets in an email without any

paperwork. And I'm like, "This is really interesting. I like these guys, but I could probably help them with some business development ideas." And I just thought about it. I really love the meeting. And that night, I had a dream that I'm going to work for them. So I just wrote in the morning, I wrote an email like I probably should work for you guys. I can bring some meaningful experience. And couple of weeks later off I went and I was handed this crazy database of emails, all the incoming emails and I just started browsing through like they didn't have time to answer anybody at all. They were just tweeting and that was pretty much the marketing. So there was a lot of incoming. So I picked up that and I think this is kind of the the vibe of the early years that we would do what felt right and what we really enjoyed. So NASA was my first pick and I I called them. I had a great talk with Bob and Bert. They would usually do like model movie collaborations. Super helpful guys. And within that one hour call, we got along so well. We were just like riffing on ideas and it sounded like

they would be up for anything. And it was late in the evening in Finland and I was totally on fire like, "Oh, this is so exciting, but I have no idea how to work with this team because I've never worked with them before. How is this going to be?" And I was about to leave home and I saw Petri Araba, head of studio at that point. He was there with Nicholas head. They were still working on something. I went there like, man, I'll be talking with NASA. We should do something really cool. And they're like, okay, Petra just picks up a pen and started drawing on the board like I think it could work. We could just take the gravity out of the engine and that would be really cool. Let's get back to this in the morning. And the prototype was ready in the morning. Said it off to NASA saying we can do this. Let's set a date. And that's what we did. We'd had a fixed date and that's how we started working as a big company towards a very specific goal. So we need to ship the game but we're going to be shipping a lot of other stuff as well including educational content. My our first licensed products we did a nio book about space. We had crazy amount of stuff. We were collaborating with

Walmart. We had a like a Easter egg hunt in all the American Walmarts. It was totally nuts what we were doing within the year. Again, marketing budget was zero. So, it was all about collaboration, figuring out who are the partners we want to work with, what can they do for us, what can we do for them, kind of negotiating those. And the whole space thing just it went really crazy after. But that was the whole point of it. And I love the Pascal that you you put this into the book as well because it's so nice to have documented. But first time we went to visit the NASA guys, we had a prototype of the game with us on iPad and we had a whole auditorium full of really interesting people. There was like educational people, astronauts, scientists, and the legal representative. And we we we went through the whole project. And maybe an hour later, we're like, "Okay, so I guess we're done." And then like, "We should probably check with the legal that we're all good." And the legal just looks at us like, "Sorry, I haven't been listening. I've been playing this game. It's really great. Awesome." And we ended up writing down the first Space Act agreement in Finland. We had to find

like a special lawyer to figure out how we can collaborate with NASA. this is like a extraterrestrial legislation that we need to do. Yeah, everything was really going well, but we were really figuring out like how we want to do the marketing. Like how can we announce this? And yes, we have a crazy idea. Could we any chance we could do this from space? Like I know it's a totally massive ask, but anything. And they were like, "Yeah, sure. Let's do some calls. I think it should be fine." And it was fine. We happened to have Well, I think serendipity is a is a word for this one. We had so many lucky coincidences and occasions that we were just riding on this like good luck but happened to be that the astronaut in duty on duty at the ISS was Don Petit who was a really excellent educative scientist who's able to really talk about science in a fun way. He happened to have some green balloons with him and eggs and one of the Russian astronauts had brought a red Angry Birds toy with

him to space without us even knowing about it. We just saw a picture of it that it was used as a gravity indicator when they were launched to space. So we had
given to him by his daughter.
Daughter. Yes. As a good luck charm
for everyone. So I didn't know that until I spoke to Maria. Apparently all space flights take a plush toy with them to know when you change gravity and because then it amplifies and it's a funny way to find out. And it's tradition among astronauts and cosmonodes to choose which plush toy they want to bring. And in that case, the Russian Cosmonote, his daughter was a fan of the game and it was his favorite toy and she gifted it to daddy just before they flew. And that's why it was used as a gravity indicator. And that's why there was a picture on space.com that because otherwise it would take weeks if not months to get a plush toy to to the International Space Station. So that kills your campaign ID right there. The logistics we had to do.
Yeah, we had to do a political agreement

with the Russian section of ISS that they were able to provide the toy because they keep their personal items on their own national sites, but it was okay to borrow it for the couple of videos. And we we got like 40 minutes of absolutely crazy material from Den Petit. He was doing like experiments and science tests. He was drawing on the balloon and making this complete in space version of Angry Birds and how how gravity works or doesn't work in in space. He had a slingshot sorted out there and everything. So, we had the best partner ever. Um, it was really tricky to make marketing out of all the content because there was so much of it. So, we made a like um marketing video out of it and I think it was one of the most watched YouTube videos of that year. But we had so much extra content that we actually made educational videos for the tunes channel. So the we don't want to miss any opportunities to educate our players about really important things in space. And that came out pretty good.
That that's part of how it becomes a

book to me. First of all, the stealth learning value. I will always remember Bob Jacobs from NASA telling me justifying why NASA did that. And this visionary telling me for NAZA angry about space is the recruitment tool for the astronauts of tomorrow. Video game as a gateway to change the world you know and and that stealth learning value stays with me today at what I do in big karma. So that's really interesting and also the historic value I'm like this needs to be told. This is a different type of story than what I've lived at other marketing departments at many companies. this is something else and it it's it's really worth telling.
It also launched entire new businesses for us that we weren't thinking about, you know, because the opportunities were so organic and I think that that's what made it so special. Like Maria said, zero marketing dollars. This is literally happening organically. And then this launched a whole new opportunity for us with education. We ended up actually launching the educational arm inside Roio where we

were having books to teach kids communication and maths and really simple arithmetic that we could populate the world and in particular below the equator and we can teach kids these basic learnings using Angry Birds as the brand.
Yeah. And it became a tool for NASA to educate kids about their usual space program and the space shuttle program was ending at that point and they were really struggling to reach kids. They had nothing to talk about because the rockets were ending. So suddenly they realized that they had something to talk about and show the latest trailer and they were able to give like hints about the n update. That's all the kids wanted to hear from an astronaut. And we were playing games with astronauts and kids and it it was super fun to see that the astronauts started enjoying their time with kids again. like there was so much to share and they felt like rock stars which find it was so awkward odd for us to realize that somebody that I think highly of is an astronaut is actually only cool when they're talking about games like how can that be but it became reality very quickly and we started even

the update with Mars Mars rover was one of those moments where we realized that we were able to translate science into something much easier to understand and playable like playful learning became a concept where you take taking really like a complex topics. Orbital gravity is not something easy to talk about, but you can actually play it and just test it out yourself and it's so much easier to communicate after that. And we started getting a lot of feedback from kids who just wanted to know what happens next to the Mars rover. Has it landed yet? And they were excited about because of the story. That was really cool.
And Angry Birds became the number one traffic source for naza.gov for two to three years in a row. If you look at the top 10 in traffic sources, I think there is Google, nasa.gov and eight angry birds links.
I guess
these are all the top 10 and the number one, two or three are all Angry Birds. And so that attests to the partnerships and why it makes sense for NASA to the point of zero marketing dollar. That's also a partnership thing. It's not that

nobody paid for it. is that each partner you work with in different industries can bring things to the table that are priceless for you but that are just in the warehouse for them. Can you pay the truck? Yeah, sure. Can you pay the insurance? Yeah, don't. All right. Delivered. That's one thing. But then there's the third thing where sometimes that costs a bit of money. We don't have a budget. Yeah, but we have T-Mo or this brand or that brand who would love to be involved and splash their logo over the thing. Maybe they foot the bill because that's the only thing they can bring to this one. and we all win. But you see a lot today with collabs and and and uh brand deals on the influencer marketing or in the creator economy. That was happening a lot at Roio these three parted uh the three-way or fourways partnerships where somebody has to pay and is the one who has the money but maybe doesn't have the cool factor or the distribution at the time. So lots of deals were done on that way and that's actually brilliant approach.
Yeah. to grow big fast on a a budget of zero or almost zero a truck and an

insurance.
The way we were looking for partners, of course, there was a lot of like interest coming to us as well. We were lucky to pick the right partners, but like Samsung had a Galaxy device coming out. That's a perfect device for space game, but we also knew that we're going to be promoting it like crazy. So, if we say that we are going to be promoting it only on your Galaxy device, it will be in every single photo. And that's what we did. We showed it on Galaxy TVs and on on pads. We had a um t-shirts going out at Samsung events. So it was a huge um like ability to collaborate with the partner in the right time in the right way and they are fully in that made a big difference.
So I guess one thing to wrap up that section and then we'll move on to the next bit. But you also did a stunt with the space needle which was was that was that timed with a rocket launch and can you explain a little bit about that? Yeah. Um that so Space Needle is in Seattle where all the tech companies are and one of our key partners Amazon just

nudging that the book is also available on Amazon. But we wanted to do something in Seattle so that we can get Amazon excited about the game and we knew that basically from the office you can see Space Needle. It's a huge landmark in Seattle. So how can we take that over? It was a photo opportunity kind of how do you create a spectacle that everybody will see and take a photo of? That's all we wanted to do. So there was a lot of this kind of like how will people see about the game? What what will they hear about it? What is the headline? So we have NASA, we have to have something entertaining and viral and silly and we even Andrew was in a cupcake wars. Was that the name of the show? He was like a judge on space cupcakes. We went for space cakes. The whole story like
to go back to the Space Needle though. Andro and Villa Aari were on the we're there on the spot hoping it wouldn't get too windy because Seattle is a very windy city and they had this giant plush toy that was just one of one and when they hung it up and these are

the elements that I love in the story the human elements because Phil Hickeyi at that moment is at the hospital because his wife is giving birth. I'm not sure if it's to Liam Man or to to Finn, but
Finn.
Anyway, he he's giving he's at the hospital and suddenly he gets a text. Oh my god, I can't watch already the drama. Oh my god, I can't watch. They made a hole in the bird. And so the inflated balloon, it wasn't a plush, it was an inflated balloon and there was a huge hole and they couldn't patch it and they were like, "Oh my god, what are we going to do?" And it's like, "No." And what what can we And then they knit with rope. They knit it together somehow that it hold and it was still leaking, but they made a bet that it would hold enough time to make all the photos and to impress the city and get the videos and put it on the internet, which it did. It did hold enough hours, but I love the drama of it. The, you know, it's just humans trying to do a stupid stunt and it might not work and the stakes are pretty high and they're having fun doing it too because that's

another thing that they discovered. It was fun to watch the marketing and the creations and the productions of Roio because they had fun doing it. They were a fun bunch to hang out with and they were laughing at their own jokes. And which is by the way the rule at the Simpsons writer room as well. If we're not laughing, no need to pursue the joke. Millions of people are not going to laugh if us 10 haven't laughed yet. Don't try and explain to me why it's funny. We didn't laugh. Move on. And I think that sense of having fun was very present at Roville. It was winging it if I may use.
Oh, that's a good pun. Very good pun. Um, I'm just gonna move on to the next bit. So, at this time and as as the book puts it, so I guess after space and and Rio, we've already been talking about it a bit. You know, Roio kind of I guess had his choice of partners and despite some push back from the creative director, apologies if I get the name incorrectly. It was Yako, I want to say Isalo.
Yako is

on making so there's some push making another Angry Birds title after space. He was convinced to get to work on Angry Bird Star Wars. So some things that stood out from the book Pascal you claimed that there was complete creative freedom from Lucasfilm which I find astonishing
relatively they studied the brand bible the Star Wars brand bible is of course lying in
mhm
at the roio office I saw it already back then and they were among fans Yako was a bit reluctant because he had been working three years with Angry Bros and he wanted to make a new game and he was convinced to do it anyway because it was a big deal but everybody else was a big fan of Star Wars was Phil Hickeyi at marketing. I he's really close to the brand now and he enjoyed it and Miguel Francisco who drew everything in my back was also a Star Wars fan. So merging the characters with the Star Wars universe after reading the brand bible they kind of nailed it and it was seen as this cool mobile game that could bring them to China that could bring them to use.

Let's do it. Let's see what they do. as you're going to get into with Naz in a minute. By the time the first one was super successful and they had to do number two, the stakes were higher and the whole of Lucas got more involved and and it was managed much more as a as a co-brand player.
So, as I think from the book, this partnership was kind of saw consumer products become a top priority within Roio and Roio collaborated with Hasbro for the first time because that was I think you said it was Lucasfilms's preferred partner. Um and then the partnerships or you hire not you the partnerships or roio hire Naz to lead the super products and retail strategy for North America. So Naz could you explain really how you nurtured that Star Wars duo in the early days of that and then building this kind of new consumer products division?
Yeah. So at the time Angry Birds Classic was doing extremely well but with all due respect it was all over the place because it was at the time it wasn't the priority for the company. So it was just

really organic. It was just growing. So it was all over the place. We were just saying yes. The company was saying yes because these look like fun products to have. Why not? So observing from as an external, I was I don't think I've ever said this in public. I was really turned off by the whole thing because I I kept saying where's the strategy? You know, this is being treated as a short-term situation. If they want to build an evergreen and they have every ingredient to be an evergreen, where's the strategy behind this? So, coincidentally, when Andrew called and he invited me to have a coffee, I actually turned him down and I said, "No, this is a short-term opportunity. I'm not interested in that." And he said, "Have a coffee with me. Let me explain it to you." And eventually, we got to the point where they brought me in. And my first the first job, which was extremely difficult, is to say no. Now, if you're in consumer products licensing, it's like you're fighting to live another day. You know, you don't say no very often. So, that in itself is going to be turning the whole thing upside down. But you had to because there were a lot of products, there were a lot of partnerships that if we weren't careful,

it was going to dilute the brand. So using the Star Wars partnership was a perfect opportunity for us to learn what consumer products licensing is internally because both Lucas and Hasbro were just premier partners, right? And they had been doing licensing forever. Whereas for us, Roio and in Finland, it was a very nent industry. I actually remember my third time visiting Finland and getting a call from the CFO saying, "Could you come up to my office and help me out?" And I said, "Yeah, sure. What is it?" And he said, "I have Norda Bank on the phone." And this is a followup to the PayPal story that Pascal uh talked about. And the Norda dude wanted to know, "What kind of business are you guys moneyaundering? What kind of business is this?" Because your CFO has shown me a merchandise license agreement, which is for at the time it was like nothing. It was like a $5,000 minimum guarantee. And the royalties reported in this one $5,000 deal is

nearing a million because once the lency pays for that $5 million guarantee, everything is a royalty, which is about 10 to 12% on top of it. And and he they couldn't understand the business. And I had to sit there and explain it's not money laundering. This happens because XY Z. And there were a lot of deals like this that we had been writing. royalties were coming in and even our own team did not know how to support the revenue that was coming in because they were only able to forecast what was in the minimum guarantee not the royalty. So that in itself was the most basic first six months of my time at ROIO. And I did use the fact that Lucas had their brand bible, they had their product development lines, they had ways that they work with the partners. Hasbro comes in as their master toy lency and it we were very lucky to be able to work with their team. And the beauty of it is to Mario's point, everyone was so excited to work with us. And we had a lot of quote unquote lucky opportunities where someone would say, you know, my

sister's kid or my neighbors this they are also in love with the brand. So they we had community behind us which was very grassroots and that's marketing that no money can buy cuz it was really authentic. So Star Wars for me was the beginning of how do we clean up Angry Birds Classic without penalizing those partners. As a matter of fact, let us reward some of those partners with the Angry Birds Star Wars opportunity to ensure that we had longevity for classic. And the beauty of it was everyone in the industry was looking for the next Angry Birds and they didn't know that the next Angry Birds was Angry Birds because the the day that we launched Angry Birds Star Wars, I think we broke the internet for like a couple of minutes. I think the app store probably had a glitch and little kids everywhere's brain kind of exploded a little bit. Um, and I don't know
that's the place you want to be. And if I'm ever so lucky to experience it again, um I would do a couple of things differently. But as I look back in those moments, I say, "Wow, it was just right place, right time." And we decided we were just going to have 50 lences and we

couldn't contain it to 50 partners. We had to open the opportunity to up to 200, but I was sitting on at least 1,200 opportunities on my desk for Angry Star Wars. And from 50, imagine, we said, "We're only going to work with 50 partners. It's going to be super premium product and what are we going to do? And I said, "No, I need to open this, but you know what? I'm going to double the royalty." So instead of charging 14%, which is a premium royalty, we said we're going to charge double. So we take 14% and Lucas Arts takes 14. It's unheard of. It's crazy. And these partners said, "Okay." Yeah. So right after Space, we celebrated our 1 billion downloads. That was the first ever of that kind of number in the mobile games section. And that was like all the games in total. We started getting some kind of analytics. So we were actually able to see when the 1 billion was broken. So we had a ecosystem of 1 billion downloads before Star Wars came out. So it was bit easier to get that message

out there and marketing was quite different as well because the IP is so strong that you don't need to push it at all. People will hear about it. They will talk about it and they will come and that's exactly what happened that you just provide all the information but they will find it and you don't need to push it to them either. And this is a great very lucky place to be where I don't think we will ever be again in that kind of here we are. Do you want to play play this game or not? I think we even had numbers that um I think this was just before Star Wars came out that we had the Christmas like Christmas is when new devices are given to new people. They are downloading their first apps. We need to be number one. And that Christmas, it was the every second device active during the Christmas time had some Angry Birds game downloaded on it.
Yeah, I guess that's almost like the peak maybe of Angry Birds at that time. Uh, one of the uh last questions on on the Star Wars uh partnership was, you know, what is it really like? We've we've touched on it a bit here, but what is it really like working with such a

big partner? It must and also ultimately it's a massive organization Lucas Film and then you've got quite a big team by that point really at Roio. It must be difficult sinking deadlines and in the book if I remember rightly so it seemed like Angry Bird Star Wars 2 was a bit more difficult to get approvals on. So what what is that what was that like? So for us cuz we had to move pretty quickly and again unheard of in our industry to sign an agreement to have pre-production samples to have final pros to have retail meetings and to ship the product and it all has to be done within a certain within a quarter. This is unheard of. The only thing this can happen is all parties are coming to the table saying I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And to that point, Toys R Us came in and blocked the scrim for us, which is the big sort of theater uh sort of u screen that was available at Times Square. Hasbro came in and

said, "We're going to pay for the air freight." And that is unheard of, right? Your lences are not going to pay for air freight for this. And they were said, "No, no, no. We'll do it because we need this product to be out in the market." And in order for everyone to be able to meet these deadlines to have this product which is day in day with the game we what we did was we shipped our rovians our finished team from Helsinki to California and they actually stayed for 6 weeks working along the product team. So both product teams sat inside Luke Skywalker's ranch and they sat together and they worked together 8 n 10 hours. They went to pizza and beers afterwards to get all of the product approvals on time and they they had complete cart blanch. There was very rare occasions when the finish team would call us and say, "We need an approval from you guys." So, it was complete empowerment, complete trust that they could get going and run. So, they had packaging approvals, labels, actual products, marketing materials.

Mari also spent a lot of time there with the team to make sure that we get that done and they get it shipped. So for us on the consumer product side was very collaborative but we were dealing with licensing agents around the world. Sometimes we had competing agents. So Roio and Grizz Classic we had a licensing agent in the territory. Lucas for Star Wars had their own licensing agent in the territory and both of these agents now also rivals now had to work together to launch Angry Bird Star Wars. So in so we did have some tel nollas in some cases but it was such an an incredible opportunity for everybody that they knew we were going to have we're forced to work together and collaborate to get this thing going and it paid off. I think
it sounds intense.
It was really intense.
It it was intense but at the same time it was I think our time was going different paces because in the game side and marketing side we were quick to do stuff like we could do anything in within an hour because we had direct access to our marketing channels. we can do whatever we want whenever we want and suddenly we had to wait for a year but

then there's like certain packaging that needed to be approved 6 months before the product comes out but we need to already do the advertising but the game isn't ready so we don't have all the assets so it was a lot of like negotiating between the the licensing the merchandising side and digital things that are way quicker to market everybody loved the project so much that that was not really a problem what was really interesting I was at the Lucas offices for a few weeks and working with the marketing team there. We were in such different worlds because Star Wars at this point didn't have any of the new movies. It was tough to say, an old brand for old Star Wars fans, only for merchandising. It was the old merchandising that was still being sold to the classic Star Wars fans. So, what it came to be was a really interesting collaboration opportunity where we were learning from each others. We were able to teach them how we do things on social media. Twitter was our main tool. We were cult tweeting to all kinds of crazy partners like, "Hey, we want to work with you." And they would reply and we would start a partnership out of that. This was not how Lucas worked. So, we

were showing them how to work quickly using the latest social tools, how to utilize partners to get visibility, just go to places and have fun, which was tough to teach. Haspro the same as well. We learned so much from Hasbro, how they do marketing and how they plan their TV ads, but we worked completely different. So, we were able to collaborate in completely new new ways. I think there was some there was a Microsoft ad that we did as well. I really like that we were able to throw in an ad for the game for Microsoft. It was like a Windows device, like a PC where our actress had the Leila Buns on and she's playing the game on a big screen and we're like just get the IP into all kinds of places ahead of time, planning this like 6 months before the game is out. That was really cool for us to learn. We had not done that before being well prepared
on the consumer products to get back to unice. Um I think angry about Star Wars 2 really is when everything comes together because by then it's the teleports

and the telepods for those who don't remember a toy that works in the game through a mini QR code and a magnifier at the bottom and so you can flash them into the game. So they have to be out at retail at that date and I think you shipped and sold through a million at lounge.
Yes. And day and day.
Yeah. And day and day, which is again very crazy to be able to do that coordinating. There are not a lot of people that's, you know, we call it fidget. There aren't a lot of people in the world that are able to understand the digital world, but it's very complicated to coordinate. To Maria's point, when you've got a game that is ready to go and the marketing, it can be done within an hour. We have very quick ways to reach our consumer. When it comes to consumer products, guys, we're dealing with steel and wood and PVC and cotton. You know, we got to go into the forest and chop some trees. So, it's the our timings before then were huge. And and you know what? We're actually credited in the consumer products industry to having changed a lot of the consumer product licensing, supply chain

processes because of what we were able to do together with the Star Wars agreement, with the Star Wars partnerships. That was incredible for us to see as well. That's wild that yeah all the different kind of impacts that you don't really know about that kind of rogue had
that's why trans media is so difficult they talk about it a lot but executing it take so many different skill sets and competencies
that it takes a lot of curiosity and and mutual respect from different and the will to learn. So that curiosity I was just mentioning for it to really work. lots of companies are talking together and end up not signing the deal or not executing it right after signing it because everybody it's us versus them and let's defend our way versus that was really refreshing and I think you took that with you actually at other ventures later Mars but Craig is probably going to get into that
I do think that that was part of our secret sauce

yes
it was it was this it was it was this idea of we're having fun we're trying we don't have resources but we're going to be resourceful. And all of our bases were filled with people that were taking action and having ownership mentality. So in marketing, you had Mari and Phil that were just like running with trust. Consumer products, you had myself and the team. Within the games, you had Petri and Andrew in partnerships. All the bases were filled. You see and since then if I could say if what's been sort of missing I think in some of the companies that I've had the opportunities to work with is you'll see overcompensation in some departments or some teams but you will see the need for these type for this type of qualities in the other divisions and I think that we missed the mark because of it. So I want to uh kind of now go on to a little bit the final questions I guess which is lessons learned few things in Arabia and and how this could all be kind of used today. What lessons there but the first thing I wanted to ask was you obviously as we've discussed you know you did a

lot of consumer product licensing and then you decided to be a bit you know more picky about what you had. Do you think that Roio ever did too much of that? I'm sure I I I'm I'm absolutely certain, but I couldn't find the talk, which is what I was looking for. I can't remember if it was exrovia was saying, oh, you know, you could get basically anything at some at one point that was Angry Birds like I don't know, a toothbrush or something. And do you think Roia ever overdid that? And does can that result in negative outcomes? Because I think really that business is very different today from what it was back then, obviously different time.
I think that it's um the positioning I think is important and the timing. So, if you look at a different business like um Disney, they're bringing in on around $60 billion a year. You're looking at Hello Kitty San Rio, they're bringing in $8 billion in a year. And you looked at the height for Roio and Angry Birds. We didn't bring anywhere near that number. You see, the difference is I forget how old Disney is, but I do know how old

Hello Kitty is. She's 52 years old. And it took time um to get there. So the progress took time and I think with Angry Birds because we took off like a rocket and suddenly we were number one 150 countries digitally and then you started to see matching products in many countries. It did look like we had way too much product and it went too quickly. Yeah. So lessons learned for me would have been to slow down the pace to match with some of the launches not all of the launches because the formula of trying to have products with every single launch or update whatever we call it back then I think that that was good the first 2 3 years but then when it comes to right before the movie we need to rest the brand and resting is always difficult because in order for you to rest and we call this the pull push effect and you see this every IPO the owner will do that. Yeah. The year before a major movie, we need to rest the brand. When you do that, you got to have a second IP ready to go. So, in our case, it needed to have been something

like Stella or the Bad Piggies so that classic Angry Birds can rest, especially after the the partnerships cuz we also had one with Transformers. We had Angry Birds Transformers for Angry Birds to go. We had the space, we had Rio, we had Star Wars. So, classic now needs to rest. And what do you do? What does an organization of, I don't know, over a thousand people do when you have to rest the brand? You have to be able to push a second or third brand. But without a second or third brand, you fall back into the original, which is okay, let's push a little bit of classic, but you can never push a little bit of classic because the monster is too big and we have to feed the machine. You see, we did have some interesting products out there that we were not able to explain why these products make sense. And I'll give an example. We had a product that was Angry Birds Fish Cakes.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. And I remember I remember a group of people asking me, you know, pointing a finger at me and saying, "N, you went too far. You used to be a very strategic person." Uh, and now what is this? Angry birth fish cakes. And and

when I was able to explain the why people got it. And let me tell you what happened. It was Southeast Asia. Parents and governments and educators were working together and they were very angry at the international companies coming in with cereals and sweet breakfasts. In Southeast Asia, in particular, Thailand, they wanted to promote their local breakfast for their kids, which was much healthier. And one of the healthiest things for that country was fish cakes. And they used Angry Birds licensing to compete with the Lunchables and the sweet cereals and the sweet breads. And it worked. So the government actually came in, the educational system came in and praised us for having done such a great job of teaching these kids to go back to these savory foods, which is extremely important. Nowadays we have enough information. 10 12 years ago we didn't know. So that product actually made sense for that particular area of the world. So there were indeed a lot of weird looking products that maybe the rest of the global audience wouldn't have understood. But there was always strategy to our madness. I promise.
All right. That's that's crazy one

though that I like I like that example. Um the other question I wanted to ask perhaps you Bria is that you were mentioning earlier you know and it was a different time so there was no marketing budget no analytics so I guess with Roia then the shift comes though right so you you built this massive company on premium games and this licensing business and then free to play comes along changes everything and then with Angry Birds 2 that gets launched it had a difficult launch but then after the first year had a bit of a redevelopment and it was doing just fine What was that like? Was that like a bit of a shift in the company that was quite difficult to to grasp with? Like how did you kind of deal with that those changes from a marketing perspective?
Well, I think the shift was quite quick and painful in many ways. Our game designers really struggled with that new monetization mechanic where you building completely different core experiences. You're creating viral loops and instead of fun experiences. So, it was really tough. We tried few things. They didn't

really work. It was quite tricky to like find new ideas from my side and I think most of the marketing team we actually left. A lot of us left at that point because it was like a shift in the way of doing things and I would say that a lot of us were this kind of marketeteers that are ready to get curious and try stuff and we are the ones who write the playbook but we don't we don't use the playbook ever again. That's a certain kind of marketing person who wants to repeat the same things that they've done and I think we never got to repeat anything because we were always reinventing and innovating and that was a good time for us to all actually move on and and start doing that with our own companies and our own IPs and for me it was very important to do the stuff that I had learned from space especially the meaningful use of games as tools for something else telling stories trans media is a word that I use a lot as well like how do you build brands for mobile yeah and and how can you tell stories that are really native to games. So one of the partnerships that I had been

leading at Droia was CERN and we ended up doing lightning out of that. We were we wanted to do quantum physics as a casual game for kids. Why not? Might as well. So it was that kind of like experimenting and for me it was really important to continue working with kids and finding gamified ways to teach interesting topics to them. So ravia years were great for totally wild ideas ideas because there was no industry at this point and educating the industry about the new new things that can be done. But I remember really well one of the sea level car manufacturers came to a meeting with us and he put a Blackberry on the table and it was the meeting was over the same moment because there was no way we were going to be telling what is mobile gaming if you have a Blackberry used to a keypad on your phone. They had never played a mobile game. It was something maybe some kids do somewhere else. Why would you play a game on a small screen that doesn't make any sense? It was a lot of that like that was the time of educating that there's this very cool thing coming

up. You might want to be with us or you might be just stuck in the past and that time when once that time has changed and you know you're working with a huge audience and you need to start using that playbook. It was a shift in a lot of uh stuff at that point. I think as a as a company as well, they were a victim of their own success because they were the last bastion of being successful with paid games. If you recall the years, Supercell was already winning at the free-to-play race a year before or a few months at least before Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars came out to the point that at Roio many of them were worried about whether launching them at 99 cents was was too late or not. It worked, but that was great for those two titles, but that kind of delayed their necessity to embrace freeto play like the rest of us peasants. And by the time they did it, yeah, Angry Birds Go was a struggle. And I remember as well, Robin Squire was

working on the community at the time and was telling me, "Oh, there's a lot of backlash because gamers and consumers were also seeing Angry Birds as the last 99 cents game that is not going to go free." and millions of fans were seeing it like that. And so when suddenly there there was this inapp purchase at $999 in Angry Boats Go that many people didn't like. And so there's this transition but as you see it in the book Angry Birds 2 eventually the constructor of fun as well made a great analysis analysis of that how through live ops and studying the playbook with hiring people who are coming from other companies. Shout out to Kasim Zulu and Villa Ajaru came back and had this analytic approach and ate their vegetables in between two big movies and then went back to the partnership playbook and have this brand now that lives. Although it never became the number one of freeto play and to be honest if we were writing a book about

freeto play supercell would probably be the title but the trans media and the brand building approach the live the pioneering of live ops and partnerships that is something that then followed us through Andrew Stalbo and Phil Hickeyi at seriously and best fiends that get acquired later because of that secret source.
So two more questions. So the the first question Naz uh I just wanted to talk about uh how you were able to take so these lessons with these partnership deals how are you able to kind of translate them at other companies kind of years later and what's changed with these kind of IP brand partnerships.
So I'm a big fan of this grassroots marketing that Maria is an expert a resident expert on. She and Phil, I learned it by being hands-on, working side by side with them. And I'm a big fan of this and taking on the partnerships. As long as it is both sides of the equation are there to align and exponentially grow their fandom, it will work. I think the issue is when a

party might be trying to mask some shortcoming and they're relying on the other brand to lift them. I think that those will work, but it'll be short-lived. So whenever I'm looking into brand partnerships, which I still believe in and thrive in, I just think that it has to be organic, has to be more um you know the when you put the vin diagram, you can't be trying to reach it. I think that that's the artificial effect and it does not last. So I've used it throughout my career, not just at Cybo with Subway Surfers, but as well as at Scopi with Stumble Guys, and you still see it. You still see the partnerships being quite evident inside Scopi these days. And I think that they're doing a really great job finding the right partnerships to elevate the brands or the games that they have.
And Fortnite is the best in class of that. By the way, Fortnite is showing us they bring everything together. Tarantino and your your favorite K-pop band Maria LinkedIn posts.
Let me tell this story. So if we're talking about trans media and and how marketing works for me like how I'm looking at marketing currently trans

media storytelling is not just the own channels anymore and it's certainly not just the partners' channels but now it's influencer and UGC. So how is your story told by other people by your fans? What kind of content can they create around that fandom? And I've never seen anybody doing it as perfectly as Fortnite K-pop demon hunters. Hooray for somebody actually embracing that attitude fully. Give the biggest brand currently available for everybody to develop their own version. So if you have a Fortnite creative island, you can just get the K-pop demon hunter assets, drop them to your island immediately, publish it, create
and automatic royalties to Netflix. This is how you need to do it. Like give your brand and let it live with the fans. You you don't need to tell the story anymore. They will tell even better stories and they will create even better games. So, I'm really impressed with a new brand being able to
doing the same in Fortnite Power Rangers.
Let the fans do it. And and also K-pop

Demon Hunters as it comes like how they integrated merchandise within the game story. All the t-shirts are already in the because the fandom is in the movie. The dances are in the movie. you already see how it's going to look like on social media and they they have lore between some of the characters that can be already tapped into and and make posters out of like love it. Whoever is behind that trans media storytelling, you've done it like it's so nice to see that it's been really thought through
and I think the last 10 years have been pioneering that. We were already talking about that 12 years ago. We were not calling it the metaverse then, but we were calling it the fusion of the zast that at the end of the day all entertainment forms come down to emotions and they all complement each other and the future being digital and faster and direct to consumer and with user generated content. It's going to be trans media nothing everything those who figure out and we get into a lot of the logistical and legal details of it. It's not just oh it would be cool. It's all the legal agreements and all the

companies coming together and the different licensing rights being fragmented around the world. Don't ever get me started about the Dragon Ball Z licensing that I did in the early 2000s. How many office you have to talk to?
It's a whole other It's a whole other podcast another book.
Um, so my last question for everyone is do do we think we'll ever see mobile sport and other IP like Angry Beard? So that kind of captured the early days of mobile right so it's quite new grew with it whereas nowadays we're in a mature market with lots of competition uh with games and apps all shouting loudly for audience attention I guess we talked a bit about clash there that actually they're now slowly expanding out so maybe that is the one I guess but do you think we'll ever see another one or what do you think open to anyone
I'd like to say that the way I see it today the mobile market has matured so the the the magical bracket that that happened around mobile around those years or that around happened around PCC

the Rome in 9394 that gave us Valve, Epic and it they are only every 10 years or so I see the industry giving us indies a way to enter somehow. So mobile is not there anymore the barriers of entry have risen and it's super expensive. This being said the spark might happen as a Fortnite island as a Roblox island. I see many of my friends getting started like startups getting started there nowadays. Some are looking for success on VR. Once you're number one or number two or you have aging engaged community wherever you founded Spark, you're going to need to fuel the fire and that's when mobile becomes inevitable because it is the one device that is in the pockets of billions of people around the world and that has democratized gaming and that will help you proliferate a brand better than the alternative and cheaper than the alternative. I know it's hundreds of millions in marketing, but it's millions a day. It's scaling at a pace. Whereas, what was the alternative? I'm going to quote Andrew Stalbo here. Why you joined

Angry Birds from 20th Century Fox? You think that making putting a few million dollars on a mobile game and then putting 10 millions a month and then hundreds of millions a month in marketings to scale it is expensive. Try launching a movie. It's $100 million to make it, $200 million in marketing. By Wednesday, you know if you're hit or not. You got three weeks to recoup. Mobile gaming as a point of comparison to that or the creator economy because I've been in the creator economy the last 10 years and I think that's where the spirit is nowadays where the stunt is made with the distribution of the influencer baked in and it's a key piece of the ecosystem. That's and that might be also how you find your spark. But at some point on your way from Spark to we're doing merch and we're doing bed sheets for kids and we're doing everything and and we're present everywhere, you're going to go to proliferate on mobile where it's still the best place to scale and find your

mass audience. And by the time you are Clash Royale, hopefully you are charactercentric and you don't have a candy problem. By the time you are Clash Royale, then yeah, you expand into all branches of storytelling and entertainment because it's what the future beholds.
Yeah, I'm I'm maybe platform agnostic at this point. I think a lot of the cool IPs will be coming from Roblox, a lot of Roblox, but I haven't seen a lot of family brands coming out of there. But it is really interesting to follow like Adopt Me is now a toy line. They just did a McDonald's kids meal. They are they're breaking in there. But this is now driven by kids themselves. This is not a parent directed marketing message. It's kids know it. Parents have no idea. And that's quite interesting to me that there's like a whole market for kids now. They are able to find their own games. And this is up to them. Apple and Google are not the opinion makers anymore. They don't have the power to create brands as they did back in the day with featuring that doesn't have the same muscle anymore. So, I'm very

curious to see where the kids are, what they are doing, and what they're going to be interested in and how much that UGC element is going to be playing into that. And my friend Ben Grubs would hate me not to say you can also totally start a brand from YouTube and you see it with Coco Melon and others. And once you have your brand on YouTube, then you go interactive and you go to a platform with a bakedin audience and a bakedin community. YouTube is still the cheapest way to start. If you're 19 today and you're wondering where to start, start making videos on YouTube and Tik Tok and go from there and build in public.
So, got to stop there. Thank you very much uh for a fantastic conversation. Uh that was brilliant. I'll give you all a chance to have any shout outs. Any shout outs for anything? Sir, Pascal, I guess the obvious shout out for you.
The slingshot formula. Amazon.com.co.uk. Buy it now. Hard cover, audio book, ebook. We get all the formats. Marketing guys talking.
Naz, do you have any shout outs that you want to make?
Do I need a couple of minutes? I want to say um I don't think that it's going to take extraordinary people to create the

next Angry Birds. I think that it's created by a bunch of ordinary people and we're all applying this one degree strategy coincidentally in the name of Makani because it's it's a bunch of small little steps. So don't think 10 steps ahead, think one step ahead. A whole bunch of ordinary people coming in making this 1% or onederee change. And I need to give a huge shout out to a few people. I think the first person I want to say is Mikuel. So Mika and Nicholas what they did at the very beginning it sort of goes we sometimes we tend to forget but those two guys it took a lot of guts for them to get started and throughout my whole journey Mikuel was actually my counter to ensure that we had a long-term vision plan and that was Mikail. The second one I would say is Andrew. And Andrew was fantastic at partnerships, but more than anything, his superpower is to bring a whole bunch of ordinary people, put him in the room, and makes us feel like we are extraordinary. And that is a superpower that he takes that I really I really appreciate about him. The third party I'm going to say it's Petri. Petri YTO

along with Yay Milis and then later on David Burn. They were my counterparts in gaming. You can't do what we did in consumer products and how we monetize demand unless those guys have an actual pure core product that you can stand on and that's what they did. Last but not least, my marketing team, man, Phil Hickeyi and Maria Continent and the rest of the group. You guys allowed us to tell these stories and you made us look like cool this cool rock star so we could monetize that demand. And and I think that once you have all of your bases covered like this, these are the people that actually made us create Angry Birds of Story today, not just the game.
Segue. Phil Hickeyi and Matt Wilson are going to be with me at Pocket Gamer Connects where we're going to have a a panel over there in London.
Nice.
That's the shout out I should have made, but I didn't write down there. You're the marketing. You got it.
Uh
I have a short one.
Please. So when I had my dream of joining Ravio, I told my husband and he said that you're absolutely crazy to

leave your totally nice global marketing job and go with these indie guys who don't know what they're doing. He joined me at ROI a couple years later. That worked out just fine for us and we we really enjoyed our years there and I haven't really left the games industry since but so few of the other crazy people who joined me were Phil and Gorilla and Serum and Yonas from my team as well. So a lot of the people we worked with during the Nokia years actually joined Robio and became the marketing team there and then started their own companies and they're all making headlines still. So it's it's been a great journey with those and big shout out of course to NASA Leel and Melvin the coolest astronaut around there. Big big thank you for being great partners
and I have to thank you thank all everybody at Roio who gave me interviews. The their names are in the book. so many of them I cannot name them right now but it was it was really refreshing how open they were and yes like Maria said it became the mother ship the mother of all CEOs as we joke

in Finland so many people out of Roio's out of roio have become CEO CMO CXO somewhere after that
thank you very much once again for your time really appreciate the insights and the history of Angry Birds and thank you everyone for listening to this episode hope you enjoyed it and As Pascal said, if you want to learn more, well, one, there's the book.
Buy the book.
And secondly, Pocket Gamer Connects London January 19th and 20th. There'll be a talk. And on that note, we'll end it there. So, thank you very much everyone.
Goodbye.