Iconicfuture explains the extra value of branded virtual items

so my name is lou fawcett i'm the director of games for europe at iconic future and we are a service provider for the games industry so we help game developers and publishers be able to leverage ip within the world of branded virtual items in social online and mobile games okay and for people who um i mean obviously our audience is much more intelligent than i am uh but what is what is the sort of um uh the 101 on that one what's that what's the super easy way of saying all that so you you deal in um items that people can buy in in games and they have little bits of branding on so are we talking about like coca-cola bottles and or cds or what sort of items are we talking about here so we tend to work more away from the fmcg side of brands and our focus is on rights holders so

global rights holders anything from football rights to cartoon characters to the hollywood studios and it's about items that you can buy in a game um that are licensed or branded um as an alternative to a non-branded item the reason that a player would want to do that and why a game developer and publisher might want to offer that is that we know that the players will engage more with um an item or a brand that they identify with and that they are passionate about and obviously as the world is evolving now in the free-to-play market um there is a focus on item purchases within games and what we want players to do is to make a purchase that for them is going to give them something um something extra something um that that adds to their sense of fun and

you're a company that gameplay in in this kind of thing um how big do you believe that the take-up is of of branded items we've been in existence since 2011 uh and we've already sold close to four million items of branded licenses obviously that is continuing to grow as more and more developers and publishers are adopting a freemium model where that ceiling is we can't yet see that far ahead but we're definitely on an upward trajectory within uh within the growth of branded items okay um so what kind of uh clients do you work with what sort of level of of games developer games publisher i suppose um do you work with what sort of examples can you give me like company names for example um we work with everybody within the games industry so our objective is to help game developers and publishers

and indies irrespective of size to add something extra to their game to help them create value to help them drive engagement and retention and conversion within their games and to monetize and that doesn't matter what size or or shape you are as a player in the market so from the smallest indie to the likes of of the big points and the travians and the digital chocolates of the world um we work right across the whole spectrum and we have very distinct offerings for each of those groups of development teams um obviously not everybody can afford the big licenses in the big books um but that doesn't mean to say that there isn't a licensing solution that's right for them so we will work hard with our partners we work with over 50 game developer partners um with over 50 major global rights holders to find a match that's right and for an indie that might just be a self-service solution that um they can almost find a pay-as-you-go model uh for a big publisher that can be

a much more um sort of ongoing partnership where we are perhaps helping them with licensing strategy and helping them to tailor an offering that's that's right for them so we work with big point okay um and they were one of our first partners that we did um did campaigns with and what we put together for them have been a couple of uh integrations one with sean the sheep okay um from admin and others include my little pony okay um sean the sheep we built into farmer armor okay um and actually it was an interesting campaign because farmer having a massive audience is also quite a mature game so from a from a producer's perspective they're looking for new ways to engage um their audience and to make sure that they they remain engaged with that with that title um we have had an ongoing partnership with sean whereby items have been uh integrated into the

game but then refreshed on an ongoing basis every couple of months there's a refresh of the content because we know that within the brand virtual item space just dropping an ip in and then leaving it to wallow doesn't really achieve very much you want to really try and maximize the license that you that you have and that means you know a refresh of different items but of the same license over a phased period of time so the first couple of months obviously that's the the initial selling window but it helps to actually consider the integration almost as an independent life cycle of its own um so monitoring that refreshing it perhaps with an additional marketing push and obviously you can you can also um draw on support from the rights holder for that um or you know align with key promotional windows whether that's a product launch or a film release or you know a major sporting event um just thinking about ways to keep the

item or the ip fresh within the game but that can be with new item integrations so how does a publisher and and how do you help a publisher decide which ip is best for their for their game we have um just gone into beta with a um innovative um and proprietary platform technology platform which we call our marketplace whereby our partners our game development partners can sign up to marketplace um and then search for rights on a variety of criteria so they may search against keywords or genres or a target demographic and what they will then get is a recommendation of rights based on the relevancy to their search that's one way that that we can support the industry to find

those rights and then obviously there's an indication of the availability of those rights we have existing relationships and umbrella agreements with a number of uh partners some of the big global ip owners people like cbs like hasbro like sony pictures have opened up their catalogs to us so we can look at what we know to be available what we know to be relevant and actually propose the right kind of ip at the right budget perhaps highlighting some ip that that wouldn't have been obvious um so it isn't always the very immediate rights that people tend to think of that actually make the best match okay um and again that that is something that we we draw on our team licensing team's expertise and and years of kind of knowledge in this space to to make sure that um that the fit is right okay um let's move a little bit more towards the consumer actually uh now for just a couple more questions what is it that the

what is it that the consumer gets from this relationship you know you were saying that that they interact more they engage more with um items that they find relevant brands that they find interesting but what is it that they uh what is it that they take away from their a from their 69p purchase and also in a more sort of i suppose more sort of a metaphysical sense like what is it that what is the psychology of wanting to interact with a brand that they recognize the reason for the purchase is driven by lots of different things it can just be a vanity item so again it depends on the type of app the type of game where we worked with a major app company outfit 7 we did a number of sports integrations for for them with talking tom um millions and millions and millions of items of of football shirts were sold in

talking tom um really it's an expression of of individuality of alignment to a particular club in this instance um or a fan of a particular ip or brand or write in other games so it can be self-expression it can also be that rights can provide a way to get a deeper sense of of um reward from a game so one of the titles we've worked with is goal united from travian um developed by northworks and that title um was one in which again we introduced some some sports integrations one of those was the benfica training academy now effectively you could just click the button to say i would like to scout for a new player and there's no kind of sense of emergence in that game

moment but but to actually have a real world stadium that you are recognizing as a fan of either football or specifically benfica means that you're you're not being taken away from the game you're actually you know you're being pulled more and deeper into the world of of the game the world experience and that's the objective it's not it's not blatant product placement it's we've talked a lot over the last few years in the industry about you know deep integration and it has to be seamless integration it has to be something that is so right that why wouldn't you want to have the star trek shield in galaxy life as opposed to just a generic shield that will protect my base you know if you're a sci-fi fan that's what you would aspire to so it's a certain aspiration and you know we can actually deliver that that ultimate fantasy by by putting those rights in and actually that moves on to to my final question really and admittedly i think this is a bit of a bit of a tricky one

how do you how do you help a client find the balance between something that is uh something that is a horrible bit of you know like ad inclusion like a like a very sort of um uh like a thoughtless kind of product placement how do you how do you sort of steer them away from that and find a solution that is much more fitting within their within their product i think it's actually the game teams and the producers and the commercial teams that we work with actually instinctively know their gains in their audience we would always we would ultimately defer to them to know what is right for their players we we will never know their audience as well as they do so oftentimes it's a case of they know which ip they would like but it may not be available

and we can come up with alternatives and solutions that fit the same brief and perhaps have the same demographic and have you know a comparable appeal we wouldn't try and coerce a partner to take a right we're not we're not an agency that reps rights so our objective isn't to sell as many of a given right into as many games as possible that's not our model for us it's a marriage of of two sides and it's helping game developers to navigate the complex world of licensing we make it very straightforward we take away the pain of the licensing negotiation the administrative piece of approvals but ultimately we will advise but it's their decision so it's you know we're there in a supporting partnership capacity but we're not um you know pushing for for a sale in the sense that you know um that these rights have to go in um so we you know we work in partnership with with in a three-way

triangle and quite often we can come up with surprises for a development development team that they may not have thought of a particular angle um and that then gets the creative produces buzzing and we you know we may spark off onto other areas so it's it's a continual and evolving cycle with our with the game partners that we work with and the titles that they bring to us