Innogames’ Deniz Kekeç On Building Long-Lasting Relationships With Narrative Marketing

[Music] hello world welcome back to the Pocket Gamer podcast with your hosts me Brian Bago and the always excellent Peggy and salts good afternoon Peggy how are you I am doing well Brian and isn't it great it's a great time for Fresh Starts it's a great time for fresh perspectives too I think we've just had two amazing teams from inog games talking about how they give games a longer life so why not take it to the next level which someone who is looking at how to move the needle through narrative right I've never heard of this before and when I heard about it I said that's it we have to have them on the show so that's exactly what we're doing we have someone who's experimented with something she calls narrative marketing so I'd like to just welcome Denise

Performance Marketing Manager at inog games Denise it's great to have you and of course this is your space this is narrative marketing and uh quite an Niche it is yeah very nice to beet you uh Brian with you and I knew Peggy and I have to say just one thing because I was doing a little checking and I asked everyone to describe themselves and I thought it was very interesting that you voluntarily say that you thrive on datadriven strategies that consistently deliver measurable results and I would say Brian we're going to thrive on learning more about narrative marketing so I think it's a match I think this was meant to be very clearly so Denise we've heard from uh other members of the in Games Team talking about some of the great projects that you have out there from Forge and Tribal wars which have just the most incredible Legacy and an active Community 20 years on so so what are the projects that you're focused on within Ino games so yeah the in Ino games of course we do have actual nine

life titles at the moment and some of them are like literally brand games or the big games like Forge of Empires Tribal wars and now we are publishing more games in the last three years which is uh rise of cultures and sunrise vage and from my perspective as a marketer that currently I'm working for Sunrise vage team uh for the game itself because last year in marketing we decided to have uh the different marketing teams for dedicated to each game because of course the uh environment is challenging and what we realized if a marketer is going to understand the product well enough that then we are going to have more experience and more idea about what kind of user we need to reach through the marketing and at the moment in Ino games for Sunrise vage we are working again uh with the narrative and now uh seven months ago we launched the desktop version of the sunrise Village after wec good results on mobile and at the moment we have we are also focusing on the

desktop version of the game to you know the the help our users to have the fun and the you know the same EAS with the playing as well as in the mobile indust and that crossplatform benefit as well yeah yeah yeah because again the mobile is very challenging the increasing user acquisition right that uh it's out of it's out of you know the out of our control so I guess it was a very good decision for us to extend our game to Des desktop because it's also a little little bit you know the different type of user than we aim with the mobile I remembered your talk in October you were at the UA society and I thought okay Denise I know her she's cool but no you came up and you had a totally different concept you had your own name for it which stuck with me narrative marketing so we know product is marketing we know about engagement marketing and then you talk about narrative marketing and then I put it out on social and people are like wow what a cool concept

um so guess asking you since you came up with it how do you define this what do you mean when you talk about narrative marketing because it is pretty cool and uh yeah you can be justifiably proud I think to be a Pioneer in this as well so so unpack it for us yeah thank you very much for your good uh uh good reviews as well uh so the narrative marketing mainly is uh the improving the bonding with the user through a giving a good story story to them it is kind of the uh the way of the differentiating your product because again let's say for Sunrise is the simulation casual game right but there are tons of other games in the market in the app store they can also play but why the sunrise vage and that's why we decided to build the story of the game uh a little bit up front so the user which is mainly the female users they're going to finds I'm the main character in the game and that's why I should keep playing because this

uh male character in the game has a story to figure out and help the other characters in the game so the mainly narrative marketing is the creating the story or even the uh building up the existing story in a way the user can Bond uh with the product themselves was that the sort of the primary driver for the game that that you know relationship building or were there other aspects that came into the game when it was at the the Des design development stage so the sunr village uh actually has soft lunch two years ago two and a half years ago actually by now and we had a very good successful numbers with the soft lunch and we were lucky actually story was there so actually they build the product developed the product with the story in but of course that we were mostly focusing on the game play necessarily you know like the while we were at least in marketing activities and then uh looking at you know other games uh that also building a huge community based on the story and I was

like I asked the product manager okay what is the story for this game and when they explained it I was like wow why don't we also because uh this game is already we prove like very good retention very good LTB but we can even reach more audience if we want to know uh they make Sunrise vage different than our competitors of course also uh without a good product you know it's always challenging even that if you're going to find the best working formula for others if you don't have a well-working existing product it's going to be of course more challenging so we have a very great talent of the developers in the in the sunrise Village Team game and uh that's why that uh trusting the existing numbers of the game and the product team also supported us uh me in the marketing okay then yeah let's put the story up front with our users and you know let's check the chemistry what they're expecting from the game or from us it's a great way

again of extending the life of a game here you've got a great game two years old people love it but you want to you want to extend it you want to expand it like to drill a little deeper into that because of course that's about understanding what players love that's an emotion you know tell us what kind of narrative what kind of story would you relate to now you could of course do surveys that's probably one way but you know you're going deeper can you share a little bit about how you decided that narrative because that's like the the the art here and there's probably not rules for it but there's probably a great story pun sort of intended here story for the storytelling um that I'd love you to share while working with a product or while working in marketing it's not important to give what I'm looking for it's important to give what the user is looking for so that's why as you mention actually the before we decided of this specific narrative that is going to work out well

for Sonage we went through quite extensive part of you know the data analysis user analysis what is our uh what is the user behavior in the game what kind of other games that they do play even we had the survey you know like okay this is the type of story a this is the type of story B which one would you recommend or which one uh recommend us to put in the game so we had quite extensive uh support from analytic as you can hear and then after that we came up with even five Concepts so we were very you know delicate about the choosing the which concept is going to work because imagine that doing this project on existing product while you already have a users right and you also don't want to uh the the repel the existing user from the product just for the sake of you're going to find the new users for your product right so with the analytics support that we came up with

first the five different Persona and from this five different Persona we understand okay these are the personas who is willing to stay in the game more than average and they also willing to make the purchase or watch the ads you know so they are our main source what they would want from us and based on that actually we built five different concepts and under every concept we build three to four different variations which is that means 20 new story we provided in the test how far could you stretch The Narrative of your existing game I mean obviously you know it's a it's a story in itself so you can't say okay and then we're going to have you know undersea monsters or something that's not going to work because that's way way out but how far could you stretch that across those 20 stories what kind of choice meant well made sense for you because it made sense for the player so I can maybe give an example it's going to be easier for me to explain let's say we had one concept

about the uh relationships romantic relationships so our main character is Ellis in the game right and we decide okay one concept should be love relationship but what kind of love relationship that could be the one case Ellis had a breakup and moved to the sunrise Village support her Grandpa this is one variation Under This Love relationship concept another one the AL still has a breakup but then moves to Sunrise which and meets someone else so it's the ignite of the new Love romantic relationship in the village and the other one this woman is just single has no breakup and strong woman and he's just going to go going to go to Sunrise V to support uh her grandfather so because as you can see as as especially as a woman you do these are the small differences but it just triggers different part uh in you one you once you're watching the at so which one one well love relationship that uh we

realized that it didn't in concept it didn't pick it up overall super well so I can give you I can I can tell you in the end of our talk that which actual concept won as well okay oh now that's smart that's very smart she's going to keep us all the way to the end of the podcast before we find out winner yes Denise this is next level yeah actually I'm just telling busy but I was just preparing for the so I I I have to ask just just to pick up on that Denise how how in Earth did you test that was it down to you know installs and engagement or you know how did you kind of did you do any sentiment or emotional analysis with with players because that's quite a tough thing to to test yes so the first thing so again uh that's existing product that means we were running existing accounts almost two years right so as a marketing person that I never

run my test in existing at account so for us for a creative test but comes to your mind metap first at least for me that I was very capable of using meta for years so I was like that's my platform give me the creatives I'm going to have a test but first thing what I've done is I created a new account with no history behind it so you know because the with the algorithm after running some uh default creatives sometimes that might be an issue you know like it's just the existing creative or the historical best performing creatives are still going to pick up because this new videos how we are going to Benchmark them with our historical best performance right so I need to still add the best performance to so what I done creating a new ad account in meta on Android and I created the five six different six different campaigns and each campaign has one concept so let's say love relationship is one the other one I don't know SCI sci-fi and another

uh campaign was the historical best platformer and I just ran the campaigns against each other actually you know and just to try to see okay which one is performing well and what I do talk about while I'm talking about performance the actually I had like three main Kei in my mind first is the traction if you know if I can spend because if I can spend with the new stories you know then then we don't need to even look at the you know the rest of the data because going to be significant and after traction uh IPM so I'm honestly with CPM and CPI I was very cautious because sometimes you can pay very high CPI but the value you're getting from that is it can be very good and then you're going to still end up profitable right so CPM is important but for me the IPM was the most important one in the upper funnel to see what is the click through rate what is the conversion rate so when users see the ad do they click on the ad and then do they installed the game right so that was the

one and the later aspect which was the little bit like mid funnel retention retention one and retention three that I was comparing versus default just understand if the game is too far from the story you know like they let's say I do see the love relationship ad I I clicked the ad I downloaded the game and but then when I start to play in game I'm going to be like ah it has nothing to do with the uh advertisement so I'm just going to you know uh stop playing the game so retention is that's why important because you also we didn't want to do something you know too different than you know what we have in the game considering our existing user base drilling down a little bit more in those results those are the kpis you were looking at and that's really good to know them because now we have a blueprint and we know which ones you were focused on that tells us which ones to focus on but you still have to sort of be rigorous in this testing this is not AB testing creatives plain vanilla stuff this is this is deeper this is

more rich as it were what does that require because you're still looking at one factor but it's so nuanced you know it's not AB testing the way you just say oh it's this icon versus that icon so the IB testing so uh just the maybe going step back to how we figure out the concepts right so because I work with product team very closely I work with analytics team very closely but the one of the main reason that the product team and marketing team work together because again let's say we have this store right can they integrate that story let's say we see the very good results and and we realize that our users expect more from us to you know have this story more if it's integratable so it's very important to understand that's why it's not the ab test you know okay this is the creative and this is the creative and just choose the winner after we had even winner we had another talks okay how we can integrate that in the game you know or

how long it's going to take because if it's going to take too much of course the product team has a lot to do you know one there side do so we try to understand that uh if the if this concept can spend and can you know uh get the uh good good feedback from our users or if we can reach the new users and also if it's integratable to the game because otherwise it's going to be you know uh you're going to promise something to use and what they're going to end up that maybe it's not going to be what they're expecting right so that's why I I really agree with you that it's not the ab test it is something that you are very very deep diving while you're thinking well in the long term it comes back to your own credibility as a as a studio as a publisher because if you're just you know serving the audience something that you know is going to be popular but it's not building that credibility that relationship then you're really pulling the rug out from under their their feet

so I believe they we had a very good job uh as a sunrise Village team with that but honestly I wouldn't see that in a way that you know uh we are the best at it because as me uh Peggy mentioned this is a very new area for mobile gaming right and I do start to see even more examples from other companies as well too I'm so confident I'm so happy that we you know start to the seeds of this narrative marketing title through sunrise vage at inog games and yeah and that's that was again very successful from our perspective so we are also considering this for other games too for other existing games too and hopefully uh up just putting the seed and also we can even come up with the more updated version of this project for in the future for our new games amazing so um Denise can we can we drill into what you learned over this whole process let's let's have a little exploration of what were the key learnings maybe what were the surprises

that you found across this whole process it was challenging for us to find the creative that is going to work with different UA channels so the initial test was with meta right and once we Pro that but now we had to adapt this strategy this winning creative which is the mystery one to uh different UA channels because we are spending quite a month with so many uh partners and we want to make sure this narrative is going to work with different channels and it was little trickier than I thought because again that imagine in marketing one out of 20 creatives can work so every time when my uh you know the creative team uh provides 20 20 creatives to us that means that we can just find one winner like this is just the overall uh proportion so that's why I was little bit more optimistic to figure out okay you know what ah we already have the winner I guess we're going to find you know the best match for the other UA channels easier too but

it was more of a test okay it does work it doesn't work and then okay retest again another variation another variation so that was little surprising part again that might be my over optimism in the beginning of the project so that would uh one of even like key learnings that this project requires a time it requires the time it requires people and effort what you're saying is that because each Channel each acquisition Source has it sort of own audience and its sort of own thing going on that you could necessarily say this is the winning concept this is the winning narrative and we'll just put it there you had to then readapt it is what I'm hearing I think I'm hearing to the actual channel so it's like this is the way people are in meta as opposed to maybe I don't know Tik Tok or whatever else you're using so that was just that extra step that took a little bit longer and took some more testing yeah you're

completely right let's say ucg right the mystery video was more like how to say uh the animation that you know like you are putting and of course in meta new it just pops up because it was like a trailer but then how you're going to put that on Tik Tok let's say right you need to figure out how we can deliver this story while keeping the standards that partner requires from us right so or Statics how you're going to convey the story to Statics right so uh again I was so lucky to work with so many talented people also in the creative team and they were like okay you know what this can give the idea of the story we want to deliver to user or you know we went through a lot of competitor benchmarks what they're using or what if there's any know Insight that we can get so it was it was it took little bit longer than I thought initially this process so what can we ask you to to give our listeners our audience out there who are interested who hearing about narrative marketing and thinking actually this

might be something that we want to try and experiment with you know how do they get started what how do you set their expectations and how do they convince you know the Senior Management this is this is um worth exploring first thing I can recommend is uh start even building a narrative while you're developing the product so because it's going to very easier because there is more so many also people who's involving in initial let's say initial uh retention test or do you know these CPI test I guess it's important to check the puls before while you are already developing the game because again it was for instance we were thinking about if the story is going to integratable in the game right it's just extra effort on top of on the existing product so but I would say that if you want to run this test that start from the day Zero of while you're building the product while you're building the product if Define your persona like it doesn't have to be one

it can be of course multiple and Define your persona and check with them or check with your uh even the user research analyst you know okay so is it this type is it this type of narrative that would work with our Persona or even if story would work with a Persona so that would be my first recommendation start while you're even developing the product so it's going to work smoother and faster definitely and the secondly of course it's not always the chance right that uh sometimes people joins the companies while the product there or sometimes you know like it doesn't work that smooth and what you're going to do while you are if you want to run the narrative project on existing product then what I would recommend as well check CPI and LTV balance already in your game but I what do I mean for inst with the narrative creatives or the stories we did observe also higher CPI yeah we did observe like 30 40% increase

in retention LTV yes but we did also see higher cpis at 10% around 10% our IPM was very strong but CPM was very uh strong too you know like on the higher band make sure that for your existing product that you do have the CPI LTV balance like you know your CPI is not going to sacrifice too much compared to your LTV so this calculation is very important so how to convince the let's say the sea level I would say if you uh believe the product has a strong connection with the uh with the user and if there's a good story that you can just ramp it up uh you know with the within the marketing and if you trust your existing qpi in the game again okay I'm okay to pay extra 10% for each install but you know what I'm going to get 30% more LTV so or higher retention of course it's business as usual that

you can't see the future but uh you can at least uh yeah measure what to expect or different scenarios even marketers ask me sometimes as well you know what should I what should I settle for and that's interesting because I'm not a marketer but they think I talk to a lot of marketers so I'm gonna ask you the question as well which is you know you have to be very clear about what you want but there's like a level of how do you think in this challenging EnV environment because we know cprs are going to be a little bit it's not a bargain let's just put that way but we know we're going to get a payoff in engagement and that really matters but do you have any rule of thumb for like what should I settle for how can I compromise on the great cpis I'd love to have how much leverage how much flexibility should be there because you don't want to short sell yourself and you certainly don't want level coming down on you maybe there's a rule of thumb you could share or something because that's what you have to deal

with that's the reality of it maybe I'm just going to repeat myself but for me ipms that I mean user willingness to you know that click on that ad again just based on the project that or the test schema that we ran the users's willingness to see that ad and download that product or the game and you know like keep using it I guess the IPM is very very good determinator I don't think that any anymore that the successful project in marketing necessarily means lower CPI so at least this is my perspective you know because the cpis are the inflation rate on cpis are higher than the economy these days yeah so oh yes so that's why that understanding understanding your users signal that if they are interested in that I would say deep di on there you know there's something in your user wants from you that just check on there or again you can also share with your

community channels if you have existing social media platforms let's say you can run an example event and if you're are going to see you know very high CPI just double check before you move forward so we're going to have to start to bring it to a close but I'm just going to shift the focus to you as a person Denise because everyone's more than a title um you certainly as well because it's about understanding the organization and we've proven to us you've shown again product and marketing work together they have to work together in Perfect Harmony but that shouldn't be too bad or too hard for you rather because you are also qualified yoga teacher which is pretty cool so tell us about how you bring that together you know you draw from this skill set from this mindset from this Vibe and make it work in your organization there's got to be some great lessons for our audience there it's the yoga teacher that it was actually during Co that I decided to get that uh certificate uh because I'm So

Into sport since my I don't know like very young age and I you know the knowing the anatomy knowing your body so that was my initial idea but exactly that I get quite a benefits also in my professional life you know sometimes let's say uh while you're talking with the people that they of course there's always the back and forth conversation putting yourself in the others shoes while they are telling this specific to you you know like I'm not even talking about you know that taking things like okay what they're telling me this is okay then I'm just going to accept it as it is but no just try to dive into the other person shoes and why they're requiring from me let's say uh that kpi and from their perspective and from my expertise then I try to if I have negotiate negotiation balance you know and then I try to negotiate on them I see let's say you're offering me this as a let's say the kpi but let's let's

discuss the other options so understanding the other person recommendations or the expectations from you from their perspective and try to answer them little bit in their language maybe you know because everyone wants the same thing successful product so I guess we are all align on this it's just sometimes we are doing different works right like it's very hard for me to graas how much effort the creative team or the product team is putting versus how much effort we are putting you know for everything in marketing so it's putting yourself into other person place and look at yourself like also what you're promising let's say I can provide this Kei but is it really what I can do am I just overselling it or am I under selling it you know so finding this balance and try to understand also the other others perspective especially if you are doing multi- Department project that's why I love where we are I mean I look at the different side of it and I say yes I know it is difficult but we

are focusing now on the game we're focusing on the story we're focusing on the player and the passion which is where it actually was when it all started um and then here we are swinging back but at a at a much much different level so I need to ask you how'd the game turn out what what what one here because I now you got me going I'm going have to check it out to be quite honest but what what one what what was the winning uh the winning narrative yeah it was actually the uh the mystery uh mystery creative so in the uh in the story that we had some surprises about the grandpa in the game normally it reveals a little bit in the later chapters and that we put that secret about grandpa again giving no secret to audience uh and then Alice is just finding herself in a this family situation that she discovers new thing about her Grandpa the video creative actually it was like uh not that

colorful you know it was more on like the black white tones and I was surprised to see actually female audience was like into that you know for the game uh but maybe you know a little bit not the so Opera but you know a little bit of drama unknown things I guess it was enough to captivating the user on a different uh level now before you go there are two questions we ask all of our guests and it kind of brings it back in ground it um within the world of games what are you playing right now what's kind of obsessing you what's eating up your time when you're not working or you know engaged in your yoga practice and two what's your favorite game of all time so uh even though I'm working in a mobile gaming industry actually I'm a uh console game player PlayStation player so there are no wrong answers so at the moment I'm playing Rise of laft actually and the it's quite uh how to say uh taking you inside of

the game and I do also like this female leading you know female saving the world type of game so at the moment I am playing Rise of Laura coft apart from Laura coft but if my like my top uh game I guess I would say again I do have some emotional connection with Assassin's Creed because it was the first game that I played when I was 16 years old so that game is going to always have some special place in my heart but but again emotional connection even though like first assist gret that I'm talking you know like it's like not everything is you know as as at his best so I guess I would say that that would be the best game uh because again because of the Assassin's Creed right now also I'm in actually gaming industry uh on on different uh area that brings us to a fabulous conclusion um Denise we can't thank you enough for coming along and joining us sharing all your Insight and and telling our audience about and narrative marketing we really do appreciate it so uh until the next time

hopefully thanks again and um yeah we hope to see you soon big plus one from my side as well and I really really appreciate you not just telling us about narrative marketing but also telling us enough about it that our listeners our audience can experiment as well so that was really helpful I appreciate that yeah thank you very much for having me this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast at pocketgamer.biz you can find

us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and saltz and that's a wrap until next [Music] week