Mobile moguls on why consumer connections are key to brand success

so um cool I think to kick things off I'm just going to let you guys uh briefly introduce yourselves and uh and then we'll kind of go into some sort of questions and stuff so we'll start start this and OB we've seen a couple of speakers already so K tell about who you are what you do by employes none of them how many EXO employ we have here this is the okay are you sure you work foro this is actually three of us same team so what we doing so we are creating and exting globies for Mob and Studios so is to enter as EAS as okay development just

for those of you who are not familiar with the name of Li Sky um we responsible for the product called it's been around years extremely well still director still you're still I'm like the one here last there over three years and I've be working with the account management and marketing teams throughout that and before that as well so friending is is pretty close to Vlad not employee never been one yet yet there still time you never know you never know okay we don't license our brand we don't make FL chice but we actually see brand from different perspective because we LIC cars and we work with I think 37 individual car brands right Fant you got one of each that's part okay

Chief creat and my background is working with one of the [Music] coers people had a great time there the to follow differents good stuff so let's just some questions then so we we're seeing uh the a real increase in traditional brand marketing with like K talked about bit this morning supercell buying out the whole Japanese underground system um and we've got people like CH coming out saying that brand building is now a corol part of promotion part you know something you should be thinking from the start um um both in terms of

increasing UA Effectiveness and also for his own sake is that fair to say is brand building now the thing we need to be doing it was all about UA for a long time it definitely should be it definitely should be cool and would you because you we talking about littleit you talking about between defensive offensive the way we think about this is right now past couple of years you've had a in mobile marketing You' had a great opportunity game and it's been a great way of SC up fast but now that's the market is getting more and more saturated there some many the compe is so acquition no longer you know you're not going to win by the marke or that's kind of a defensive play to to us now and going for the saturat even further that's when you really

you need to have and that's something dis back you're very serious you're very serious cool would you agree with that yeah I certainly I agree because um you know you want to have a compelling story and um for us we've never done user acquisition so it it's you know we want to have a compelling story bringing across a true story and also kind of having an honest story yeah fair enough and OB you're kind of you're all about branding so you can agree brand should be the first thing to think about definitely okay so let's let's that's that's um obviously when you've got you've got great Super Cell but how how you know is this how does it work for the for the the small guys for the Developers starting out a bit more caues

can't all go you know buy an underground train station so so how how do we how do we think about grp how should they how can how can you build up game up thinking about BR what's how do you do it what's the secret I think one of one very much at the core is how do you build up the IP for example the amount of eff that building up the the world the universe defining the characters nuan how is something that I I don't think most people realize the effort in there but once you spend that effort it then means that when the game starts get up you have you have so many stories that you can create you can you can have a lot of if you if you just you know do 40 games in a

with very small shots like just effectively throwing a lot of things at the wall then if one of those games takes off you might not have that behind behind thep then it's going to be very going to be basically scrambling okay you AG obviously we talked about from from a quite simple simple character as his Ang I guess but you know how how important was the kind of was the kind of brand ination well I I think the key element was really like to be deep down in connection with with the users and the fans and get the understanding what are they looking for what are their recommendations what what do they want to see in the future that that helps you being authentic and and real and that takes you to the next level because when you when you listen to their

feedback so things like Facebook Twitter and all that and really um yeah listen and then also take action what people are saying and recommending and that adds to building obviously we're far away from from what Roo has done but it's it's established it's established but I think key element as was saying that you focused on what is our product here rather than just throwing things out and then don't know what will happen so we need to have that Vision yeah even with us like we do release other games that as well so we do need true yeah so we need to SL from scratch as well there and it's it is a lot even for say richro which is much much more so but The Branding is very strong in there so it's really thought through how do we want to that what are the visuals what is the Style's the

target audience the a soundtrack these are super important elements that add to the game play and I guess with the very St Ian do do you I presume you're advising on branding as part of that whole relationship with those guys because they're they're making the game it is an entertainment business we need to be able to makeal connections to everything with it and find a community and having a brand means that you're giving that brand to the audience to own so how do you listen to them that you are paying attention to how they want to see it too yeah and then also I think to make sure that when you apply something that it's really perfect or as close to Perfection as it can be for us it's been you know making use of the motion the iPhone it doesn't make sense that the game is half ready or not half ready but the motion sensor is not made made use of to Perfection sure you know you rather wait and get that right no I think I think that's think that's

you know see the quality obiously a lot time getting right but that's the point of having money to get away before get out um just switching side looking at working own Brands looking working established Brands again like for second mean that's obviously something that that done Le Sky kind of work with like things like SpongeBob and other movies and to you've kind other games you've kind of done a lot of kind of paring with branding ation so what's the thinking behind that and how does that you know well how do you manage that it's it's a bit of like helping both Brands to evolve and add another twist to it and add another story to it yet again keeping in mind that it needs to be some sort of brand fit yeah so um you know taking two Brands together and and uh putting them into one po um can actually lead to something completely new do do you find that it's movie companies it's coming

to Temp coming to to you saying hey can you do something with this or is that is it I guess it goes both ways but um you know again as an e developer or as a smaller developer or even in young industry like we are in it's always perceived that big movie label movie studio those what they're doing actually then it's management expectation where you have to realiz and this is what we can do rather than go years in Hollywood but I didn't say now there's a lot of lot of well Global IP from us now looking atop and it's been to see how they seeet obviously like the next game example really great things what's happening we next in the next kind of

session I think definitely that's very interesting there's a lot of that it used to be it used to be remember the Java days where necessarily a brand new game wasn't necessarily A a bad of quality um but uh but I think yeah these days is a lot more mature way of approaching it um I would want to kind of um kind of merchandise again it's something I've draw too because everybody knows how amazing it's everywhere um but um where's the in terms of the attitude towards kind of merchandising like how do you find the balance what's the secret how do you decide when to when to Mi and when not to famousy has like 10,000 products or something it's a lot of different things which is is certainly one way of doing it but and then you have other people that kind be very sort of selective and C to four five things how how do you how do you decide that how does that come about well I don't know whether it's it's a mixture of of decision making and also lack of of Manpower that for example we have a licensing department of I don't

know how many people you guys have there right it's it's massive um I mean we are more going after what makes sense for us you know and and it's a bit of a Sharp tank out there because you will have people coming to you from you the world that they will sell gazillions of POS to or whatever and also that the quality aspect that we have or the you know it's a it's a nice game that shows some sort of perfectionism that we want to have that in that license product as well so it doesn't help that all of a sudden we're going to throw out you know truck loads of of plus boys that fans will be unhappy with and to us you know we we want to take a consistent and rather slower approach because we think that we rather have a brand that's Val 20 million in 20 years than one that's 200 million 2 years but zero and 20 years so you know finding the balance there I gu is the key that's from a brand

perspective I guess is this the sort of thing you're advising you guys advising it seems to me the mobile is ideally placed you know you got big audience You' got characters obviously well' seen bit and pieces Stu do you see new wave of mobile kind of bringing out merch OB now how they how they can license their R even further but I mean obviously there's always the revenue discussion like in general like as great to generate but mob developers most of them are starting with like if they LIC they see that as a great to build the awareness and also great way like your fans yeah and I I think that that's a great way to start that's also tool like how you can build

longer terms as well instead of going stra away and go all all the categories that are aable and so I guess I guess the question that is obviously you get t-shirts soft drinks films whatever it works two ways doesn't it on one hand you know it's a great drive for awareness of the game with the digital product kind of selling on the other hand it's Revenue generator like is there is there a perfect balance between those two those two things I me for for RO clearly reported it's making a decent Chun of your of change almost 50% of r l so is is it both for for for or is it you know int you both or do you focus more on the revenue side and the I think equal equal so obviously there the business Reon to but at the same time like here say we want to be on all screens and and to be on those screen so

it does drive a lot of awareness for the game and bringing people back to the the digital experience as well but um like I said this there's also the marketing aspect of it so using it as a marketing tool to get in Fr of people who might not be able to ever buy an iPhone differ yeah I I think for us um we want to make sure that it fits and I think I said it earlier to you because that when we will find dood jum dog food somewhere I think the dog food is dog food we know this no don't think so I think that be okay um okay I to you've talked about you're very much about building Brands and building strong IP that's your mission statement isn't it so and and you know so from that perspective are you also kind of looking at the wider world of kind of brand kind licing most of or are you just games know Tove had two different

approaches supercell saying just about the games we're not think about anything else and P talking about the bigger they don't care about games at it's not but it's the bigger so where would you sit the way we think about even the massive bridge on mobile in world we we believe that some of the world's biggest entertainment franchises will be created on mobile fform first and what we set up to do is build that can reach a m lar audience on mobile and we completely absolutely focused on the game for now but at the same time we're building building at time where this there a greaters world that you can discover there's conflict there's characters there's all types of elements that on you know that enable us in the future to have the option of expanding from from the game

into even even okay um I've got a couple more questions I'm have an option for anybody to ask questions anybody out there any developers interesting asking a question here where's my G assistant Go's top just it's very bright I see I think it's blue yeah hi I've got a question for Maria uh so when you were starting the merchandise Foria IID like to know how did you think about making this um happen as did you consider just selling your brand to licenses uh or sorry Lors or did you think about making it all in house as in contacting the manufacturers uh you know handling the whole PR online store and everything can you

please share if there this I'll try to answer that so I haven't worked in the licensing team so I'm not totally aware of all the details there but as far as I recall the the first products we did were the FL toys and they were already done with the licing so we we we worked with a partner we trusted and we knew that the quality was going to be great uh we have done some products ourselves as well so sourcing the factories and such but to be honest it is so much much easier to find trust that I established already and have the retailer connection so that that's a lot of work we do have a licensing team in house and it is pretty extensive one they work as category managers so they are responsible for certaines and certain products and they look at the samples approve the U the products and make sure that they like with our St of approval before they go out same with the marketing stuffff we have a similar type of data when we work with Partners we stamp for the final

product before it goes out in the public so we use a lot of Partners to be able to be somewhere where we are naturally and and get the awareness for okay do you have any more questions at great I can't really see here so very okay I have one last question which I'm going to thr there I think this is I start chat actually he showing me um NFC technology yesterday had Skylanders thing so sky and tels seems to be a really uh really interesting way of the real world merchandise with the brand and the game are we going to see you know is that something obviously you guys working it successful do you think that's going to be a real important part of the future mobile games the we bringing it you know Nintendo OB just now anoun they're going that way Disney being followed is this something all mobile guys can look into more I think working with elements like that is

absolutely fantastic we can create new gaml types new experi that you haven't been able to do previously at the same time I think it's a little more additive thing if you look at the entire game it gives you more more options but it's not cly it's not the only way toad are you going to be doing collectible cars in the real world stick on theet the gate it's just Complicated by the fact that you don't own the designs and names of the cars so there got to be a lot of convincing to do because even if you look at the brands in one Niche the automotive Brands they're all different if you look at our game it's a racing game so it's like an ideal fit but some say hey grandis is a racing game but you have a mobile it's not serious so it's it's always difficult to negotiate and go further and that mobile is a real deal because for them 200 million mobile users sometimes worth 200,000 TV viewers

they just don't get it sometimes they do sometimes they don't but eventually I want to do this because what we see now develop technology we see the convergence of digital and physical it's becom more easier to create those kind of experience physical objects is really cool I would like to point out a few things well um I think it's pretty excited the traditional toy companies are interested in this show because this is not their expertise so we are able to give them that opportunity to in in the mobile space so there's a lot of innovation going on there obviously because they really need to move on to the next space so we're seeing a lot of interesting stuff from that perspective but I think what's really cool like from my personal professional experience is that what we're working with hasper right now is teleport for Stella so we're going to be doing female digital physical integration for girls category and I don't think this has been done ever before so introducing something super mobile and digital for girls

it's pretty exciting your audience have a little yeah down on the screen I think to balance it whole new game that's for free the new Doodle Jump is like a I exactly I think the key here is that it needs to be executed executed really really well otherwise it's just going to become a land and we don't want to do that okay and any any closing words from you uh yeah I mean a lot of toy lies already talking about it quite quite a lot so that's always a good Mark it's something more than basic label that you just take the Rand put it teach just take the and put teach something more unique that's something really cool and really waiting for it awesome and as the as father of a three-year-old I'm delighted to be more classic things to ACC to mobile phone so can we have a round of applause please know