Why KLM is publishing mobile games

good morning um I think a lot of you are wondering what is KLM doing here and I fully understand I mean if I walk around I only see guys that's the first thing that I noticed and I only see Gamers I am not a gamer I'm the kind of person who plays Cooking Fever and I play that all the time but my kids are big Gamers um Minecraft bike race they're playing GTA which they're not allowed to but they do it anyway but I manager social media within KLM and I know about customer needs and that is where the connection between gaming and social and companies comes along and I would like to tell you something more about that um for those of you who have no clue what KLM is KM is Royal Dutch Airlines it's an airline in the Netherlands and uh we're 95 years old flying under our own name so we're a legacy company and our main challenge is huge we don't have a

big Home Market as for instance our FR our France has or British Airways we're a very small company so our business model is built around the fact that we want to get as many customers as possible to our Hub it's kle and fly them uh around the world on internet Continental destinations that is how we make our money and we're talking about 27 million passengers which we are transporting on a year yearly basis from one end to the world to the other end and that is what was so interesting when we stepped into the world of social media that we could suddenly connect to people that we never could connect to before I mean we were used to doing big marketing campaign sending out messages to everybody around the world and hoping that everybody wanted to fly with us and suddenly we were on Facebook with right now more than 7 million fans and interacting with our customers this same

thing is happening in China we're present at Wet we're present at CAO in Russia we're present at V Conta so suddenly we have an opportunity to connect with a lot of people who have never ever heard about KLM but who are suddenly following us and who might be potential customers and that is where the connection with gaming comes along we believe we should be present where our customers are and if you talk about gaming then you talk about a totally new market to us gaming is and you know that a lot better than I do a huge potential Market with millions of people who are gaming all the time who are in constant interaction with in our case a brand um it is a totally new audience to us um it is about continuous engagement because if somebody is playing a game and I'm not talking about at for games but I'm talking about real games ual games

strategic 3D games they are playing in sessions of around 20 minutes maybe an hour and they're continuously engaging with your brand and that is extremely interesting to us and most important gaming gives us the opportunity to make a connection between offline and online if we use gaming in a very good way we are able to influence the behavior of our customers can we make a game which makes people be on time at the gate can we make a game to sell tickets can we make a game which gives us the opportunity to know where our customers are all those opportunities are a reason why we decided to step into the world of gaming so what have we been doing so far um we thought about this story and we thought okay let's give it a try so in 2013 we introduced our first game Aviation Empire a strategic 3D game

which is about building connections leading your own Airline building up airports Etc so what happens to happened to us so up to this moment we have 700,000 downloads um we're doing pretty well in the App Store and the Android store we have four stars four and a half Stars so so far everybody seems to like it most important of those 700,000 downloads we see that most of those downloads s are in markets which are Focus markets to us so the US I mean nobody knows KLM in the US but they are in our top 10 of downloads China nobody knows km in China but we're in the top 10 of downloads up there as well so it suddenly gives us the opportunity to get into contact with potential customers who had never ever heard about km before of those 700,000 downloads we have about 6,000 Ina

transactions it's a free game you can play it completely free but if you want to buy stuff you can to speed up the process um and on the online offline connection stuff we build in a GPS check-in um opportunity so every time a real customer of us is flying around the world entering San Francisco he can check in via the game and get San Francisco in the game as well so that was our first experiment we're regarding what is possible on the online offline connection stuff and so far we're really really satisfied with the results so far and um on an average people play sessions of 20 minutes which means that they're interacting with the km brand 20 minute at a time I mean if we want to do that with a television commercial we pay about millions of euros and right now with this game they're Contin continuously playing it doing it over and over again so to us those results

are really satisfying and we want to continue this story um this spring we will introduce the Chinese version of Aviation Empire so instead of Facebook and Twitter login we put in WeChat and CAO um we translated the whole game of course and we um adjusted it a little bit to the Chinese culture this is a small experiment we just want to see what is happening because we already saw that there were so many Chinese download but we're going to try it in Chinese now I mean those downloads were English now we're going to try it in Chinese and this spring we will also introduce a very simple at for game a mini game which will be available in weet KLM also a little experiment to see what is happening if we add a little bit gaming into weet we hope to get more weet followers but we also hope to get more uh people to download Aviation Empire in

Chinese so this is all about Aviation Empire the results are really satisfying to us so we decided we want to be in there for the long run in July uh last year we uh hired Romar bukur who is up here our project manager gaming and we're developing a lot of more new games right now we want to make a whole Center of gaming sklm because we believe it it has a lot of added value to us um and our new adventure begins today um in this spring we will introduce our second game as I explained to you before we have Aviation Empire which is a hardcore 3D game it's completely in the top right if you talk about gaming we introduced the at for game we introduced the Chinese version but we decided we wanted to have a game which is um better

understanding for a bigger group of people so we decided to make an entertainment casual game and that is our new game what if a simple idea can change our world and the right choices can change the way we fly with state-of-the-art design and aerodynamics we can go where no airplane has gone before and now with our revolutionary new flight control system we can bring Aviation back to the people to you to share and have fun Jeffs Airborne spring 2015 this is a small small small part of our new game and why is this one so interesting to us with the lessons we

learned from Aviation Empire we try to develop a game which has all those things in there which are important to us it is really social it connects the social world with the gaming world that is the first one the second one it is a game that can be played by millions of people it is not like Aviation Empire a hardcore 3D game and third of all we're looking into this online offline connection which will be available in the next Rel Lees um my main message to all of you is I believe that in five or six years many companies like us will be present in the gaming industry I don't know if they will do it in our way but what I would like to say to any company which is thinking about this go beyond the at for game the at for game is only a small marketing instrument but go the way we are going because I believe that it is really strong and powerful to make

your brand available available to a bigger bigger group of people thank you very much cool well thank you very much for that um I mean I find this kind of stuff fascinating it's something I've been wondering about for many years I mean back in the days of dialup modems we were trying to find ways to make flash games work with um uh you know Brands as well and and we never managed to make that work and I think the reason was we were coming from a kind of a promotional point of view a revenue generating point of view trying to get money out of the the brand rather than I think what you're doing which is coming at it from a well this is our brand how are we going to engage with our audience is that is that a fair summary yeah it is it is absolutely so what do you think is the S of Core lesson you've kind of gained from that I mean is it something that other brands should be doing more of are you what do you what measurable things would you say you're gaining that other people should pay attention to um well I mean um if it is the bigger

audience which you can reach that's the first one it's a completely different audience which we reach with our marketing campaigns and stuff like that that's the first one the second one is um it it it uh enriches your brand in a totally different way because it asks about well RAR always says any game you you make it has to be fun that is always the first pillar which he's talking about yeah and and mainly if companies think about gaming it is about serious gaming you know like how can we tell our employees that they have to think about safety and stuff like that what we are doing is really really completely different because it takes an investment that is the first one but if you look at the the cost and the revenues then it is so much stronger than uh what you can do with marketing campaigns and stuff like that but it is if if you do it really well it can be an additional Revenue model I mean let's be fair so far we haven't really been focusing about payments in in in inep payments and stuff like that you kind of got the Liberty to do that you absolutely

absolutely yeah this idea I think though is something that I think is very important not just to do with Brands building games but also game Brands building Brands the realization of brand building and brand enrichment being a critical part of the relationship with the player yeah is something I think is largely I don't know missing it's too strong a word but it's a problem that we have because we're measuring every single install in the games world and I think you is it fair to say you're free that oh you are doing well we're doing that as well we're doing that on social we're doing that on gaming we really want to know what is happening what is the added value if we have a download is somebody there to stay or is he only downloading it and throwing it away uh immediately so you're actually looking for engagement because that's connecting a positive relationship with a brand absolutely but there's also the possibility of social logins I mean it is about data you know so if you connect the social logins from your game with all the other stuff you're doing you get a really Rich profile of a certain

person and I mean um that can be really intrusive if you use it in the wrong sense but if you use it in the good sense it can really be of added value to a player as well if we know that you love to travel to New York and we know that you're a gaming with us and if we are able to buy or to to build something into the game which gives you the opportunity to for instance win a ticket to New York then it's of added value to you and to us as well you know absolutely yeah and you can use the assets available to you I'm going to hog the questions if I don't stop and um and actually reach out so has anyone got any questions in the room Al so u j just introduce yourself I know we know who you are but um if you could just for the purpose yeah so I'm want I for gaming uh that's gam company so like the question is natural you're an airline and you have the access to install the game to inlight interment system yes so why don't you do that um we are thinking about can I just get you to repeat the question we're being record the question is why

don't we add our games to the inflight entertainment system that is what we're thinking about the big problem is we don't have Wi-Fi yet on all flights so what we really want to do is yes we want to add it to the inflight Entertainment System but we also want to make it possible that if you have been playing that you can continue on the ground again right now if we put it in the nflight entertainment system it will be there but it will be a completely separate session and as we are talking about continuously gaming and we want to keep you to the game we're really afraid that if we put you in the plane you play Aviation Empire and you come to level 9053 that you that you will say like oh now I have to start all over again because I'm on the ground so it's really boring to get to 1953 again so yes it is on our list and Wifi is being enrolled in the coming years in the coming months actually so it is on the list to be implemented yeah I'm looking forward to the more Wi-Fi and more ples I'm going to ask Jaz if is the next speaker to come up um but whilst you're doing that

I'm going to reach out and see if there's any more questions that we want to ask anyone else got any more questions for current any more questions your last chance anyway so I found this very fascinating the idea of Brands reaching into the games market and using it to enrich their brand themselves I think fascinating the idea that we're communicating through games as the medium is something that's completely under under um uh understood underused and it's fantastic to see km doing it thank you very much thanks thank you very much yeah