The myth of 2025
The cycle is here to stay and why game developers and punishers need to take a close look at how they do marketing to navigate the new norm.
I just returned from Istanbul where I attended Mobidictum, the region’s largest gaming conference focused on mobile gaming. The conference was wonderful - great audience, solid venue, strong content, terrific hosts. The same goes for Istanbul by the way. Lovely people, vibrant culture, incredible food. It’s safe to assume that I will be back.
As a part of the conference I was fortunate to host a panel titled “Brand Matters - why brand strategy is marketing’s key to scaling games”. My guests on stage were Tim Dequidt, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Zynga, and Luis de la Cámara, VP of Marketing at Rovio. Between the two, they have led marketing for iconic titles such as FarmVille, CSR2, the Angry Birds franchise, and the soon to be released Sonic Rumble. They’re among the most forward-thinking marketers in the entire gaming industry and shared golden insights in front of a packed house for a full 30 minutes.
Here are the headlines from our conversation.
Gaming like any industry operates in cycles. Its makeup and dynamics are becoming similar to that of a commoditized market. Differentiation based on product is more challenging; bigger players take up more and more of the oxygen in the space, making it harder for new games to emerge; players have high expectations but if in doubt will revert to games they already know (read: the already successful, big ones).
The mantra of “survive until 2025” is a myth. This saying has been going around the industry, giving people false hopes that if they just hold out for the rest of the year, things will get better in the new year - which many equate with things reverting back to the good old days of cheaper installs. I’ve got bad news: it won’t happen.
Focusing on reducing cost per install alone is not enough. In the current environment, teams can only lower CPIs so much. LTV has to be a focus in order to achieve a payback period for the marketing spend that makes your game economically viable. As a part of that, games need to be able to retain players a lot longer in order to enable greater LTV levels.
Games that currently dominate have the best of both worlds. These are games with broad marketability but deep LTV monetization that is atypical for the traditional very broad mass appeal games. They get it all: lower CPIs due to their broad appeal, and much higher LTV levels. Monopoly Go is a good example.
Gaming is still a product led industry and the quality of the game matters. But marketing and specifically brand matter as well. A lot actually.
Have you ever looked closely at professional tennis players like Rafael Nadal? (How do we go from tennis to games? Hang tight.) They typically have one really strong, muscular arm and one normal looking one. The strong one is the one they use to swing the racket. This is the metaphor for marketing teams in games: most of them have one really strong arm because they’ve only been using one. That arm is called performance marketing. Given all of the challenges around performance marketing, teams have to unlearn old habits and open their minds to doing real marketing work. They have to train and use their second arm.
That starts with the number one priority: investing in high quality insights and player research to deeply understand your audience. Only if you know the real needs and drivers of your audience can you design a marketing campaign that is actually geared towards resonating with them. Player expectations have shifted significantly. We can’t meet them if we don’t know where they’re headed.
Organizational setups and mindset shifts need to happen. Marketing teams need to be enhanced with new and different skills. But they also need to align much more closely with Product. Essentially, they're on the same team, anchored in a shared vision of who their target audience is. Rovio addresses this by having a dedicated marketing lead for each live game, who works closely with the GM and the Product lead of that game. On the finance and budgeting front, CFOs have become so used to the immediate attribution and bottom line impact of performance marketing. Brand marketing and its financial return can be a bit more nebulous initially and take time to materialize. CFOs have to develop the stomach to let marketing teams make the required investments.
Lastly, there’s a big misconception. Brand work doesn’t mean millions of dollars and a TV campaign. Even small studios and games can invest in their game’s brand. Start with your own community of players. That’s your tribe. Learn about them. Understand them deeply. Grow from there.
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