5 Keys to Successful Video Game Marketing from Ayzenberg Group’s Steve Fowler

There was a particularly interesting and succinct article about video game marketing from Industry Gamers the other day.  The Ayzenberg Group, with some well known clients like Turbine, Konami, Lucas Arts, Ubisoft and Microsoft has built itself on marketing to the most advertising adverse audiences.  They’ve done some fantastic work with some pretty highly known video games, they know their audience and I’ve got a considerable amount of respect for them.

Steve Fowler, the current VP of Strategy and Client Services at the Ayzenberg Group presented a very cool, high level piece about the 5 Keys to Successful Video Game Marketing.  For the most part, it’s a good distillation of what’s known and what’s already being done.  However, what sets this apart from most of the video game marketing pieces I’ve read is that it goes beyond the channel and gives some excellent, short, snippets of wisdom and reasoning behind just the channel.

1: Identifying Emerging Trends

This is the core of video game marketing.  It’s well known that gamers, geeks and the tech-native crowds are early adopters, early abandoners and can intuitively find the value and usefulness of pretty much anything they put their minds to.  For example, when Twitter first came out, it was primarily a haven of tech-heads talking amongst themselves.  An essential and primary function of marketing to gamers is to understand where they are, where they migrate and to be absolutely embedded in that community.

2: Utilizing Social Media

When Myspace, Facebook started to boom, most advertisers looked at uniques, pageviews and the number of active users.  The immediate reaction was that it was a place to drop new banners to reach them.  However, as time passed, it was obvious that the click throughs were down, conversions were down and there was a tremendous amount of fraud.  One campaign that I ran in the early days of social media marketing, I found that over 20% of my conversions and sign-ups were inactive users, UGC farms and for the most part, absolutely useless.  We paid quite a bit of money to learn that mistake, yet what grew out of that failure were the core aspects of marketing through social media that Steve Fowler reiterates.

• Be authentic: It’s ok to be a marketer, just don’t try to hide who you are.
• Be a part of the conversation: Gamers will know if you’re one of them, if you’re an authentic gamer, then that will show through.  Your excitement and enthusiasm will translate to the conversations with other gamers.
• Add value: Don’t just sell shit.  Don’t just try to make people buy shit.  That will piss off more people than it’s worth.  Give gamers the things they want, they want media to share and consume, they want information, they want transparency and they want to be a part of the experience.  This is the value that gamers crave.
• I would add the following: Crave criticism and feedback.  If something sucks, you will be told, other people will be told, entire networks will be told.  Your reaction to that criticism will be a defining factor in how you’re perceived.  If you take that feedback and change it to suck less, then you’re adding value and being a true part of the gaming community.  If you try to spin what sucks into something else, you’re done.
• Lastly: Be Active: Don’t just post a few statements, drop a few links and expect hordes to come following you.  Engage people, don’t just be a marketer, be a person, be a geek, engage other users & not just other industry people.  If one of your followers sends you a message, do your best to respond to them, re-tweet them or engage them in a real conversation.

3: Think Beyond the Click

I particularly like this principle.  When dealing with an agency, sometimes they can be an oppositional force to your goals.  Most agencies rely on automation, replication and procedures to run campaigns.  Make sure you have transparency in the data, make sure you work closely with them before the campaign is launched so that you have clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  Secondly, work with the agency or professional.  Understand that the campaign may not go as well as planned.  The time to find out about that is before the campaign is over and before the money’s spent.  Allow the agency to re-work and optimize the campaign.  Hold the agency accountable, but understand that it’s a partnership where both parties are working for the same goals.

4: Activate Your TV Spots

Commercials are difficult to get hard data from, most of the information can be correlative and there are often (especially if you are running online campaigns) other variables that can affect spikes or dips in the KPIs.  When running a campaign, give the viewer an action.  Go to a microsite, find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter.  These steps turn an otherwise passive activity into something that can be directly measured.  If you know that your TV spots are running at certain times, track the time of the following notifications to show if there are significant spikes in people engaging in your call to action.

5: Trailers are Important

From the teaser trailer to the preview to the ad to the gameplay trailer.   It’s critical to produce good trailers on a regular basis.  I look to the success of the marketing campaign of The Saboteur, their trailers are well produced and themed.  Know that your audience is actively searching for and spreading these trailers, the better they are, the more excitement and engagement you’ll create.

6: Adding Value to the Marketing Message.

This is probably one of the most important and most elusive aspects to video game marketing.  The value can come in packages (as the NVG’s for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) or they can come in bundling (as The Orange Box).  The can come in exclusive in-game items from GameStop (something that I don’t particularly like as a gamer… but it can be effective).  Bridge the campaigns from the digital to the real-space.  Participate at events, create your own events and find ways to cross over the game to other media.  This last one gives an incredible amount of freedom and creativity to explore.

I’ve expanded upon Steve Fowler’s excellent summary of video game marketing principles.  I enjoyed its brevity and clarity and absolute spot-on message.  However, I would add just two things.

1: It’s no longer true that just being talked about is successful marketing.

With EA’s “Sin to Win” jackassery at ComicCon, and the pathetic apology following, it’s clear that context matters.  Dante’s Inferno looks like a fantastic game that’s had a particularly stupid marketing campaign.  If the goal is to sell the video game, then just getting people talking about it will no longer accomplish that.  Understand that gamers are voracious content consumers online.  Chances are, we know about the game.  Chances are, we’ve consumed some media about it.  So there’s very little value in just getting the name out there for its own sake.  What matters now is the context of that message.

The movie Bruno had a massive marketing push, yet within a single day of release, the twitterverse immediately panned the movie and it saw that no matter how much marketing, no matter how many people were “talking about it”, the movie failed expectations because the context of the conversation mattered to people.

2: Embrace the Mobile Platform

With smart phones becoming ubiquitous, it’s absolutely critical to have a mobile component to any video game marketing campaign.  The campaign could be simply SMS, it could be a mobile site, it could be an app.  Understand that most of the tech-native audience now owns and uses a smart phone for games, utility, entertainment and communication.  This new trend is not changing anytime soon.  Create compelling experiences that can engage users in an entertaining and useful way.  The experiences you give them on the mobile platform can become bridges between the marketing, the game and the overall experience.  A simple free application can become a marketing tool as well.  If I download a free application, and between levels, the loading screens can be modified to promote a microsite, a Twitter account, a new game or anything else you want.