{"id":6514,"date":"2022-01-25T19:31:04","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T19:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/25\/gamesbeat-summit-why-gametainment-and-brand-is-the-future-of-game-marketing\/"},"modified":"2022-01-25T19:31:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T19:31:04","slug":"gamesbeat-summit-why-gametainment-and-brand-is-the-future-of-game-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/25\/gamesbeat-summit-why-gametainment-and-brand-is-the-future-of-game-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"GamesBeat Summit: Why “gametainment” and brand is the future of game marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Join gaming leaders, alongside GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming, for their 2nd Annual GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit | GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2 this upcoming January 25-27, 2022. Learn more about the event.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

What do ice cream and games have in common? Not enough. In the consumer packaged goods world, brand is life. But in the game industry, especially in mobile games, marketing tends toward the functional, with a focus on the bottom of the funnel where ROI seems much easier to demonstrate. <\/p>\n

However, with competition growing and performance marketing becoming an increasing challenge, it might be time to turn to lessons from the CPG world. Iconic brands can live forever \u2014 and connecting deeply with consumers is what makes the difference, said Laura Keren, VP of marketing at Playtika.<\/p>\n

She joined Peleg Israeli, director of global gaming, creative shop, Meta at the GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit<\/a> this Tuesday, for a discussion about how mobile game studios can actually build lasting relationships with their players to drive growth and engagement.<\/p>\n

Playtika, which has been around since 2010, first started in the social casino space, but now ranges across 15 different genres. It\u2019s a global company that spans about 20 offices worldwide. Before joining Playtika, Keren was a business unit manager at Unilever. But while going from consumer packaged goods to gaming was a dramatic change, she has demonstrated that brand building is essential to successful mobile gaming marketing.<\/p>\n

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The 2nd Annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit and GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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\u201cComing from the CPG industry, I\u2019ve learned that there is no replacement for a good story,\u201d Keren said. \u201cA strong brand is even more important in the game industry, since the competition is much more fierce.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s everything from the number of copycats to the number of new game developers looking for a piece of a booming market\u2019s pie, plus how difficult performance marketing has become with and new privacy restrictions and increasing CPI, and digital marketing growing more and more automated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing we can control is our creative and our messaging,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is the way we can create emotional connections to our games and to our brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company is defining its brand identity together as a team, across studios, using players\u2019 insights, talking to employees, and mapping the competition, because the people that work on the brand know the game the best and know their players the best. They create workshops based on player insights and competition analysis, and build it into a 360-degree holistic campaign that will appeal to both potential and existing players.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call this \u2018gametainment,’\u201d she said. \u201cWe see that mobile games, especially now since COVID, have become a more popular, a more accepted form of entertainment. The boundaries between TV shows, movies, music concerts, and gaming are really blurring. In the campaigns we\u2019re adopting, we want to bring entertainment to our players, and we gradually build more and more gametainment elements inside the game and also in our marketing efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keren spoke to some of the company\u2019s most successful gametainment campaigns, including the one that kicked off with the \u201cShe\u2019s Bingo\u201d music video, aimed at promoting Bingo Blitz. It\u2019s the top free-to-play social bingo game, with more than 1 million active players per day, but the company wanted to move beyond the perception that it\u2019s an old person\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started out as a market leader. Our responsibility is to drive the category forward,\u201d Keren said. \u201cThis was our state of mind when we planned this campaign. We wanted to make bingo cool again, and to expand it to the mass market. We thought, what could be a good solution to connect different generations? And the answer was music, because music usually connects people everywhere, across countries and generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

They took a hit from the \u201880s, \u201cD.I.S.C.O.,\u201d and tapped Luis Fonzi of Despacito and Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls and the Masked Singer to create a three-minute music video with very high production values. They released the clip organically, first through the singers\u2019 YouTube channel. They racked up more than 70 million views on YouTube, TikTok, and Spotify, and even had a successful TikTok challenge with a dedicated dance. After the release of the song, they went live with a TV and UA campaign edited from the full video clip. They also created avatars, community activities, and special features inside the game to engage current players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe business results really surprised us dramatically,\u201d Keren said. \u201cWe increased awareness and UX. The campaign has created a major lift in our daily installs, in our revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House of Fun campaign, promoting one of their social slot games, teamed up with Penn and Teller to create a TV and digital campaign aimed at their current players. They created an in-game miniseries with Penn and Teller to take the players to a mission-based adventure \u2014 the first time that a miniseries has been streamed exclusively within a mobile game, Keren said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project was really a turning point for us, for the way we think holistically about marketing, player experience, and how we combine both to provide high-quality entertainment to our players,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The challenges of brand marketing<\/h2>\n

Within mobile games, the main focus has been, and will always be, on acquisition and performance, conversation, and clear measurements. Evolving to a brand-centric viewpoint has been their challenge over the past two years. It started with building new marketing teams, which included experts in strategy, creative, production, consumer insights, and research \u2014 and most of these roles hadn\u2019t existed at Playtika two years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the performance people and the brand people, and sometimes it\u2019s like speaking a different language,\u201d she said. \u201cYou need to find the right bridge for the brand people to talk to the performance people. It\u2019s like two sides of the brain. When they find the right match, the magic happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the main challenge, usually, when doing brand activity, is how you measure it, she said. Moving from a very accurate measurement in performance marketing to a more holistic business view meant they needed to redefine their KPIs, and look at it from a larger picture approach. That included evaluating it in terms of revenue from every category of users, what kind of lift they\u2019re getting in search, in brand awareness, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds easy, but it\u2019s really hard to crack the measurement objectives, to understand how we\u2019re choosing the right media mix for our campaigns, where it will be the best to put the extra dollars in our campaigns,\u201d Keren said. \u201cI feel like we have a dream job. In an industry that\u2019s exploding and growing all the time, as marketers, it\u2019s an amazing opportunity. If we can dream it, we can do it. There are no boundaries. I feel very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

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GamesBeat’s creed<\/strong> when covering the game industry is “where passion meets business.” What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you — not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Learn More<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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