For the next in our series of case studies looking at how small businesses are using social media, we caught up with Adam McGowan, Global Marketing Director and Debbie Brettell, Online Marketing Manager, Playlogic International
In no more than 50 words explain what your business is.
Playlogic is a publisher and developer of interactive video games. We publish and distribute a wide range of games for consoles, PC’s, handhelds and other digital media platforms. Some of our most recent projects include Fairytale Fights™, the Xbox®360 and PlayStation3® hack’n’slash platform-adventure, developed at our in-house studio Playlogic Game Factory.
How do you use social media as a business?
Traditionally as a video game publisher, we have been able to interact with our consumers through magazines affiliated to consoles or certain publishers. These magazines were able to aggregate the news that readers and gamers alike craved. However, with the digital age came a lot more freedom for video game publishers to interact with their consumers. The thirst for news and content has become so great in 2010 that online magazines, websites and social networks are attracting more visitors then print. Even print magazines are looking at ways to develop their social media strategies and monetise a community that once expected content for free.
With an exceptionally low cost to entry, social media marketing is proving very effective. Many video game publishers now have their own in house teams dedicated to community management and social media. And Playlogic are no different. We have our own in house Online Division that looks after our all of our online marketing, including website development & management, CRM, social networking, banner advertising, reporting and so much more.
As video game publishers, we often spend millions developing content. For this reason, we look to be able to engage our consumers as much as possible to ensure we are delivering content we know they will enjoy, and through developing communities and utilising social media campaigns, we are able to get right to the heart of those that buy our products and services. We encourage our community to interact with us and our social profiles as much as possible. We see our community as a vital tool to help us tweak and refine our offering.
As the video game industry continues to evolve, in similar ways that the music and film industry have, the way in which we communicate with our consumers will continue to evolve and social media has been a tremendous driving factor in this evolution.
The ways in which we utilise social media does however; depend on the results we are looking to achieve. For example, we are able to utilise social media to create awareness and buzz around a new product release, by releasing small pieces of information, screenshots, trailers and other assets that consumers can then freely distribute themselves. In this case, we can use social media, far in advance of starting any other part of the marketing mix, by simply creating an online thirst for content, and drip feeding that thirst over a period of time. It’s of course vital to ensure your online community have a place to reside and so building a website, community forum, blog spot or Facebook page for example is crucial to supporting this. Allowing consumers to congregate in one location and share their thoughts and opinions can often help the direction of the development (we listen to the bad as well!).
We’re currently working on development of Fairytale Fights 2, a follow up to one the surprise hits of 2009, Fairytale Fights (available on PlayStation® 3 and Xbox®360. Fairytale Fights 2 will include many elements, allowing consumers to interact with one another through social media, as well as being able to interact with us of course. This will be vital to the games ongoing success and long term profitability.
What are your business/marketing objectives for social media?
At Playlogic, we use social media firstly as a tool to raise awareness, breaking news and announcements as quickly as possible. From here, we can then direct users to more detailed information should they wish to continue their journey. I think in general, throughout the industry, social media is certainly used as a great awareness tool. However in time, this trend will shift towards social media being a main driver in purchasing decisions. It’s all down to how social media develops. We’ve seen a staggering surge in the use of social media as more applications and platform become available. With Facebook (for example) available on consoles today, who is to say that in 2-3 years time, consumers are purchasing console games through their Facebook profiles.
Do you measure the success of your social media marketing? If so, how?
This is certainly one of the great benefits of using social media within the marketing mix. We’re able to engage with our consumers when developing particular campaigns, and evaluate their response very quickly. We can see exactly who is responding to what, and this can help define future strategies.
Like with most marketing activity, we want to be able to understand and measure the success on each platform, and with social media, one of the easiest ways to gauge success is through the volume of interactions, comments, likes, followers or friends you have, as well as understanding how far your message has reached, such as re-tweets and your followers posting news on their own profiles. One key to success in social media marketing is to use your audience to convey your message for you. This can often be tricky when your message in the hands of your consumers, so making sure it’s clear is simple is crucial to making it successful.
At Playlogic, we keep a close on eye on all our social network profiles, making sure we interact with our friends and followers as often as possible. We put in place regular KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to check on the progress of our social media marketing in order to maintain a positive trend. However, it’s crucial to ensure you keep feeding your community with content. Without content, your community will go dry and disappear quickly.
How does social media fit in with the other marketing your company does?
Unlike many other companies, Playlogic is certainly leveraging the power of social media marketing. A large % of our budgets are typically spent online, which represents a huge investment. This investment can only be supported through the continued efforts of our online division, to ensure they encourage and foster two way interactions with our consumers, and grow our social presence. We must ensure we secure maximum return on our investment and social media is no different.
Whilst online represents a largest % of our budget, traditional forms of marketing are just as crucial, so combining these efforts is certainly what we look to achieve. The campaigns we develop often utilise the full marketing mix, making use of all available channels and maximising our return where ever possible. For example, a print, and or TV campaign would also be supported with social media to ensure we’re able to track the interests of consumers.
Today’s video games consumers are very tech savvy, and with the emergence of social networking on video game consoles, such as Twitter and Facebook, it’s clear that consumers have a hunger to engage one another as often possible. Working in one of the leading entertainment industries, we too must embrace today’s technological advances and use them to our advantage.
There are many games available today that allow consumers to post their high score, upload a new racing track or a new combo move, or the latest and greatest goal they scored, the list goes on. User generated content is rapidly becoming crucial, and key to supporting communities. For example, Twitter could be perceived as a simplified form of forum and allowing your consumers to share their thoughts, content and more with one another in this open platform can only be beneficial for the long term.
Do you have plans to increase your use of social media in 2010?
Most definitely, throughout 2009, Playlogic have been building social media campaigns around each of our major games releases in Europe, North America and Asia and we certainly plan to continue this throughout 2010 and beyond. It’s proved very effective for the release of additional content for Fairytale Fights on the PlayStation3® and Xbox®360 systems.
With Fairytale Fights continuing to sell well and still generating a buzzing community, we’re excited for what the future holds for Fairytale Fights 2. We’re busy working on marketing plans for Fairytale Fights 2 and social media will be crucial to its success as the game will feature heavy social media components. Our Online division is also growing rapidly to handle the expected demand, as we’re also busy finalising plans to re-launch our own digital distribution service in the coming months, which is heavily supported with Social Media.
We will certainly leverage the experience we have gained in social media marketing thus far, and potentially look to develop our own social media applications and or widgets in the future. We personally feel that the likes of Facebook for example are a great way to extend a brand beyond the traditional realms.
Scaled down Facebook versions of traditional retail games are becoming very popular and we certainly believe this will become a major driver of retail sales (either through traditional retail stores or via PlayStation Network / Xbox Live). Our Fairytale Fights mini game that was created for the social media fans proved very popular, with over 1500+ seeds throughout Europe and North America.
What would be your top 3 tips for businesses looking to get involved in social media?
There are many tips for a successful social media campaign. It goes without saying that any company should make sure they include social media in any strategy they develop. It’s an incredibly powerful tool, often under realised or underutilised. In today’s world, we all need some sort of online presence and there are plenty out of tools out there that can provide one for free.
Understand that social media is not necessarily guaranteed to deliver results. Social media should firstly be treated as a form of branding, an awareness exercise in which you are raising your online real estate, and creating a presence where your customers can feel settled and comfortable enough to express their opinion.
Depending on how social media is integrated within a campaign, will influence the results’. For example, integrating social media elements with a TV campaign will inevitably deliver large scale results. It’s important to make sure that social media is built around other campaigns when you are new to the online space. If however you are an older company with a long online heritage, rapidly developing a social media campaign can be very effective as your customers may be experienced with your brand and so each campaign could prove very successful. Social Media should be used in conjunction with other marketing mediums for the best interaction results.
Lastly, have some fun. Social Media doesn’t need to follow strict rules and conventions. Social Media should allow you to reach out and become friends with your consumers, fans and or followers. As marketers, we are constantly seeking touch points whereby we can directly interact, however we feel that in too many businesses, social media is too restricted, or even feared in some cases, and this can prevent your consumers from being able to engage with you.
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photo credit: clevercupcakes
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