Game Connection is a growing site of marketing and business development in the games industry, and while there weren’t that many booths on hand, there were a number of marketing and business experts in the field present who provided an insider’s view of a very different aspect of the gaming industry than the creative one.
Among those present was Carmel Ben-Or of TAKEOFF CSH, a marketing agency that’s worked with a number of large and small companies for projects in the industry. I took the time to ask him some broad questions about his work in the field – how marketing material is conceived and how it interacts with gaming culture.
Take Off has worked with both large and small developers, notably Eidos and Ubisoft. How much would you say comes from the initial client, versus the marketing firm?
Well, that depends on the marketing firm – how much they’ll take from it. Some companies will just leave with a budget, a number in their head, and they’ll run from there. But the good ones – the experienced ones – they’ll insist on communication. It’s really about understanding the client’s brand and making sure you’re getting the story right. Anyone can make something that’s cinematically [sic] and aesthetically appealing, but to truly understand the game, to understand the gamers, the spirit of the game and the brand, that takes more time. Not necessarily budget, but good communication
What do you think is the role of the marketing agency in the production of a game?
Well, the ideal isn’t “well, we want a trailer, let’s go.” The role from the beginning is to absorb everything that they can from the publisher. A marketing agency isn’t supposed to be an agency on its own; rather, it’s supposed to mold onto the existing company and become their (outsourced) in-house creative team… If a marketing agency isn’t spending most of its time trying to understand the client, then it’s throwing gum against the wall.
It’s interesting you mention trailers. So many trailers we see on TV seem to fall into the same mold – the guy shooting at random things, playing your generic rock music– a disconnected burst of sound and fury. Why do you think so many marketing and gaming companies fall back on this sort of thing?
Well, they fall back on a template that’s easy and it works. Even if it works like 70% of the time, that’s still a template worth doing. If your trailer is successful 70% of the time that’s a good turnover rate. If it’s a template that works, then don’t mess with the system. That’s the overall credence… It’s too challenging and too risky to really mess with the template and try something new. That takes a bit more balls, and companies that want to be more established and more consistent in their profits won’t take that chance.
Do you think that marketing has by and large helped, or hindered the image of games? If so, why?
Well, there’s a big question right there!
That’s my job.
Marketing – whether it helps or hinders? It helps and hinders in two ways. For gamers, they appreciate being wowed by the new special effects, by more attention put into [the marketing’. There’s always going to be haters who assume that it’s all about big guns and big explosions. It’s entertaining for one audience, but it’s fuel for the other’s argument. There’s always going to be this dichotomy of whether marketing is helping or hindering, and people are going to interpret it the way they want to.
How much material about a game’s themes, or plot, or content do you usually get before you’re given a job to do on a game?
Most of the time it works on a need-to-know basis. But when we really want to work on something and understand the full brand, a good marketing agency will insist on being briefed on the whole game and what the game represents and the general movement or not only the brand but the company as a whole is moving with this game. The customer will always [push] a need-to-know basis, and it’s the marketing agency’s job to extract as they can out of it to really produce something that fits well with the message.
I now that a lot of marketing works off this imaginary concept of the “generic” consumer. Trailers and marketing material are calculated to go to a specific audience. What is the image that they have, in your opinion, of this audience?
I would actually have to disagree with you on generic gamers – there aren’t. To simply classify gamers into one catgory is something for outsiders to do. Different gamers have different preferences and we design trailers for them accordingly. For puzzle game fans, we like putting in little easter eggs, intrigue, and mystery. For action fans, we like to put in lots of special effects. There’s not one group…It’s not on us to decide what the generic audience is – that’s for the publisher to do their market research…
I guess if you want to categorize gamers all together, they’re all very critical. They spend a lot of their time playing games. It’s a big part of their life. So if you want to slap together a template, it won’t work – they’re generally an intelligent bunch. If you don’t really perform and impress them, they’ll let you know.
What would you say would be your best example of collaboration in your own experience, your best work with a client?
We were actually nominated for the Best Broadcast award [at Game Connection] on a trailer we did for Ubisoft: the official Animus trailer for Assassin’s Creed III. While we didn’t have the craziest budget for it, what we did insist upon was good communication. Because we’re not far from Ubisoft – their studio is actually neighboring ours – we’re constantly in each other’s office brainstorming. The collective work is better than any one person.
It was original destined for a private screening at Comic-Con – because it leaked, it went on to be the intro video for the PSVita version.
How often do you get that experience where the material you create is incorporated directly into the game? And how do you feel when it happens?
That’s always a point of pride. When something like that goes beyond its expectations, it means we’ve done our job super-well. The publisher has felt the branding we created so well represents their image that yes, we want to incorporate this into our actual game… If we can understand our material like that, we’ve hit a home run.
Thank you very much, Mr. Ben-Or.