HEAD BLOG

The beautiful thing about working with video games is the sheer range of subjects you get to cover. One minute you are working on a sci-fi game and the next you are producing visuals for a cookery app. “Normal” agencies don’t get to flit around the product gamut as we do. It means that even though some companies see as as “specialist” others see the experience that we bring.

So when MBN Events came knocking we were pleased to put on our Sport Billy hat and begin producing the kind of exciting visuals that have helped sell games for UEFA, WWE, Race Pro and many other titles that in a normal world would take all the energies of top agencies.

Head First approach work in the same way, regardless of client size. We take a look at the consumer market in which such products rest and create imagery and ideas that measure up to the standard of quality expected whilst also standing out in terms of recognisable identity. Again, coming from the video game industry where every (for example) war game can look the same we have found that being distinctive can make all the difference.

For MBN we have begun producing high quality visuals to continue their already high quality approach for both print and video.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I swore to myself when I was initiated into the Cub Scouts that I would never, ‘pon my honour, ever make a pun as bad as that one. As with most things in life, however, promises are made to be broken. Circumstances change and what seemed like a good idea at the time now looks dated and out of step.

Enter 2K Games, a company we’ve had dealings with in the past and for whom we have nothing but love and affection. OK, you can sidestep the client loving if you like and skip to the part where we say they came to us to request a new perspective on their International website. The world of HD video was passing them by and the amazing visuals they had in their games wasn’t being shown to full effect.

Head First came up with a new look which evolved the great work done previously and which would enable 2K to showcase their games in line with modern technology. Times continue to change, of course, and we’re aware that we’ll soon be beaming the demo packs straight to the cerebral cortex.

But we’ve got an App for that.

In addition to the design work, something within Head First just doesn’t stop thinking and we have also put in place several neat sub-branding opportunities for use in subsequent development.

Working with the new breed of developer publisher has been an exciting challenge. In a world of digital downloads how are you going to make your product stand out? Do you confine your promotions solely to the online world or do you learn from companies such as Google and utilise the power of old media and the attention it still attracts?

At Head First we ask all of these questions and help shape the creative campaign to suit the product and the client. With The Mysteries of Little Riddle we have been lucky enough to bring our skills to this issue and create a series of images that are sales focussed.

And luckily there is still great fun to be had in creating real world objects.

I have read a bold claim.

An agency claimed that a piece of creative they were responsible for had led to an increase in sales.

It might be true.

But the claim came on the back of the information that sales rose after the ad was aired.

So was it the creative?

Or was it just the media buy?

How do we know where responsibility lies?

The problem with making a claim is that once made, it is open to question. A designer who claims their logo concept boosts sales has to do so with confidence that the rest of the activity isn’t also having an affect.

Regardless of this, however, is a deeper question: what does advertising do?

My feeling is that advertising doesn’t sell…

It creates the urge to buy.

There’s a big difference. I’ve had arguments as to the effectiveness of advertising. Friends not wrapped up in the world of advertising claim that an advert has no effect on them; that it doesn’t influence them. The fact that companies are spending billions each year to reach people like them has no effect on the argument. They just insist they aren’t influenced and that’s that. Then they go and buy a BMW.

Whilst there is little doubt that many companies waste huge amounts of money on ineffectual advertising, it’s certainly not true to say adverts have no effect. Even as a barrage of messages upon our collective consciousness they have a cumulative effect.

What matters to me is whether that effectiveness is selling or creating the urge to buy.

The difference may seem pedantic but it governs the way we approach the creation of advertising.

I’m interested in choice. Or the lack of.

Any regular reader of this blog who ISN’T paid to read my ramblings may have noticed this. Whether I’m talking about the rise of the supermarket own brand and the way in which it elbows out brands who have spent the better part of a century worming their way into our homes; or the iPad with a gloomy eye to a single entertainment gateway and the way we will all willingly walk through it as a direct consequence of our genetic tendency to gather in mobs, choice is something that is often, in my mind, off the menu.

It’s easy to see this effect in the shops we use. Amazon, iTunes, ebay – the giants have set up store not so much along our most popular bus routes and busiest retail spaces in the way M&S did, but right in front of our eyes. They are hard to avoid and the lazy majority (guilty) don’t even bother trying.

Less easy to see, perhaps, is the same effect in products.

As a company, Head First are hired to promote video games, books, films and other entertainment products (all of which, increasingly, are sharing the same digital and promotional spaces using many of the same techniques to make them more visible to the consumer, quick-eyed as she is). In ten years of business, we have shepherded a large number of these products through our creative process and, from the middle of the forest, it rarely feels as though we are repeating ourselves.

I say this not to brag of the way in which we find unique solutions to our projects but to highlight the range and flow of product; and it’s apparent diversity.

Yes. Apparent diversity.

On the face of things you only have to walk into Game to see a wide array of products. Game after game lines the shelving, a barrage of action shots vying for your attention. But split these down into genre and choice begins to lessen.

Advertising is about finding a compelling reason to buy that the consumer can latch onto. As products seek to compete with each other these reasons often become marginalised. It may be a slight improvement in taste, a tweak of image or a reduction in price but the obsession with becoming the next big thing in Genre A takes over and genuine innovation takes a backseat.

It’s inevitable. Risk costs money. It costs more money to launch a new IP than to issue a sequel. With films this risk is lessened by the inclusion of a Star. Bruce Willis may be starring in the same old action flick time after time but hey, it’s Bruce Willis and we like him. So that succeeds. Bring in an unknown star and the film better have something unique about it for advertisers to sell us the concept. Think back to The Matrix and yes, Keanu was a star but the concept was something new(ish). So the marketing looked fresh, taking its cues not from the genre (sci-fi) but from the concept. The stylistic approach entered the lexicon and today we see parodies in all forms of product lines (Money Supermarket being the one that most springs to mind).

Just asking yourself how often this happens provides the clue as to the extent of diversity within what we consume. Books are wonderful at providing cutting edge graphic design for certain genres but they also know when to piggy-back another style. Because book marketing understands what some other products don’t – that people like their choice in one flavour: limited. Movie marketers know this as well of course which is why we all fall for the same old poster with the goofy guy and the gorgeous girl when it comes to finding a simple movie which EVERYONE will like (but which nobody really does).

As someone who writes advertising, this apparent contradiction intrigues and challenges me. It demands that I be blunt in the face of a brief’s assumptions of what is the product’s unique selling point and prepared to find new ways of helping make a product noticeable.

A few nights ago I was reading a book to my son. This isn’t, in itself, unusual enough to write about but, after writing about how much I think the iPad will change the book buying market it did make me think more than usual about the process I was going through in reading the book.

Earlier that day I’d been discussing e-books with an author as we outlined plans to help him promote his first book. Creating eye-catching advertisements is a large part of what we do here at Head First and our experience in games has given us a pretty (I’ll resist saying unique) appropriate perspective in promoting certain types of products. As books increasingly vy for attention against games (which is intensifying in the face of the e-book) we all felt that our knowledge could be put to good use.

The upshot (after many preambles like that) is our discussion. We both agreed that e-books are here to stay but that print was where the real joy was.

As the wide format book opened in my hands that night I found myself enjoying its shape, weight and texture just as much as the marvellous writing. This, I thought, was what books were all about: the pleasure of the format and the joy of reading it outloud to someone too young to walk away. Every author desires a captive audience, every father no less so.

This, I felt, could never be lost. The amazing shapes (and sometimes sounds) built into the idea of a book are infinite. Wide books, tall books, flap books and pop-up books – all of these are part of teaching a child not so much to read but to feel; to engage in their tactile world. As enchanting as the words on the page are, as charming as the illustrations are, a book is so much more. How could an e-book ever threaten this?

They won’t. They will offer something different. As they mature, writers and artists will explore the format in the same way they have explored new printing process. New ideas will be born from the potential of e-books but the role of print will not disappear.

There are many migivings about the rise of digital books. Adjacent business models in games, music and even films offer glimpses of what could be around the corner and clues as to how to deal with the changes. Totalitarian regimes and corporate anti-trust cases should serve to remind us of the power and dangers of allowing a single entity to control a communication gateway and new threats will no doubt arise that must be dealt with from the perspective of what is beneficial to society rather than propitious for commerce.

We must never forget that a book isn’t solely the material from which it is made. The paper, the card, the vinyl or the silicon offers writers and artists a format to work in and explore but the ideas they invest in that format are altogether bigger.

A guy in the office owns a Blackberry.

He traded in his iPhone for a Blackberry. I have to remember that detail because it’s that which makes the least amount of sense.

I don’t understand the Blackberry. A tiny screen. A tiny keyboard. A confusing menu system and connectivity that is a pain to set up.

My colleague can’t give me an answer to explain his decision because I tend to shout at him when the topic rears its head.

I’m sure it has a future but deep down my feeling is that future will increasingly be shaped like an iPhone.

* * *

My wife does our food shopping. Each week she comes home angrier and angrier, telling me that yet another product range has been taken over by the Tesco own label brand. Where once she was loyal to a particular brand (remember when brands were simply “makes”?) now she is being forced into the arms of Mr Tesco.

She’s angry that Tesco create vast walls of a product which looks almost like the old, more established one.

The future is being shaped into a Tesco logo.

* * *

We are all guilty of wanting a simpler world. In the realm of the world-wide-web and even the wider world of email, we gravitate towards a simpler way of doing things. Often this means preferring to only buy our books from one place because we either see no value in personal service or else believe everybody is selling the same product anyway.

Last year a post by Seth Godin led Dave Trott to argue that the “perfect” social number of 150 (the number of meaningful relationships an individual can realistically maintain) could be extended to Twitter. I didn’t agree because I see Twitter as something to dip into rather than collect. But Seth’s précis of Dunbar’s Number is important for the way we develop socially on and off the web. As individuals and as groups we interact with only a small number of brands and as the web becomes bigger and bigger I believe, commercially at least, we search out fewer and fewer brands to interact with. These might shift as alliances are formed and broken or as new products come online but, by and large, we’ll continue to buy our books from Amazon over choosing the smaller bookshop; we’ll look to consolidate all our data in one area of the cloud; choose our clothes from just a small number of retailers and wait patiently for the single device which enables the vast majority of us to pursue our relatively simple pleasures.

Of course there are exceptions just as there are varied tastes there will always be a variety of stores and services. Just not as many as the global aspect of the Internet could allow for and not half as many as we might think.

There will be the Blackberry and there will be the iPhone and some may ask what the difference really is.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a big hit. I’d wager that it has high visibility in the general populace and that you’d be hard pressed to find a “gamer” who hadn’t heard of it – regardless of whether they would consider buying it or not.

The PR on this game has been extraordinary.

It was only whilst walking past the billboard that I wondered about the game’s advertising strategy. What is the big idea behind it? Does it, in fact, need one when it’s clearly going to sell (and has sold) millions?

It made me ask around and do a quick survey on what makes people want to buy the game and here is a selection of the comments I received back:

* because i love CoD

* I bought it to be a social animal as my friends list are all on it and I missed the boat on MW1

* I’ll almost certainly get it at the weekend when I know I’ll have the time to play it properly.

* nope can’t say I’ve heard of it.  seen the tv ads for some war games but couldn’t name them – look cool though.

* yes, it was in the free paper I read on the train the other day

Those comments come from a range of people (all men, incidentally) who are a mixed bunch of gamers, ex-gamers, very casual gamers and non-gamers. Not surprisingly the gamers had all heard of MW2 and all expressed a desire to own it. Some were keen to get it as quickly as possible (some had bought it on pre-order) and others, whilst keen, were happy to hold off the purchase until it suited them.

The casual and ex-gamers had registered the fuss and, at best, acknowledged its good looks. They were’t moved to buy it especially if that meant having to buy the console to go with it. For them, this wasn’t the game that would drag them into the joys of modern gaming.

So that made me even more curious. The game is fabulous. It’s selling by the bucketload. It’s being launched into a climate where interest in modern warfare is high and it has a budget behind it that brings video game marketing in line with film marketing.

That’s when I began to look at the advertising in a little more detail and found very little in the way of sophisticated communication or strategy. I felt the PR and so had my core sampling of casual gamers but the advertising was something else altogether.

It was, at best, a clear example of support strategy. It’s role, as far as I can tell, is to remind us that the game is out there and that it is big enough to warrant an outdoor spend. On TV the visuals are stunning – to the gamer who, as we know from my detailed research (ahem) were sold early on by the strength of the brand and the advance word generated by PR.

Activision won’t be grumbling over the sales of course. It made over $300 million in 24 hours (take THAT film industry) – who would grumble with that?

But I’m drawn back to the advertising because it could have done more. Actually, it could have done something. It talks to the initiated leaving the unintiated to stare at the image of a soldier. This could be for any war game. The cover art is lovely – moody and violent and beautifully realised by the design agency (or perhaps by Infinity Ward themselves).

But packaging is not advertising and this could have been a marvellous opportunity. There is no big idea, no added value to the advertising. Essentially it is a picture and a logo and why pay an agency for that?

And then all this leaves me wondering about something. If another publisher had pushed out a cheaper, similarly packaged game at the same time how would it have fared? Would it have benefitted from Modern Warfare’s generic advertising strategy?

Research conducted by EEDAR and highlighted by Games Industry Biz “shows” marketing plays more of a role in shifting product than reviews.

This stirred up a bit of a fuss. Nobody likes to believe marketing affects them. Least of all the journalists who hope their reviews carry weight.

So The Guardian came back with their view which was that by looking at the top selling games they had discovered a correlation between high sales and good reviews.

Both camps are correct. Marketing does drive sales and so do reviews.

And it all comes down to Dan Brown.

The way a marketing spend is decided is by sales projections. If a sales team thinks they can get high numbers of sales for a product then it will get a higher marketing spend.

Why do they think it will get high numbers of sales? Because they believe it’s a good game.

Now, what do you think happens with a good game?

It reviews well.

There’s a correlation there.

But correlation doesn’t always indicate causality.

When the publishers of Dan Brown’s latest book got together do you think they said “this is going to review brilliantly”? Did they (or even Mr Brown himself) believe for one minute that critics were going to gush over his literary style and elegant wordplay?

Doubtful.

But they knew that it had mass appeal because The DaVinci Code was a mass appeal hit because the marketing of that book concentrated on the controversial aspect of religion and conspiracy. Which we all love. The easy, child-like style of the book may have helped also.

What both articles could be interpreted as showing is the lack of quality marketing for titles which may not review well but which could have mass appeal. Or maybe it shows the lack of titles with true, Dan Brown mass appeal.

Agencies like to draw conclusions between what they do and the value it has to the client. We often use it to justify our existence. Or at least our involvement on a project.

Web and viral advertising make this easy because they come with metrics easily attached. The link between creative and clickthroughs is easy to ascertain. The link between clickthroughs and sales is less easy.

I just watched this viral movie. In some ways it is impressive. Certainly it has had a big budget behind it.

Now, forget about the special effects and whatever you might think of the script. Ask yourself what it is doing for the game. It has had a million views on YouTube. That’s an impressive number. Can’t argue with that. If I had a million people choosing to tune in to an ad I had written I wouldn’t be complaining.

So we have to look at what value it is bringing to the product. Is it helping sell more copies of the game? Is that one million figure a million unique viewers? Does it tell us the viewers were considering buying the game or went on to buy the game? If there was a rise in sales was the data separated out from other marketing activities running simultaneously?

To me, the film seems like a gift to existing users. I’d say that’s a pretty nice thing to do. No doubt the scriptwriter had fun fulfilling a live-action dream too.

All I’m seeing, however, is this quote:

Because of the length of the video, this live-action short makes the potential players and audience connect emotionally with the characters on the game, and that will probably make the chances of them buying the game higher.

And that makes me wary. The length of the video is enough to make potential players connect emotionally? It will “probably” increase purchase? Where’s the link between length and quality (that ought to get the spam bots in a frenzy)?

Of course, I’m looking at this from one side. From the side of someone reading a claim about the benefits of lengthy viral movies. From inside the information could change. It could well be that the sales were delivered and the ad paid for itself. It could be that the project was a longterm, brand building exercise designed to heighten awareness of the brand. It could be that I don’t know the full story. Certainly it is true that the game has achieved great pre-orders but whether that is because of this, it’s hard to know.

But as someone who is often asked to create ideas for this whole viral marketing movement I’m still left asking one thing and the answer isn’t clear:

Why?

UPDATE: Ogilvy.com just posted an interesting post which overlaps my cursory thinking on this (and does a better, more analytical job on an article I was going to write about the whole notion of measurement and what it is actually doing for marketeers).