HEAD BLOG

We’ve been following the series of articles about cover art over at Kotaku very closely indeed. Here at Head First we understand that cover art is a vital part of the marketing mix. For some games it is the only form of advertising a game will get and so conveying the right degree of quality and content is essential.

It’s not, of course, the last word. The under-discussed back of box is an area that serves a vitaly important role in helping consumers decide whether or not the game is for them (and this goes for pretty much any related product subject to the whims of casual browsing – books, films especially).

If you’ve not read our ‘hilarious’ take on the process of buying games then you can catch up here.

Right. The laughs are dying down and it’s time to outline a few of the reasons why the back of box is so important.

It’s estimated that 40% of purchases are impulse. That’s a pretty big chunk of people deciding right there and then to buy a game. They could be gamers who have a vague idea of the sort of game they are looking for or they could be Ma and Pa, looking to buy a game because little Johnny has eaten his peas.

Now that’s a pretty diverse audience right there but let’s assume they have all missed your advertising campaign, or at least that it’s not the influencing factor. Price and packaging are key factors in this (showing how a proper sales strategy – something games don’t do that well – and cover art is important).

It’s the back of pack that is interesting because that can make a real difference here. Ma and Pa may well be looking for cover art that resembles what they’ve seen before so they will be drawn to “that sort of thing”. That means they will be picking up the box and taking a closer look. They need to be impressed and convinced that the game will be right.

The back of box can do this by being impressive and by being clear as to its message. Great visuals will give an idea of what the game will look like but how do you go about doing that? Is one big screenshot better than five smaller ones? One might be impressive but five smaller ones might give a better impression of the varied gameplay. Then again, five smaller screens might get lost in translation as the detail becomes too small to make out so maybe you opt for a montage of screens to make, in essence, a new piece of cover art derived completely from the game itself.

Or maybe you get brave and decide that your screenshots look pretty much the same as those of the competitor. That’s not an unreasonable stance to take. Nor is it anything to be ashamed of. The quality of games these days is remarkable. Having something “just” as good as the competitor isn’t bad, it’s “just as good”. And even if it is only marginally better – is that really noticeable in the screenshots or do the elements that make it better come across during your involvement?

In which instance you can see a strong case for doing something different on the back of box. Making an argument, or a claim – “Makes Modern Warfare 2 Look Like Jet Set Willy” you might opt for over a simpler image just to show that your visuals are amazing too.

There’s no correct route.

The decisions made when designing the back of box art depend on all the questions, all the intended audience data and the ultimate goal of the publisher.

Nothing says “I don’t really care” like an e-card. After their initial novelty veneer wore thin, the e-card became confined to businesses  who wanted to trumpet 1) that they can save money by donating to charity but really can’t be bothered 2) that they are now taking a low-carbon approach but really can’t be bothered or 3) that their MD received one from his son (who couldn’t be bothered) and who thinks it represents the future. Of not being bothered.

Just hours after installing the new super one hour photo developing machine, everbody’s grandmother went digital consigning vast towers of squeaky paper and “leather” bound photo albums to the warehouse of oddities last seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Suddenly we could all take as many rubbish photos as we liked without some sixteen year old slapping a sticker on our faces telling us to do better.

Websites such as Photobox (Flickr capitalised late on this) sprang up to turn those digital files back into “product” and find a use for all the paper we thought we’d saved.

There are, of course, lessons to be learned from the e-card and the sudden collapse of entire film-to-print industry. We clearly wanted to carry on taking photos and share them with family and friends. We also enjoyed the freedom to “get creative” with our work. Especially when it came to personalisation.

Which is exactly what Moonpig saw and capitalised on to great effect. From out of nowhere came a brand with no real world value. Moonpig just created a great product at the right price and it caught on.

It must have caught the stalwarts of the greeting card industry by surprise. Just as Kodak were caught out by the rapid take-up of digital, so were Hallmark and their heavyweight counterparts. To the outside observer they seemed unfazed by Moonpig’s success even though it was clear from the start that this was an idea which would grow and grow.

Unfazed or calm.

Business strategy is a difficult beast to pin down. Those of us who press our noses up against the windows of other businesses like to weigh in on the decisions made by marketers.

I’m no exception.

Often it’s a good exercise, a sort of what-would-I-do thought experiment that sharpens the mind. Or distracts from real work.

In the case of Moonpig, I’ve often wondered why the big boys didn’t jump all over them immediately. They have the resources to protect their business on and off-line so were they being slow and out of touch with the way the Internet was shaping business or did they have a much larger strategy at hand?

We’ll never truly know of course and perhaps it doesn’t even matter because what they have established looks pretty good. It will appeal to the “rest” of us who are slower to adopt new ideas. Those of us who waited for Boots to begin processing digital films again.

The gut reaction (from what I’ve heard) is that Hallmark were just slow to react, caught with their pants down. And I’d be happy to go along with that if I wasn’t regularly having to think different about what my own industry perceives as good and bad packaging.

Because I don’t think it’s that simple. And thinking like this makes me want to look at things differently.

I can see a good business case for Hallmark waiting. Their name and reputation wasn’t going to disappear overnight and so, if they were fazed by the Internet explosion, it didn’t need to matter too much. They could afford to wait. They could afford to let Moonpig take all the risk, spend all the money and get people used to the concept of ordering and personalising cards online. After all, it’s an approach which works well for Apple who often wait to see how people access new technologies before jumping in and “innovating”.

Hallmark are now advertising on TV. They are doing it in a very “Moonpig” sort of way but with the Hallmark brand. If they go the whole… hog… then they should tie in deals with Boots and use their stores to carry the message back out into the real world where its customer base still live and shop.

This is an extract from Digging by Seamus Heaney.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

The poem is a lovely one. It addresses the relationship between Heaney and his ancestors and the way in which Heaney has to find his own craft, knowing, as he does, that he has “no spade to follow men like them”.

Heaney’s skill is in words and he uses this poem to explore that skill and show respect for men like his father who bring food from the earth.

In 2010, I explained to a client, I want to do two things. Just two things.

I want to improve my writing and I want to grow potatoes.

That made me think of the poem which, in turn, made me think about finding your own path in life; digging your potato drills.

That way you end up producing the kind of work you’d want to eat.

Aol. is talking about becoming a content provider. It appears, on the surface, to be a sensible move. Indeed, as ISPs consolidate and Internet access becomes yet another of those services that have become devalued, entering the ‘freeconomy’ content inevitably becomes the first choice to attract consumers and, with them, the advertising dollar.

Yet the move has parallels with the opening of shopping centres up and down the country (and across the world). Seem strange? Bear with me.

As shopping districts turned into shopping arcades and malls (and now just supermarkets) we’ve seen consolidation of the kinds of shops available. Choice, it seems, is everywhere. Or so we are told. Yet as companies buy out chains of stores all we have is the choice of which store to enter. The contents of those stores is becoming increasingly similar. Just as we were told that we are all, more or less, one of only five or so different sizes, so too are we finding that really, a shirt is a shirt.

Choice disappears.

The debate is on regarding whether Yahoo! and Microsoft will form a credible alternative to Google. For me, there is no choice. It’s become a habit to type www.google.co.uk into my browser or use the built in search window. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s not a thing I even think about. It’s a matter of habit.

Choice disappears. All I want to do is find a webpage. Easily and quickly.

For information on a subject I will probably end up at one of the top searches and will find what I need there. I may look harder but it’s just a matter of working down the list.

For a shop, the same process unfolds.

Choice disappears.

And so to Aol. What content will they provide? Will it feed its content to other sites or is it really only talking about becoming a content portal, consolidating other people’s content?

Because that content is becoming subject to the whims of consolidation. Our choice of news seems to be getting narrower, our choice of opinions becoming polarised between Left and Right.

If it is to succeed, if Yahoo and Microsoft are to succeed, then they need to provide something radical. They need to think in terms of a paradigm shift of their respective business models.

Good creativity is full of risk. But such a direction seems to be in direct contradiction to the message of despair and cynicism that currently prevails. Steve Henry of HHCL questions the use of celebrities in advertising during a time of recession saying, whilst acknowledging the escapism value of such strategies, that they don’t represent the best way of talking to people. Rich people advertising cheap food – where’s the connection between brand and consumer there?

Celebrity based advertising (generally speaking) is just one of those fallback positions for Creatives. They are easy propositions which show conservatism in full swing. The reasoning seems to be that by shoe-horning Celebrity D into Brand A there is no risk, or at least a reduced risk. There is a degree of truth to that. Safe advertising done well can be effective, of course it can, and wild, risky ideas can fail miserably. I’m sure Gillette’s “star-studded” tour de force may well have sales to back up its strategy.

More often than not this form of advertising, whether it is stapling Richard Hammond to a supermarket trolley or forcing Ant and Dec into other people’s made-up lives, has to remain true to the basics of good advertising and use their celebrities for solid, persuasive reasons and not because they are flavour of the month or, worse still, flavour of the marketing exec’s better half.

I’m going to let you into a secret. It’s one of the best kept secrets in marketing. This may come as a shock. OK, here it is: the video game industry is a global business. It is worth more than movies and, well, the marketing people who promote each product under its banner aren’t playing. They know what they do isn’t playing, it’s business.

As a global business, the marketing side of video games must be targeted, strategic and fiscally responsible. It falls to other businesses, businesses such as Head First to promote and sell the products at a global level. If the product is big enough then the effort must rival that of any Hollywood blockbuster. This was true of Resident Evil 5, it was true of Guitar Hero and it was true of Modern Warfare 2. If you work in marketing then you could probably add another half dozen titles to that list from the Christmas period alone.

What constitutes ‘global’, however, varies from title to title. Each territory may have its own sub-strategy. Imagery may vary from country to country as local brand managers look to personalise the marketing and take into account local customs, local personalities or local trends. Sometimes this is the right way to go.

There are, of course, complications in this approach. The Internet has made this vast world of ours vastly smaller. When it comes to the release of media, many consumers are subjected to marketing from all four corners depending upon their browsing habits. Whilst many if the big magazine portals are canny enough to target content and advertising at a local level, things happen, stuff leaks and people share the high points and low points of ad campaigns.

This isn’t true just for video games of course, in fact it’s probably less true for video games. For movies, sites enjoy sharing the local marketing efforts as they look for the best creative across the world.

The Internet brings us all together and we can’t have one bad apple letting the side down. In many ways there is no ‘local’ any more.

When we approached MotoGP, a campaign slated for full bloom next year but which has already begun this year, we took the decision to think about what it means to market at a global level. We were used to delivering campaigns globally; many video game campaigns operate on a very centralised approach – create one key message, one set of key assets and then roll it out. Tweak locally where necessary. For MotoGP, however, this approach needed refining because of the nature of motor-sports.

Motor-sports aren’t as big a phenomenon in the UK or the US as they are in, say, Spain or Italy. It wasn’t a question of creating key assets and then tweaking locally by placing a key rider on the cover for some countries. The campaign needed to think a little cleverer than that. It had to look at where the real passion for the sport emanated from, where the real excitement was; and then it had to convey that to the rest of the world.

It is the same approach when tackling any modern, global brief. It’s not enough to fit vaguely into a set of brand values any more, allowing local marketing their own idiosyncracies. But nor is it acceptable to force a centralised message from one country on the rest of the world. The marketing has to be cleverer. It has to be grown-up.

In some ways, the video game business is still trapped in the body of a twelve year old. It still sometimes thinks and acts as a series of separate, unconnected businesses. Brands often start and then end with the product itself and that cannot be right for such a big, such a global business. In the years ahead that will probably change but for now, for product marketing making local global is the key. We need to go further and think deeper.

My friend, Gary, is the smartest guy in the world.

Seriously.

Eight years ago we were on our lunch break and walked into the local shopping centre. He’d eaten but had the urge to buy some food. He wanted biscuits.

So we walked up to Millie’s Cookies where he pulled out a double handful of the most random collection of coins you can imagine.

There was no way anyone could tell, at a glance, how much he had. He certainly didn’t know.

But he wanted some cookies.

So he handed the cash over to the poor woman at the counter and asked:

“What can I get for this?”

I wanted to disappear. At the time, it was embarrassing and funny at the same time. I thought he regressed about twenty years. The woman at the counter thought so too. She must have thought I was letting him making his first purchase.

But she kindly counted his money for him and handed over the single cookie and some change.

Millie’s cookies taste great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

Gary was pretty happy.

He’d made the most of his money. He could have bought ten packs of custard creams from Kwik Save but to him, that wasn’t value. That was just spending his money and then eating.

A cookie from Millie’s tastes great. They are expensive, but they taste great.

I work on advertising accounts of all sizes.

The big clients spend a lot on media and buy as much coverage as they can. Which is a lot of coverage.

The smaller clients spend a lot less on the same media and get a lot less coverage.

Why are they buying custard creams?

I can sort of understand the big clients wanting a lot of exposure. There are arguments on what that exposure will do for them but I can understand it.

But the smaller clients… well, would they buy a hundredth of an adshell and be lost next to the ad from the big client?

Why aren’t they buying something else entirely and making the rest of us look with envy at them?

I’ll always remember Gary’s cookie.

Recently, I’ve been sat back reading. Just putting my feet up on the table, a cup of coffee steaming beside me and all the time in the world to consider things like why water is wet and how many elephants David McKee could draw in two minutes.

Important stuff.

So it’s whilst all this change the world philosophicationising is going on that my eye fell across agency ads.

Agency ads – the job an agency hates. How do you sell yourself? There are so many great things about us, we tend to think, why stick to just the one? Why use the approach we take with clients? We could miss out on the element of our business that chimes with what they want.

We’d like to please everyone, on the off-chance that something will stick.

The result seems to be a mixed bag and I was a little surprised at how many agencies went big on boasting about the clients they work with.

Is this a persuasive argument to use an agency? It’s true that some clients do believe that because you have worked with client A then you’ll be perfect for their needs also.

Makes sense to a certain extent.

It shows experience and a level of service that will no doubt rub off into their product.

Seems appropriate, right?. The strategy is akin to hauling your portfolio around and hoping the client sees something that rings true with what they are looking for.

But thinking about it deeper it struck me as an odd strategy. Like someone who brags about their sexual conquests.

Which is risky, because what happens if someone walks past and says: “oh yes, I’ve slept with that person as well”. And then someone else coughs and says “umm… actually…”.

And so on.

Because really, for the most part. Well…

We all have.

It doesn’t make it any less special, but it does make your point of difference a little less different.

Whereas Head First… well we introduced them to our mums.

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about the death of print. Newspapers have been terrified by it and, in turns, avoid, deny and confront the possibility. Video games seem to be moving away from it, lured by the sultry promises of online advertising and smooth online deliveries through systems such as Steam. Apple have made digital delivery a reality with the App Store and we have all seen, and perhaps experienced, the ease with which new software can be obtained, bypassing the traditional bricks and mortar distribution channels.

There’s little point denying it or fighting it. The future of print and boxed product has changed radically. Read more…

A friend of mine had a leaky tap. Not the sort that threatens flood. Not the sort requiring of a finger in a hole. Just a steady drip drip drip.

The trouble was he was about to go away for the week and, well, that drip wasn’t about to dry up anytime soon.

But plumbers are expensive. Call out charges alone seem prohibitive.

So it’s either a steady drip for a week or a major drain on the salary.

This is what he did. Read more…