How B2B marketers can harness the power of games 🎮

The global games market currently is worth a whopping 177.8 billion pounds. 🤯

That trumps the music and film industry put together. 

So, as marketers, how can use this to our advantage? 

We chat with Cari Kirby, Head of Marketing at Peek and Poke, a BAFTA-nominated branded games studio. Their mission is to help brands of all shapes and sizes harness the power of games in their marketing. Cari's job is to increase people's awareness of branded games and show them how easy it can be to use them to engage and entertain their audience. 

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why marketers should be paying attention to the games industry 
• How gaming can increase brand awarness, lead generation and data capture 
• Some key things you should consider before delivering into the world of games within your marketing. 

Interviewer: Amy Burchill 

Guest speaker: Cari Kirby from Peek and Poke 

Podcast produced by Let’s Talk Video Production: 

Transcript

Hello and a warm welcome to the Big Bright Podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about marketing, design, tech, company culture and everything in between. I'm Amy, the marketing executive here at Bright and today I'm welcoming the lovely Cari Kirby onto the show. Cari is the Head of Marketing at Peek and Poke, a BAFTA-nominated game studio that creates branded games for businesses. Their mission is to help brands of all shapes and sizes harness the power of games in their marketing. Car's job is to increase people's awareness of branded games, and specifically show them how easy it can be to use them to engage and entertain their audience. So, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about. Cari, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm really pleased that you're here with us. To begin, could you could tell us a little bit more about Peek and Poke and what your mission is, and where it all started?

Yeah, of course, well, like you just mentioned in that lovely introduction, Peek and Poke essentially make branded games for brands. And the idea behind that is, you know, there are lots of people talking about gamification and using games in marketing now. But lots of people are worried that actually, it's a very complicated process and that it can take a long time, and it can cost a lot of money. And in the past, that was definitely the case. But now as technology has developed and moved on, we have a range of ready-to-go games that we have invested in the development of and we have made them great games to play. So brands can very simply customise over the top of it and make them their own in that regard. So yeah, that's what we're trying to do just to make it a little bit easier for brands to come into the game space and try something without too much investment.

I guess it brings a little bit of fun into marketing as well.You mentioned gamification. Can you talk a little bit more about that word? I hear it quite often, I'm never really sure what it means.

This is atually one of the issues that we come up against as well, because what we do is slightly different to gamification. So gamification, in its broadest sense, is using mechanics from standard typical games in a non-gaming context. For example, in a business setting - LinkedIn do it - lots of social media kind platforms do it, where you have a progress bar, you complete a task, and you get a badge.

So all of those little things are gamification mechanics, whereas what we do are stand alone branded games, so you're actually having a really nice, full game experience. They're not like Playstation or Xbox games, but they're meant for marketing. So they have to be kind of quick and fun to play. But they're just a little bit more than the snippets that you get within gamification.

Okay, that makes sense. You see a lot of that in SaaS products as well, don't you? You see like progress bars and all that kind of thing. So let's talk a little bit about games and why they're so important. Can you tell us a little bit about the psychology?

Yeah, of course. Well, I mean, we've been playing games as humans for a really long time. And in the 70s, video games became a thing It's how we learn. It's how we have fun. It's how we entertain ourselves. When I do presentations, I often show the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. There's lots of the elements that we get from playing games that fall into those top categories of need. So that's things like being part of a community and getting a sense of achievement, all of those things you can get from playing really good games. And that's because they fire off chemical reactions in our brains that make us want to go again. They make us feel good. And that's why we keep on coming back to playing games in whatever respect that is. And obviously, in the 70s, we had video games, which has kind of grown and grown. Then we get into 90s and the early 2000s when Apple launched their smartphone. And now everybody has a device in their pocket that they can play games on. So the demographics of who is playing games has had an exponential growth is humans now, so it's really no surprise that we're talking about it on a podcast now, about how branded games are coming into marketing.

Let's talk about games in the commercial space. Where do they come into it?

Just referencing the answer to the last question about how games can kind of fire off these feel good chemical reactions in our brains, as marketeers we want our audience to feel something so that they do something, right? That's essentially what it boils down to. And again, games are a great way for harnessing those emotional connections between a brand and an audience.

There are so many ways to communicate with an audience now. And as a consumer of things, we are bombarded with messages left, right and centre. So if a brand or a company can find a way to cut through that noise, that's what we're all looking for. And games are a really good way to do that. Because it's something different, its entertainment. It's not an interruption. You're actually putting something in front of your audience that they actually really want to do. They want to play the game, because it's fun.

Yeah, I've been playing a couple of the games that you've released for your brand partners. They're very addictive. I can vouch that they definitely work! As marketers, why should we be paying attention to games?

The global games market now is worth 177.8 billion pounds. That is more than the music industry and the movies industry put together. It's a huge, huge industry. And it's actually projected to be over 200 billion by 2023. And I don't know if you've heard, but Netflix are launching  their own gaming division. And so are Amazon, so everybody is wanting a piece of this pie.

What's that going to look like?

Well they'redoing their own platform so that they can release their own games alongside their programmes. Stranger Things is a good example. A little game will rub alongside the show and it'll all be part of the package. So you can see how games are a standard parts of the entertainment package now for sure. Brands have been getting involved with games for a really long time. It's not a new thing. I remember, you know, having a CD ROM with five minigames off the pack of Kellogg's Cocopops packet. It's, been a thing for a long time. But I think now, as we said earlier, with people having lots of different devices and having a computer in their pocket, it's just more and more accessible. What's been really nice, I think, over the lockdown period, and over this pandemic that more brands have been utilising games as a way to connect with their audience. So Louis Vuitton did something in Animal Crossing, lots of brands are kind of putting sponsorship in front of gaming audiences as well. So yeah, it's not new, and it's just gonna continue to grow for sure.

Well, after the figures you just gave us there, it makes sense. Let's go back to Peek and Poke and what you guys do. What are some of the pain points that your clients have when they come to you? And how do the games help them fix that?

There's a few that come up quite a lot. And often we get people say "yes, okay, we get it games are fantastic. But we don't know the process, we just don't know how to begin this. It's something that we haven't done before." And it's always a risk, especially in a B2B setting, it's a risk to do something different and do something new. That's why we have created the white label stuff. If you like the things that are ready-to-go that brands can very simply add a layer of their branding over the top, it just makes it a really cost effective way to utilise games.

There are also loads of use cases for games. Lots of people want to reengage a stagnant audience. For example, you have a a huge marketing list that don't engage with you very often, throwing a game in front of them with a competition to win something can really help bring those back. Lead generation, for example, at a trade show, that's a great way to stand out in a sea of stands who are all doing the same. Have a little game on your stand, invite people to come and play. There's lots of different use cases and the ways that games can help with those pain points.

Do you have any client use cases you can talk to us about? What are some of the best projects you've worked on? What are some of the best use of your games that you've seen out there?

There's one that's live at the minute which is being used by a B2B agency called Sleeping Giant Media. They have run one of the best game campaigns that I have seen. And this is something that we always say to clients - while we can deliver a great piece engaging content, you still need to give it the push that it deserves. It's not a magic marketing bullet that you put a game on your website and then throw this in and throngs of gamers come and play it.
But at the same, with everything, you have to give it a mix of promotional push. So Sleeping Giant Media have done this brilliantly. They utilise one of our match three games. It's a little bit like Candy Crush, and they branded it all to their colours and put their logos within it. But they've run a campaign, which is 10 weeks long, which we were a bit worried about to start with.

That's a really long campaign, a there is the worry that you might get all of your audience at the beginning, and then nobody's going to play it at the end. But they've really thought about how they've developed the prizes for it. So they're giving out a weekly prize, which means people are coming back over and over again. The prizes are fantastic. They've got things like Crystal Maze experiences, Alton Towers, £50 voucher for Amazon, or £50 for blue box, all of that kind of stuff. But they've put a really nice content strategy around it. So they've made some fantastic videos, they really piggybacked off the squid game thing too. They've done little cards with a QR code on it, and just kind of dropping them in lots of different random places so that people see these and kind of like, "Ooh, you want to play a game", and then it takes them through to their game. And it's worked really well for them. They've been going live every Friday on LinkedIn to announce their winners as well. So it's really engaging people throughout the game campaign period. And their results have been fantastic.

What were their goals when they came to you? Was it about brand awareness? Was it about lead generation or a mixture of the two? And are they seeing good results? Say I'm playing the game, what do they want me to do at the end of it?

It's a mixture of both of those things. Brand awareness and lead gen were their two main priorities, and they're definitely seeing the results in that. So 60% of the players that were playing their game were new contacts to them, which is phenomenal. And they've also seen some really nice stats on LinkedIn as well, because that's been one of the big channels. For them as a B2B agency, they were telling me the other day that they're 90% up on impressions and 100%, up on new followers since launching the game in 30 days. So it's really boosted their awareness. And then obviously, there's the process of the journey for the customers. You play the game and then you put your details in at the end to go on the leaderboard and get entered into free prize draw. So there's a bit of data capture there as well.

So people have obviously spent more time at home over the past 18 months, have you seen a noticeable growth in branded games?

In general, gaming has increased. I's been one of those things that I've seen a huge uplift. Worldwide gaming increased by 150%. And we're now up to like 2.9 billion gamers, and the UK specifically grew by 50%. So it definitely did have a massive increase. And that, again, is down to how games make us feel and how we can connect to each other when we're isolated. Having these online, huge platform games like Fortnight and Animal Crossing are really just lovely ways to keep connected and to keep talking to people when we're on our own. So yeah, absolutely, it did see a huge increase during those difficult months. And in terms of branded games as well, we have a client called Beasley who are an insurance broker. And normally they do one game a year and have done for the last 10 years for Christmas, just to say thanks to their audience for their support. But during lockdown, they actually created three games as a way to keep on talking to their audience and to give them a bit of fun while everybody was working from home.

Would you say this is quite a good way to set yourself apart from the competition? You mentioned an insurance broker which I imagine is not always the most fun and interesting industry to be in.

Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we come up against all the time. People say, "It's a very dry industry. Our audience are not wanting to play games. It's not going to work for us." But, in fact, we know that so many people are playing games, whether you're marketing to a B2C audience or a B2B audience. We're all human. We all love to play. So yeah, it's definitely a way to set yourself apart and to kind of cut through the noise.

For any of our listeners who are interested in delving into the world of branded games, where should they start? And what sort of things should they be thinking about?

it's the same with all kind of marketing tactics. Always start by thinking about the why. Why do you want to do this and what do you want to get out of it? Because then that can affect what game you go for and what route you go down, what extra functionality you need that from an out of the box game. So yes, that's the first thing that we do if somebody comes to us.

We ask: why do you want to game? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to get out of it? Is it lead generation? Is it brand awareness? Is it data capture? Who is your audience, who are you targeting? What age group they're in, what do they like doing? And then we'll be able to find the best game to match your audience as well. And see, like I said if you need any additional kind of functionality.

We work with a lot of retailers who want to have a voucher code functionality, for example. So you play the game and if you collect something within the game that might trigger an email with a code and you come to the store, and then you get your discount or something like that. And the same goes for the hospitality industry. For example, they want to remove people from a virtual setting and bring them to a brick and mortar place. So that's something that games can do as well.

Would you always recommend that there should be a prize?

It does help to have a prize because at the end of the day, they're marketing tools. And if you're asking people for data, it's nice to be able to give them something. It's like an additional motivator to play. So if you were creating a game for the first time, I would always say definitely try to include a prize in there. But the more games you do, people start to get used to them, and they start to really enjoy seeing them come in. Beasley doesn't have prizes.

 Sometimes they do a charity donation, sometimes they just do them for fun. And I think the more you do, the more your audience come to expect them. And in which case, the game is the prize.

More often than not, we would say to try and do a little free prize draw. Never do a top spot. We always say this. It's very easy to think about games and their competitive nature. So if you're offering a prize, you want to give the first person on the leaderboard the prize, right? However, because these are online games, they're open. And what you might find is somebody who isn't as good as the game than the person at the top, they might just go, "oh, well, I'm never gonna hit that score, so I won't bother." And then that gives a negative feel to the whole thing, which don't want. The whole reason for doing it is to have this positive and fun experience. So you want to make it as accessible to everybody as possible. Some people do try and cheat the system to get to the top spot. So it just makes it a bit fairer for everybody, really. So we would always say, do a free prize draw.

So for a marketer who's listened to this and is quite interested, and they want to get the management buy in or senior stakeholder buy in? Is there anything you can recommend to help with swaying the decision?

Yeah, it is a challenge, isn't it? Especially if you haven't done games before, it's a big risk for some people. So I would say go armed with the industry stats, they're very compelling. If there's anybody in your industry who are creating games, and they probably will, try to get to the heart of what they did and how it worked for them because people like to see that it's a safe thing. And actually, it will work.

The way that we do things, it doesn't cost that much money. Especially if you wanted to do something around Christmas time, for example, that's a really good way to test it. Because you don't really have to do anything to the game, the game is already Christmas-ified. All you have to do is add a logo to it, and then you can share it and see what happens. And that's a really cost-effective way to test a game with your market.

You mentioned earlier about how you need to give it a good push from your end as well. What are some of the best ways to promote the games?

A good starting point would be to obviously send to your mailing lists, that's always a good starting point. But just to go hand in hand with your social, you could push some kind of PPC behind it as well. If you're trying to capture a new audience, and then some remarketing as well, that's always really nice. So if somebody has come to your site, or somebody has gone to a particular page, and they're not doing what you wanted them to, you could then do some re-engagement. So that works really nicely.

Do you think there's a possibility of there ever being game fatigue? Are we going to see more and more brands creating these brand new games? Are we just gonna just get a bit bored of them?

I'd love to see a point where we have so much branded games out there that we get bored of them. That would be amazing. But I don't actually think that would happen, because what is important for us and what we're always trying to do is to innovate and to bring new games out. There are so many games out there. This is why the games industry is growing. There are new games all the time, so there are always opportunities to do something slightly differently and to look slightly different. So yeah, I think that the industry and branded games will keep on innovating will keep on changing.

Before we wrap up, I wanted to find out from you what your favourite game was of all time?

Well, I've always been a Nintendo girl. I was on the Game Boy back in the 80s and I just love that ethos. I love how family-friendly their games are. And I have two kids now. So we're always playing Mario Kart and Mario Odyssey. So anything Mario has got my vote, but I do love a bit of Animal Crossing as well. It's so gentle. It's what I really love about it. Having two boys who are always on Fortnight and shooting guns, I'm like "come and play Animal Crossing" and they love it too.

If people wanted to get in touch with you, or get in touch with Peek and Poke, could you direct them?

Yeah, of course, please come along and have a look at Peekandpoke.com. There are so many games there. All of our game engines have demos to play. There's loads of case studies on there too. So yeah, come and play some games in the name of research.

Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thanks for having me!

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