How to Make a Creative Agency Your Secret Weapon
Do you remember the extraordinary transformation of the Finnish studio Futureplay's game, Merge Garden, we talked about last year? From enduring a slump to notching up record growth and an entirely fresh look and feel. If you would like to know what made the difference - here is a quick answer: Futureplay’s collaboration with a creative agency.
Futureplay, the developer behind Merge Garden, was acquired by Plarium in August of 2021. Given that the acquisition was announced then, they were probably working on the deal between 6 to three months prior. As the game’s revenue declined, Futureplay nor Plarium didn’t abandon it but kept making drastic improvements that eventually got the game back on the growth track and above.
Mishka has Martin Mohr, the Chief Creative Officer at Bond, a brand design consultancy for all things new, spill the beans about the story of their collaboration with Futureplay and much, much more.
Tune in not to miss this super insightful podcast. Throughout the podcast, you will find numerous references to Bond's role in this transformation and dig deeper into the story behind this success story.
Why hire a creative agency?
A creative agency specialises in areas where, candidly, your business might not. They perceive your game or product in a holistic way, deconstruct it into its basic narrative, and then reconstruct it into something much more appealing.
Picture this: you've got grand plans to promote your game, develop your narrative, and reach new users, but something is just not working out. We hear you. Many businesses find themselves at this bottleneck, where the ability to conceive great ideas outstrips their ability to execute them.
Hiring an agency isn't just about perfecting your marketing or strengthening your game's branding. It's about creating harmony, building a bridge between your marketing efforts and the intrinsic value your product offers. It's also about turning the lens outwards, understanding how your marketing performs within the real world, and how it resonates with your audience out there. After all, they work daily with varied target audiences across different industries, observing societal cultures and trends to bring you the most relevant insights. Which simply means - they know.
The way they are operating, Bond is not the type of design agency that usually works with just marketing departments. They also work with product owners, founders, CEOs of the companies – all the relevant decision-makers of the company, meaning they go a step deeper, into the foundation of the brand, the company, product, and so forth.
The Collaborative Process & Timeline
Martin describes the phases of a typical project managed by a creative agency and how long it takes.
During the initial phases, taking roughly two or three months (for a big project), Bond consultants get a deep grasp of the product and the opportunities it offers while simultaneously handling any appearing misalignments.
Martin emphasises that the challenge isn't usually time constraints but rather obtaining interviews and engaging with the right stakeholders, making sure everyone sits down together. This crucial step ensures a thorough understanding of the project's requirements and goals. Maintaining an iterative approach, the team collaborates closely with clients through open communication channels like Slack, ensuring continuous feedback and alignment throughout the process.
Onward, the following phrase is then translating initial insights and findings into unique directions which they refer to as “simple ideas” that strategically and creatively bring opportunities to life through concepts, narratives and visuals. Mood boards and early design sketches are used to tune the tone or direction as it offers more flexibility in changing gears based on insights or client preferences. Martin mentions the importance of giving findings before rushing headlong into creative work, building a solid foundation for understanding and alignment.
Moving into a higher gear, the "sketchbook" phase is where the creative process truly begins for designers. Often proceeding from one of two concepts, each explored in much further detail and actual designs, character sketches and copywriting. Here companies have the chance to also consider freshening up their brand, such as logos and colours, bringing everything in line with the game's storyline.
When developing concepts, the Bond team takes a channel-agnostic approach that ensures ideas are versatile and adaptable on all levels, fitting “under the same umbrella”. Simplicity can accommodate different channels with ease.
And once a concept has been established, discussions centre around touchpoints and narrative alignment with the brand. This is the point where a project's viability starts to make itself clear.
Finally, now approximately four-six months into the project, the phase is reached where effective collaboration and stakeholder alignment yield tangible results: the focus shifts towards actualising the touchpoints. This could mean anything from designing the actual game world and characters, marketing production, animation, game branding and of course merchandise.
About the cost
Martin explains that while it's challenging to pinpoint an exact figure, Bond typically operates within the six-figure range for their services, often on the lower end of that spectrum for new collaborations. As projects progress, they usually transition to a fee-based model after the initial phase wraps up.
Reflecting on the initial investment required to engage with a company like Bond, Martin aptly points out,
“If you are a company that can already put, let's say, 20- 30k a day in your performance marketing, it's really not that crazy of an investment to start thinking about this. If there are ways that you can add a multiplier on top of your performance marketing, by simply doing that little hard step of thinking about what your brand is, what your story is, as a company.”
Conclusion
Martin emphasises the importance of quality in today's market, noting that "there's no room to not look perfect anymore”. And an increasingly crowded gaming market means there's no room for error either. With that in mind, he says, marketing in a crowded future means moving away from straight imitation and focusing on differentiation.
He warns against a strategy that leans too heavily on short-term performance marketing in efforts that end up advertising the entire category, rather than the individual brand in it, instead suggesting that companies meld brand building and storytelling with their marketing efforts, the latter of which has the power to entertain like nothing else. Contrary to common misconceptions, even casual games can benefit from narratives with depth.
A brand involves weaving a narrative that can resonate with the audience in a way that traditional marketing methods fail at.
Blend brand building with performance marketing and you have a harmonious synergy between both. This fusion of strategies gives companies the ability to deal meaningfully with the market while at the same time gaining a competitive advantage in it.
If you take Futureplay as an example they did exactly that, broke free of their performance plateau and increased downloads by 1000% and doubled player retention.
