Global Franchise Appeal
One of the world’s largest game publishers wanted to better understand evolving reception to their top-selling franchise, and, in particular, how to keep it relevant to a global audience.
Problem:
Brand slippage: all brands face it and must continue to innovate to stay “fresh.” The video game space is no different. In fact, given the “bleeding edge,” tech-savvy, multi-modal, content-drenched consumers that make up the core gaming audience, the challenge of keeping a brand relevant is even more pressing. Recently, our client needed help crafting a strategy to maximize appeal for a new game from this storied franchise.
Solution:
In preparation, we conducted research to identify the franchise’s core tenets – what makes it unique and is at the heart of why gamers gravitate to it year over year – while also pointing out where the brand needed to innovate to attract new players and keep current ones from defecting. We knew going in that while there would be “universal themes” attracting consumers around the world, every major market would likely present unique challenges and variations in consumer attitude. To tap these cultural nuances, we conducted deep qualitative across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, delving into brand perceptions, expectations and gauging reception to early marketing material and positioning strategies. In the end, we helped optimize brand positioning and overall marketing strategy in each region, catalyzing the brand and enabling our client to realize a highly successful product launch.