CASE HISTORY AND SAMPLE CLIPS
Promoting B2B Gaming Tech
Emergent Technologies had been supplying development tools to game developers for several years, but new game engine competitors had recently captured the lion’s share of the lime light. While Emergent focused totally on developing technology for other studios, their competitors had made a single game and then sold the tools they used to develop that title. Because the two most worthy competitor each had a hit game, they were able to leverage the success of their individual game to promote the licensing of their technology.
Emergent tasked The Bohle Company with reestablishing its reputation in the market.
We developed several strategies:
• Reposition Emergent as a core technology for quickly developing any game. The competitors only had the tools for games in a single genre. Emergent made game technologies that could be used for multiple types of games, from FPS to MMO to arcade.
• Establish Emergent executives as visionaries on the broad subject of game development – able to comment on development trends impacting all types of titles.
• Emphasize in all materials that using Emergent tools minimizes risk — allowing developers to work quickly, eliminating speculative development and mistakes.
• Point out that Emergent has already demonstrated that the suite of tools work – using customers who had created commercially successful games on Gamebryo
Tactics:
• Brainstorm future development trends with company executives to pitch original industry stories with trade media
• Jump on breaking game development news stories and offer company executives for commentary
• Secure face-to-face meetings with media at GDC to demonstrate the capabilities of Lightspeed, a new upgrade product, taking the core Gamebryo technology to a new level
• Continue to work with customers to demonstrate the success of games built on the platform, but concentrate PR efforts to post launch stories after a title achieves success rather than announcing every new deal
• Establish relationships with industry analysts; generate positive reports
Results:
• Executive interviews and contributed pieces in game industry online and print media
• Dozens of pieces on new Gamebryo product launches in top trade targets including Game Developer Magazine, Develop, Gamsutra, Edge, GamesIndustry.biz, GameDev.net and GameDaily.
• Coverage of games being developed on Gamebryo in major game enthusiast media such as Joystiq, Kotaku, Destructoid and GamePro.
• Inclusion in every major game engine/tool round-up article in major industry trades
• Positive briefings in newsletters distributed by DFC Intelligence, Acacia and Wedbush Morgan analysts
