On iOS advertising copy

The standard phrase goes "You are what you eat." but I think you could easily change that to "You are what you study." One of the reasons I say this is because my majors were advertising and management at Uni and I desperately tried to run away from them with admin and teaching jobs. Yet, no matter where I went I could not escape analyzing management practices at work nor contemplating advertising copy whilst waiting for my wife in a shopping centre. It was as if my brain had an automatic sub-routine hardwired into it that would naturally kick in the moment a marketer or sales person started to engage in a meaningful discussion about what products I truly 'needed'.

Having been an advertising enthusiast and then an actually marketing / sales practitioner at my last job, I was sure that I had already been scared by the worst of advertising out there. Then I started browsing the app store on itunes to assess the competition. I was glad that I was sitting down at the time.

For this post, I'll list just four of the things that I found odd about the way products were marketed.

#1 in Finland, Zimbabwe and another country you may have never been to. 

Being #1 is a big thing and a great marketing tool. We've all seen ads on TV where they mention how this product has been huge in another market and therefore will be huge in yours. This is basic marketing by association and is a solid idea, the problem occurs when the association makes no sense. For example, an ad might say "#1 in America" when advertising in Australia and that's understandable, Australians listen to and like a lot of American music. Therefore when you say that, I might think "Oh, I'll probably like this then."

However, what if the same ad said "#1 in Casablanca." A disconnect happens. In fact, it might damage the product because the viewer starts to consciously process the comment. Firstly, they don't know a lot about Casablanca and they probably don't even know if they've listened to any music from there. Suddenly, you're asking them to take a risk. "I might not like Casablanca music" their mind might argue "I would waste my money. Perhaps I should try it first on youtube?"

Secondly, and even worse, they could become suspicious. "Why only Casablanca? Isn't it popular anywhere else? How big is Casablanca's music market?" They become aware that it's an advertising ploy, that you are trying to manipulate their decision. The best copy is never registered as advertising, it's absorbed and acted upon through impulse. You have probably lost a customer and worse, encouraged them to share how ridiculous your product is (without even trying it).

New great features.... Coming soon (On product release)!

If the previous one was bad (but based on a sound principal), this is just plain horrible. I'm not even sure what crosses their mind when they write these sorts of things. I assume their argument goes like this "People will know we're behind the product 100% and we will reward their purchase with additional content."

There are many implied and immediate problems with this, so I'll break it down piece by piece.

The product is not complete. - This is the biggest statement you are making. You released the product early because your budget ran out and / or your deadline occurred. If it sells well, then you can add additional functionality which should have been in there in the first place. This is quite demeaning because you are admitting that you made a mistake somewhere in development and expect the customer to be ignorant or gullible enough to help you fix it. Not a good start.

Does not reward early adopters - Early adopters are the ones who take the biggest risk. They spend their own money and time on an unknown product to see if it's any good. These customers are the ones that should be more rewarded than the late adopters. Yet, you're rewarding procrastinators. This secondary group of people will hear about the product from the adopters and be able to buy it for the same price but get even more functionality. They take less risk yet get additional benefits. In fact, they might even get the social reward of sharing something new with the early adopter because of a new game mode, decreasing the benefits an early adopter gains from the risk taken.

Encourages late purchases - There's a Dilbert strip which depicts a sales rep coming back from a meeting with a prominent vendor and telling Dilbert "I just told one of our vendors about all the great features our upgrade would have and they got really excited. Now they don't want to buy our current version, but the upgrade. How long it will take to get ready?", Dilbert replies "Two years." (Paraphrased)

Perhaps the time periods have changed but the issues are the same. What benefit can you gain from promoting a product that's even better than the one you have? Why would they want the current one? Worse, you've just told all your competitors what you think would make great additions to that type of game and they implement those in their games too. (Maybe even faster).

To bring the example down to earth, let's look at what would happen if we applied this logic to a physical retail product. Say we went to JB-Hi Fi and wanted to buy the new version of Office. It's been out for 2 months and you're quite excited about all the new features it has. When you get there, the helpful retailer starts discussing its great features but then adds "Well, it's good. But I've heard that in six months, they're going to release a premium edition. It's for the same price but also has database management software, a financial accounting program and instant voice recognition."

What would happen to sales of the current version? What do you think is happening to the sales of your current version? You've may have spent weeks on marketing your new version just to undermine the value of your product at the checkout.

The mile long read

This is the most common and although it's not the worst, it's still pretty bad as these things go. I believe the reason for this stems back to who studies advertising and writes copy for it. At Uni, I met a lot of story tellers, people who wanted to be writers but did an advertising major because it's difficult to achieve success as a published author.  (Yes, I was one of those too. Can't you tell from the size of these posts? :) ) For me, this was a huge issue at Uni. I would write so many words on the copy that you could barely see the poster. I truly believed that my copy was great and that by including all this information I was assisting the customer. They were well informed.

Fortunately, my lecturers took my notes and mutilated all the pretty words until there was nothing left except what the customer wanted to read. Eventually I learned (very slowly and painfully) that I had to shrink everything till it was easy to understand and quick to read. Then review, review, review. Then shrink again.

Now imagine if I hadn't had that experience but landed a writing gig at a small gaming / publishing company? Of course my job is going to include ad copy and press released but I'm still in explanation mode. I think features and value are the same thing and so type away quite happily believing that I'm doing the customer a favour.

Reality is vastly different. People are always busy and even if they're empirically not, they will tell you they are.  (How else do forums about games magically fill up when everyone's at work or school?) Plus, they only want the information they believe they need. Nothing else. So the idea is to be as short as humanly possible and for it to be as simple as possible. They don't want an essay, they want something that assists them.

On the iphone / ipod this is even more important because the screen is so small. A 100 words can feel like a trek through a 1,000 word review on a computer. It's also why Twitter is so popular. Short, immediate and powerful.

So there's no excuse in today's world. Yet the copy I read for some games on the store is long, tedious and over complicated. It tells you everything and I mean everything about the game. It tells you about its 63 features (even though people probably only want to know about the top 3 - 4) and how to play (despite it being explained during play) or sometimes embarks on a quest to tell you about how you'll help revolutionize the industry.

Let's use a metaphor. Imagine I told you everything about a movie. The story, the cast, the behind the scenes activities, the uniqueness of its feel and the emotions you should feel during key scenes. Why would you see the movie? More importantly, I've just stripped away all your ability to 'self discover' these things. So there's no mystery left when watching said movie. Nothing to find for yourself. I've actually removed some of the experiences you can obtain from the movie.

They don't do it for movies, music or art. Don't do it for your games.

Today's final - Support local independent game developers


I saw this a few days ago and then had a 'grumpy ad man session' in which I ranted to everyone within earshot (my cat) about how dumb this is. This is not a feature or benefit. It may be a selling point but only to those who actively and aggressively do not purchase mainstream titles but prefer their titles from smaller and more independent companies. That market, however, is normally quite small.

For this section I'm going to assume that you would like your game to sell well and have no (real) intention of staying a small developer over the long term. When you write those words, you are writing them to try and increase sales for your game by appealing to the positive cultural value of 'helping the little guy'. Question: If you do achieve a strong commercial success, will you still care about these supporters? Think about it because your brand (and the perception the community at large has of it) can hinge around what you do after achieving success.

Anyways, one of the problems with this approach is that it takes away from your game. You're putting the emphasis on 'helping independent developers' as the reason to buy the game instead of 'its an incredible experience and you'll love it!'. Say someone purchases your game because of this reason, would they say: "Oh, this game is incredible?" or "It's pretty good for an independent developer."

You see the difference? One statement says that it's good, period. The other states, it's automatically not as good as a published company. If that mindset starts to seep in, you can never get rid of it. Your games (no matter how good they are) will always be second class in the customer's mind. They are buying them to 'do you a favour' instead of buying them because 'they want to'.

When money gets tight or time limited, your games will end up being ignored simply because they believe that they've 'helped you enough'. Also, consumer's can start to believe that they should have control over your company. After all, you exist only because of them (true) and their generosity (not true). Make what I want / charge what I want or I will stop supporting you.

No matter how big or small you are, we're all competing on the same playing field as much larger / smaller companies. Your game has to be equal or better than what is on the market. Saying "I've only got 1 programmer and two cats, that's why it looks suspicious." is not an answer consumers will wear (yes, even for free games).
-----

Well, those are four of my pet gripes about ad copy on the iOS store. I'll probably have more in the future as Ahasai Designs continues and I'll let you know what they are. But from one marketer to another, see you next ad break!

徒羅藩

P.S: You can follow us on Twitter @AhasaiDesigns

Enduring the bug infestation

When it comes to small companies, (even ones you sort of partially own), I'm never sure if I love or hate them. Firstly, there's the complete lack of ignorance you have when it comes to the finances. You know the finances, you know much money is in the coffers, you know when you're the red lights are flashing and it's 'give me sales or give me centrelink' time. I always imagine it must be nice to work for a large company where all you do is work until one day, BAM, you're redundant because there's no money left. Total ignorance. No constant fear for this month's salary, just raw expectation. 

Having worked in three small companies now, I've also noticed one other consistent theme, you get to do everything. Everything. A word than encompasses everything you previously thought of and then even more. Designing new games? Check. Understanding programming? Check. Sales? Check. Social marketing? Check. Making websites, trailers, bug testing? Of course. 

Which brings me to this post. Bug testing. How I loathe thee so. Having worked on basic database projects for school and University, I knew that games would not work as well as expected when they were reviewed, but, I never imagined they could be such abominations. I'll never forget the first demo level I saw with place holders. Pink placeholders. I almost curled up and cried for a day. This was not the spectacularly funny and hilarious images that I imagined. They were pink! And the game crashed! Regularly. In fact, it felt that you only broke it when you played it. Best to just stare and enjoy the loading screen. 

Overtime though, that became the easy part. Bugs were clearly obvious because it was 'X should do Y but does Z and T', gameplay balance became the new thing. How do you know what's fair? 15% faster? 20% faster? Should the save points be closer? Further? Levels longer? Shorter? Is it too difficult or am I just mediocre? Does it need to run in real time? Game time? Relative time? Isn't time and space the same thing?

Plus the infamous programmer's question 'tell me exactly what you were doing'. Exactly? What do you mean exactly? I was sipping a caffeinated beverage and playing the game when it crashed. I was playing it as you, the programmer, intended; with two hands, three toes and a nose! The thing, on the other thing did not show up. 

Yet it doesn't end there, oh no. Once they fix the bug, the send you the game again and ask you to rinse and repeat. To do it over and over again. Until you've seen the same section of a level three hundred times that you notice if they move anything by a pixel. And then you start to hate that pixel movement because the game now feels as if you're playing an entirely different experience. Your brain starts suggesting that they should move it back, except, maybe they did it for the customers? Surely it wasn't a random pixel movement? There must be some logic behind it? Why else would they put you through this pain? Don't they understand how you feel about that pixel?

*Cough* *Cough* 

Anyways, that's one of the good and bad things about working for a small company. I've never play tested before (or used Twitter for that matter) and if I just 'lucked out' and started working for a larger game company, I might never have. I would have no comprehension of what it takes to play test and the frustrations that goes along with the job. So, I gain an enormously diversified set of skills that can be applied almost anywhere, on the downside, I have to be prepared to do anything. One time I had to sell trips to China for a previous company with zero advertising dollars because, y'know, it had become my job. Great for the resume (eventually), possibly hazardous to my short term health. 

Oh, and about that big company thing. I worked for one of those. A year and a half later it went bankrupt. Good times. Good times. 

徒羅藩

P.S: We went to Freeplay last week. My boss, 海奴陸, will have more details later on this week. 

The joys of startup - Part 1

I was talking with a friend of ours in the Australian gaming industry and we got talking about game design / production. During the conversation he described a popular iphone game and it's enormous success despite the fact that it had only taken two weeks from idea to completion. As this appealed to me, I made a couple of comments about the idea being repeatable. Almost as soon as it came out of my mouth,  I received a strong reprimand, "This is very uncommon. It just does not happen like that." Then he took a drink of his beer and we continued on.

Afterwards, I mentally filed it under the category of 'naive optimism' along with other such classics as 'I'll just finish this level and go to bed' and 'I'll study four hours of Japanese today'. Yet as the weeks went by from that discussion my mind kept saying, Why can't you?. What's wrong with a two week development cycle?

Well, there's a lot wrong with it. Firstly, the odds of the game being very good are low. Secondly, it's a rush job. If you're putting the emphasis on time instead of quality then it's doomed to have a dozen or so corners cut. Secondly, well, it's not what the experts suggest. Yet, I still couldn't get over it. I kept thinking of the games on the mobile platform and the value ratio of gameplay to customer.

This part got my marketing mind working. I started looking at really popular games that were on the 25th version and thought about what made them popular before they had 3000 levels. About what a consumer would want from an experience for a $.99. I started thinking about my wife and how she used games.

Here was a woman who completed the Angry Birds demo three times without prompting but played the full Angry Birds for 10 minutes before never wanting to play it again. This led to me contemplating about how I even found the number of  Angry Birds' levels to be too much. How I enjoyed the sensation of 'completion' to be more satisfying than 'more of the same'. How I wanted to experience many things (especially only for a dollar) and how too many levels was, literally, removing the completion of the game experience from me and also blocking my ability to purchase more titles because I haven't 'finished' Angry Birds yet.

Then my mind spun to more traditional mediums such as Japanese serial manga (One Piece for example) and on-line comics. Japanese serial manga is addictive and I've read Slam Dunk probably four times from vol. 1 to vol. 31 but stopped reading Naruto because it got too much. Too many comics, too much to read. I wanted to move on to a new experience but was not satisfied with my last one. Yet, the idea of continuing the story to infinity because it had a strong fan base was commercially sound.

Were these companies (and authors) creating endless sequels because they benefited the reader or because they benefited the publishing company? Who was the main beneficiary of the 'endless story / game'?

With these experiences in mind, I started to contemplate about games again. $.99. A can of coke in Australia goes for more than that. ($1.20 at the best). So, were people looking for the game with more and more features or were they looking for something that gave them value for $.99? I kept coming back to the marketing concept of value for money. It's not about getting the 'best' or the 'most', it's about obtaining something that represents the 'value' of $.99 to the person purchasing it.

So, I opened my notebook and started writing about what could be worth $1.00 value. If an in-game hat could be worth that much money then perhaps a smaller and more complete experience could. If it wasn't about the length of time the game could be played but rather the overall perceived value of the 'package' then perhaps, just, perhaps 1 - 2 week development cycles could achieved.

With this powerful inspiration, I decided to ask my boss permission to think up five ideas that could be done in a week. He kindly agreed to this ridiculous notion and I was super amped. I had a whole day to come up with five ideas for games that could be developed in a fortnight project cycle. The only thing needed now was actual game ideas.

How hard, I thought, could that be?