Philipp Stelzer detailed what developers need to do to win new mobile gamers and explained Wooga’s promotional strategy for Agent Alice during his lecture at Casual Connect Europe 2015. “As an industry, we are really numbers-driven, but the majority of our work is based on creativity,” Phillipp says. “And that creativity is mostly pouring into the game design…but it’s also something that we should and can leverage for marketing.” For more on Wooga’s strategy, see the video below.
Philipp Stelzer has played games for as long as he can remember. He recalls days as a kid playing games sitting next to friends, each taking a turn when the other one died or failed to complete a mission within a certain time.
But it’s not necessarily games that make Philipp such a fan of the gaming industry. “The industry is a great place to work in at the moment,” he says. “Mobile games are driving the growth of mobile marketing. We are really good at inventing and optimising new analytics models, and we are exceptionally good at being the first ones to successfully monetise new platforms.”
Believing in it
As someone who has experience in marketing and economics, Philipp knows what he’s talking about. He received his Master of Economics from Zeppelin University and conducted his master’s thesis on dynamic pricing systems for virtual goods. He’s also worked in the music industry, which taught him a lot about traditional approaches to marketing.
Philipp notes that music labels are “perfect marketing machines,” covering multiple channels such as print, radio, TV, new media and guerilla marketing repetitively. “It’s definitely an industry to learn from when it comes to offline marketing.”
This knowledge and experience has come in handy in his role as the growth and business development manager at popular mobile games developer Wooga. In November 2013, the company kicked off their first non-performance TV ads for their game Jelly Splash.
While Philipp’s experience certainly helped with the campaign, due to the nature of TV advertising there was a sense that Wooga was throwing darts at the dartboard to see what worked. “For the first time we didn’t have a good way to track and optimise our marketing efforts. That was a strange moment.”
Eventually they were able to develop a simple tracking algorithm that proved effective — they were even able to measure some viral effects. Still, Philipp says, TV feels a lot more like a “you gotta believe in it” strategy that only makes sense for successful titles.
Thriving on Change
It’s challenges like these, along with ever-changing tasks and projects, that draw Philipp to his job. As part of the growth team at Wooga, he does everything possible to make their games successful before, during and after game launches — such as making sure all the necessary departments are running in sync with each other.
Philipp and his team are often testing out new strategies covering multiple aspects of marketing, analytics, and business development. His personal responsibilities include media deals, TV advertising, behavioral marketing and user research. “On some days I am required to take up multiple roles,” he says. “That can be challenging, but really it’s what makes this job so incredibly fun.”
Testing Early
Philipp notes that the games market is incredibly fragmented and experience varies among audiences. In order to understand their users and gauge the behavior of potential players, it’s important to test as early as possible — this means testing before they even go into development mode. During the prototyping phase they’ll talk to potential players and gather as much data as possible.
This helps him and others at Wooga define and understand their audience, which is the key to develop fun and meaningful games for players. Philipp has found that the most meaningful insights from testing are also the most negative ones. He recalls one such user test where they gave a game to 10 players and simply asked them to play as much as they liked within a week.
“Afterwards we asked them to share some stories about their experience,” he says. “Five out of the 10 came back and had only played about two minutes. They all had the same reason: They didn’t like the art style.”
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New Trends
Aside from testing results, Philipp also pays close attention to trends. One of the biggest trends he has noticed are casual players becoming more advanced while PC and console gamers integrate mobile games and devices into their daily lives.
Philipp believes that game developers will need to find a way to please both audiences with more sophisticated and increasingly complex game mechanics. In order to help achieve this at Wooga, the company is employing their Hit Filter approach to come up with a variety of different games.
He also believes there will be a “consolidation in performance marketing” for advertisers and saturation of the mobile marketing space that will increase marketing costs and push out smaller developers. But Philipp Stelzer is ready for all challenges, saying that he and Wooga will “continue learning and becoming better at what we are already good at.”
