Hades. Marketing. The hell of repetition. And the same trend for 2021
End of year is a season of posts about trends for 2021, with marketing it would not be different and I am sure you will find a lot of interesting material out there. But this year I would like to bring a slightly different approach to remembering a trend that should never go out of fashion for all professionals and that was reinforced this year due to a specific game and its particularities. Hades is an independent game developed and published by Supergiant Games that was nominated for the main Game of the Year category at The Game Awards. Those who have followed the industry for some time, do not care much about these awards, not least because there are many publications and websites that have their own distinctions, where Hades has even been considered the game of the year in many of them, but the Game Awards for being, let’s say, the biggest budget to invest in marketing and transmission, ends up reaching an aura of more important for the unsuspecting, the Oscar of games, these things.
Well, regardless of the discussion, whether you are a gamer or not, you must have realized the importance of an independent game being nominated for the most relevant category of this award. So I would like to bring with this post, how Hades brought insights that impacted personal and professional aspects, and it is about the latter that I want to share a little with you.
A brief parenthesis about Hades (and repetitions)
In the film Storm of the Century, 1999, written for TV by Stephen King, the main antagonist Andre Linoge defines what hell is quite simply: “hell is repetition”. This could not define this game better. To escape his father Hades’ house, the protagonist Zagreus must cross the most famous regions of mythological hell. Each room a wave of enemies to prevent its success. Here it is important to mention about the game’s roguelite/roguelike genre. Every time you fail, you’ll have to go through all the rooms again, but the path is never the same. Choices, enemies, placements and rewards undergo minor changes making each attempt (or run in the vocabulary most appropriate for the game) almost unique.
It may seem quite tedious, but it is through the various runs that the story and its relationship with other characters develop by unlocking new nuances of their personalities, the protagonist’s past and their relationships with the gods. In other words, the game is self-conscious about repetitions, they are part of the narrative’s development. There is another element that will always make you think: “ok, just one more time”. It’s evolution. Every time you fail, you never leave empty-handed. In addition to becoming more and more familiar with the pattern of enemies and the operation of traps, you also always receive some currency to acquire benefits, such as the right to die more than once during a run and other aids that will be very important until finally, you manage to escape for the first time.
Ok … and marketing with that?
Well, first there is a provocation in our consultancy that I like a lot. We have commented to some customers that digital marketing does not exist, and that they just need to learn how to adapt to their consumer’s digital behavior. I like it because I see it as a focus that I can give to my constant learning about marketing. Understand, sometimes being up to date on marketing can be incredibly frustrating. It is difficult to keep up with the evolution of the theme in so many sectors of this field of study and the managing partners of our company, which seem to be true online hubs for news about marketing, seem completely intangible. So, if I were to have a focus to monitor and specialize more and more, without a doubt, it would be about user behavior.
This whole bias of understanding how the pattern of consumer behavior changes according to certain situations and devices is fascinating, even because I am also a user. This being my marketing focal point, it is interesting to put into practice everything you learn about, hypotheses and combinations between different strategies. The coolest thing is that everything can be tested to understand what can and cannot work.
If I apply a solution that results in more sales for a company, it is because I brought a solution that is interesting to the consumer. But what makes him buy more? If I change the position or color of a call to action will he buy more? And if I buy more, was it because of this change? And if this is working now, will it work forever? Perform tests, and tests, and tests, and tests and more tests to never make a decision based on guesswork. And where did the repetition really bring me something positive?
Test. Fail. Test again. Repeat. You have already achieved success
Now, if the game Hades provided such cool insights for me, the act of repetition must be a natural part of a marketing strategy and I want you to understand that it should never be faced with something frustrating, such as it is apparently Hades’ journey, because quite different from the myth of Sisyphus, the act of repeating and failing is always accompanied by a small victory. So if things are kind of stuck, how about testing! E-mails, CTAs, banners, entire pages, post titles, approaches, button placement. Absolutely everything can be tested. Be creative when testing. The repetition of the test routine is the way I found to be updated and find effective solutions for customers.
Don’t be ashamed to propose ideas, after all, you can test everything
To adapt to the digital life of the new consumer, we need to have ideas, work as a team and be creative. But remember: as original as your idea may seem, how about proposing it first as a test. Performing an A / B Test today is very simple and there are even free access software that you can bring to your company. You can test a new page for your website and show it to 1% of the people who access it, for example. Check for bugs, feedbacks, make adjustments and increase this percentage until you have a statistically significant validation to safely point out that the page you suggested is more effective than the current one. This is data-validated creativity. I think your coordinator would really like that, wouldn’t you say? And as you can tell, you don’t have to be afraid to test.
To finish, I would like to make a checklist in parallel with Hades that I hope will be of benefit to your professional life even if it is the minimum.
· Evolve. Each kill makes you a little more experienced in the game. Each time a test fails, you have already eliminated one hypothesis and your chance of succeeding in the next one is greater.
· Every advance, however small, is a great victory.
· Test! Hades has six types of weapons, you have a multitude of tools to test your ideas.
· It’s okay to be terrible at something in the beginning. The important thing is to look at the flaws and understand what you can start doing.
· If you can’t or don’t like something, don’t give up. Try to start by understanding how it works.
So, repeating (no pun intended here) what I commented on is this way I face the constant learning about marketing and the challenges I encounter in clients that I considered very well translated in the game. Many answers can be found in the most absurd ideas, but nothing is absurd when you can test and validate! And you have it in hand, enjoy it.
I am on the 48th escape attempt in Hades and thinking about what to improve on the next run as I write this article. Don’t be afraid to repeat the cycle again. If repetition is already hell, who in this world will hold you back?
Jesus Bardini
Head of Content Marketing & SEO at Math Marketing