MCV PR Panel 2021 - Full Transcript

Below the full transcript of the interview extracts appeared in the MCV Feature https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/pr-panel-2021-eight-pr-experts-look-back-on-a-hard-year-plus-the-new-consoles-preparing-for-the-year-ahead-and-the-return-of-events/

How has the pandemic changed how you operate, and what changes from this time do you think you’ll maintain going forward?

Renaissance has operated since 2015 using an agile model - essentially, people work remotely and spend as much time as they need to on specific objectives rather than me saying “you need to spend x amount of time on client y”. It’s about doing the best we can rather than hitting a strict 9 to 5. With the pandemic, we’ve been very successful at maintaining the same level of service across all our clients and I believe, thanks to our operation model, our efficiency actually increased - especially thanks to industry experience my team has.

More specifically, how did the lack of events impact you this last year and do you think they’ll bounce back in 2021?

Well, I think I’d actually argue there’s probably mean too many events this year, rather than a lack of them. Almost every event has gone digital and, on top of those who already had a digital presence, it’s been hard to weigh up just what the return-on-interest will be for each one. With a physical event you tend to have attendance figures for previous years and various others bit of data, but this year everyone has essentially been starting from square one. 

At last count, I think around 194 events happened this year, 145 of which were digital. Normally, you’d have 2-4 big events where the industry tries to grab a share of the noise, but this year, there are events weekly, almost daily sometimes. While that means there are more opportunities for developers that, in general, cost less to secure, the reach of each one is both indeterminable beforehand and - without naming any specific events - in many cases a lot smaller than the physical alternative. On top of that, the pandemic has meant there are less journalists covering each one, leading to a run of small events with much smaller impact than the traditional tentpoles of GDC, E3, and Gamescom. 

I don’t think it’s likely we will be back to some form of normality until 2022 on this front. However, because we have data from 2020, we now have the tools and metrics to let our clients know where they need to go depending on what they want to achieve. 

In a more globalised world, with ever more streamers in particular, how do you manage reaching out to such huge numbers, and how important is daata to your business?

Renaissance is unashamedly a data driven company that - paired with our expertise - allows us to anticipate market trends. This is the reason why we have invested in tools to enable us to utilise a massive amount of data intelligence to achieve our communication goals - Gamesight, Press Engine, Giadmin and Keymailer to name a few.

All these tools allow us to increase direct contact and relations with both content creators and the media. It enables us to push our games to the right people more frequently, perfecting pitches and landing opportunities that generate both quantity and quality coverage for our clients on a local to global scale, or in a very tailored way depending on the type of client and scope of work. Not all games needs 1 agency per territory and viceversa not all products can be covered by 1 central agency.

Speaking of streamers specifically, we have now three people working specifically in this area: two in the UK and one over in the US. For each product we start research from scratch based on a unique matrix of variables that lead us to the people we want to reach. 

This new generation of consoles provides greater continuity than ever before, there are thousands of games already for the new consoles. What opportunities does this present? And what issues?

I can honestly say that I love both the new consoles, and ultimately they offer different approaches that will favour the end user. With 200-250 games releasing on Steam each and every week, however, I believe the real problem is not the number of games but what the market will become and how to navigate through it. 

Right now, we’re seeing a typical console war between PS5 and Series X|S that mirrors what we’ve been used to in some form from the Nintendo vs. SEGA days onwards, but whereas in those previous eras you could usually pick a ‘winner’, this time the different approaches of both Sony and Microsoft mean it’s not a cliche to say everyone will win this time around: the different approaches lead to different objectives, and whoever sells the most this Christmas or in 2021, both PlayStation and Xbox offer viable and profitable routes to market.

What will be vital for the future is the ability to both synchronise and indeed work with first parties to better serve their respective user bases, as well as exploring new avenues to reach your games through media, content creators, and - from 2022 onwards - physical events.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for 2021?

I believe the key message I can give is, developers need to stay relevant and not sit on their laurels. The way gamers hear about games is changing, and we need to move away from purely fixated on the usual announcements and PR beats and look beyond the traditional preview and review cycle when launching a game. 

Preview coverage for non-AAA games is essentially disappearing in most cases. Also, the games media has been impacted by COVID, perhaps forever, and the number of writers out there has been reduced as we’ve all seen. That definitely has had a knock-on impact on the way we’ve approached our relationships with the media.

Nevertheless, there are still good signals coming from the media - the growth of VGC, for instance, has been as impressive as it is heartening. You’ve also got Eurogamer and Everyeye in Italy as well both showing strong numbers, but the reality is, we live in a world with more games, less media, and a disproportionate number of digital events. We also have a very healthy content creator landscape, which brings with it fresh and exciting opportunities.

So to summarise: Stay Relevant, use metrics and data to see what to do and where to get the best ROI of both time and money. Most importantly, be nice and respectful to everyone whether they’re big or small players in the industry. :)

Which PR campaigns have inspired you in the last 12 months and do clients need to take more risks to succeed?

I am super proud of what Renaissance has achieved for our clients this year. Our first next-gen announcement on Series XS exclusive ‘The Ascent’ was a big highlight - co-ordinating and executing the announcement together between our client Curve Digital, Microsoft, IGN and Edge was a big moment. 

We also greatly improved our relationship with content creators, better integrating it with our and traditional PR operations, with huge successes like BPM - Bullet Per Minute which was the perfect indie game that got the community, media, and content creators coming together to celebrate the release. 

I often think that, in general, it’s not so much the clients that need to take risk but the agency that has to be more creative and data-led to showcase measurable results. The issue you have on a daily basis is getting a share of the noise to reach that wishlist target, increase pre-orders and ultimately sell more copies