作者：Tom Ohle

我们花了很多时间用Skype网络电话讨论如何改进我们的PR工作。当然，促使我不顾一切改革公司多半是因为我自己对PR行业的濒死状态的焦虑和个人的反叛倾向。但真相是，尽管公司在行业中颇有威望，我们在为一些客户和游戏做PR时仍然遇到很多困难。作为一个PR公司，我们希望始终适应风云变幻的市场行情和处于业界前沿，以下是我们的一些想法。

我们讨论后的结论基本上可以归结为，我们必须更加精挑细选我们接手的游戏。理论上，始终专注于质量——从我们接手的项目到媒体定位再到实际的宣传内容，我们应该成为行业中的佼佼者。但我们是不是太天真了？只是专注于把工作做得更好，我们就能得到更多的新闻媒体关注？或者我们只不过是让自己更少遭遇挫败罢了？

pr_logo(from prtz.wordpress.com)

问题是什么？

某类游戏为什么难以得到新闻媒体的宠爱？以下原因几乎第一条都可以自成一篇文章：

1、手机游戏、网页游戏或休闲游戏：除了游戏评论和励志故事，新闻界并不太关注这类游戏的情况，而与此同时，这类产品的消费者也不太看新闻评论（我只是简化了这个问题，这类游戏也有其他宣传渠道，但并不太多）。

2、开发者不知名或开发者的作品还未获得评论或商业上的成功：一旦你成为“媒体宠儿”，获得暴光率简直易如反掌，但在此之前，绝对是很困难的。

3、类型较冷门的游戏：特别是对于大众媒体，商业就是争夺关注焦点；这意味着AAA游戏、《我的世界》、《英雄联盟》等能轻易得到宣传，而小众类型的游戏基本上少有或完全没有报道量。“对不起，上次我们对这款游戏的报道没什么点击量，所以我们不会再报道它了。”

4、没有明显的“卖点”的游戏：如果你找不到游戏在激烈的竞争中脱颖而出的理由，那么当你被问及这个问题“为什么我要报道它？”时，你一定会很抓狂。即使你认为你的游戏有大卖点，也许它并不如你想像得那么独特。

5、确实很糟的游戏（这是最让我痛苦纠结的一类游戏）：对于以上几类游戏，我们基本上可以向媒体打包票：“你们应该报道它，因为它很不错。我保证。”

以上，我们介绍了几类因为本身的问题而导致暴光量少的游戏。在讨论中，我们还谈到其他原因——不一定是游戏本身的问题，可能破坏我们为客户及其项目做宣传的努力：

1、新闻媒体很忙。我们知道（因为问过了），许多新闻媒体每天都会收到成千上百封邮件，大多是关于游戏或游戏开发者的新闻稿。如果媒体不是确实中意你的游戏或公司，他们为什么要打开你的邮件？

2、新闻稿和材料通常不得要领。除非写手了解你的游戏或公司，否则你得到的新闻稿基本上毫无用处。退一步说，假设写手了解你的游戏，但不喜欢它呢？

3、定位不恰当。在现在的电子游戏PR模式中，你向数百人组成的“媒体列表”群发新闻稿。如果只有其中10个人确实能够报道那篇新闻，那么你为其他人提供什么价值呢？不恰当的定位添乱了。

4、AAA游戏一手遮天。虽然独立游戏在最近几年（甚至最近几个月）大有发展，但大多电子游戏媒体的目光仍然停留在AAA、大预算游戏上。无论你的游戏有多好，只要你跟《侠盗猎车手》一起发布，你就别指望有新闻媒体来关注你的游戏了。令人悲哀的是，大多数拒绝你的媒体也正好是你认为必须成功的那个（现在，无论你是否仍然应该考虑“一线”媒体，完全是另一码事了）。

以上，我们确认了为什么游戏难以得到媒体关注的外部原因。接下来的问题是：

我们应该怎么办？

如果你不准备拿出行动或改进，那么就没必要用挑剔的眼光自省你的游戏了。根据以上几点，我们可以想到一些解决方案或结论：

手机和休闲游戏并不适合持续性的PR

我们应该与客户合作小规模的活动，专注于获得有影响力的媒体的关注，保证评论量，和主流媒体的基本关注。我们可以提供预告产品、游戏分析等。这些其实不是PR服务，但可以说，“那正是你们应该做的”，鼓励开发者多在广告上，或者更重的是，在改进游戏的核心体验上花钱。至于手机游戏休闲游戏，毕竟其目标是获得平台持有者（游戏邦注：即苹果、谷歌和Facebook）的推荐，或得到口口相传的推广。游戏本身的品质高有助于达成上述目标，单靠PR是不能增加销售量/下载量/玩家人数的。

不要或少用新闻稿

是的，这就是我的建议。除非通告对收到的人来说确实有用/有意义，否则就不要发了。如果你是与知名开发者、发行商合作，那么通告可能会有用，甚至可能是向媒体受众宣传的最有效的办法。除非是这样，否则写新闻稿就是白费力气。在大多数情况下，“我们为游戏建立了一个网站”不是新闻。所有游戏都有网站，你的通告没什么特别的。

一对一的媒体定位

根据我们的经验和与媒体的讨论，专注于与一个新闻媒体的合作比疯狂滥炸式地发送新闻稿更有效得多。理想的情况下，我们确定目标媒体——因为任何原因而对特定游戏感兴趣的人，然后花时间与他们讨论，向他们介绍游戏，努力吸引他们的兴趣。一旦他们对游戏产生兴趣了，通告就可能更加有用了。在新闻媒体中寻找游戏的固定的传道者，会得到持续的好处，比如更容易保证评论量，或者与某个记者合作编写更有意义的新闻。

与客户保持更加密切的合作，以确定“卖点”

我们总是与客户讨论游戏的卖点，但还有改进的余地。现在，“卖点”的概念已经变了，所以应该告诉开发者现在的“卖点”到底是指什么。“10种武器”不再是卖点了。为什么我要玩这款游戏而不是XXX游戏呢？如果你答不上来，那么你的PR活动一定会很困难。我们也要跳出框架思考；在如今的时代，让人们讨论玩法的10秒钟的视频片段比大预算游戏的2分钟游戏预告来得容易。每一个小故事——从开发者的背景到使用的工具，都可以作为卖点，所以我们必须与开发者更加密切地合作，找到尽可能多的卖点。

与此相关，我们必须使客户相信“少即是多”的方法。作为开发者，你可能认为发送这些新截图给每一个记者就是好办法。作为PR，我可不这么认为。我们必须劝说客户，与单个新闻媒体合作向该媒体的受众报道相关的故事才是好办法。

不要太依赖一线媒体

我们还是这么说吧：今年初，我们花了很多时间和钱给Larian工作室预定《Divinity: Original Sin》预告片的新闻发布会，尽管已经让开发团队从比利时飞到旧金山，坐到记者的办公桌前，我们还是被几个一线新闻媒体拒绝了。没什么大不了，预料之中。我们仍然让大量一线媒体看了我们的预告片，但他们可能不会通过通讯稿、社交媒体等宣传游戏。因为我们的“故事”不太能与他们的受众（我讨厌这个词）产生共鸣，最终那次报道对游戏宣传并没有起到太大效果。

然而，我们只花了相当少的时间和钱与YouTube红人合作宣传游戏时，大约一周就产生近百万的视频观看量，同时，在Kickstarter给《Original Sin》拉的资助金很快就超过我们的预期。YouTube的受众更能接受非AAA游戏，所以我们的视频产生了相当大的影响。我要说的重点是，如果你认为只有靠“大”媒体保证报道量才是PR的圣杯，那么你可能错了。每一点小宣传都是有帮助的。我经常使用砖打比方：你把游戏介绍给每一个人，这个人就相当于为你的消费者地基上添一块砖。是的，IGN的报导可以送你一些砖，即使只有1000人看了新闻稿，那1000人也可能是你的另外1000块砖。我们希望通过与小媒体和YouTube观众的合作拓展我们的PR工作。就是这么简单。

避开我们确实无法支持的客户和游戏

这对我来说可能是最困难的部分，让我有些纠结。正如我所说的，理想的情况下，我们花许多时间与独立写手、博主、视频名人等合作，让他们接受为某款游戏做宣传，然后与他们商量合适的宣传创意。假设与一名编辑合作经历这一系列过程需要30分钟。发送新闻稿给1000个人需要20秒钟。相比之下，与单一的新闻媒体合作还更花时间，这意味着我们要雇用更多人或接受更少的客户。

雇用更多人绝对不是好主意，因为管理5人组成的小公司已经让我心力交瘁了。它也不能解决我们内部竞争报道的问题——我们曾经发送5份新闻稿（我们团队中不同成员写的不同项目的稿子）给媒体……我觉得太多了。注意，新闻稿往往不太管用。

所以我们选择专注于更少的客户。这使我们能够改进工作，保证项目的质量。我们可以花更多时间一对一地对话媒体。而且，我们不会经常遇到内部竞争新闻稿的情况。最重要的是，为我们的公司获得信誉，我们只接受好产品，不会浪费媒体记者的时间。

结论

PR(from seowix.com)

是的，理论上听起来都很好。尽管我个人非常害怕改变。为了维持公司运作，与更少的、高级客户合作意味着我们必须提高收费标准；但是与我们合作的很多独立游戏开发者和小公司可能承担不起“正常的代理”费。我们在新闻媒体上押了很大的筹码，当我们发送邮件就要保证他们一定会打开邮件，知道我们发送邮件的原因。我们希望客户说：“当然，如果你认为不好，就不要麻烦发送那份新闻稿了。”我们假设你的理论是正解的，那么当因为我们没有每天放送通告而没有媒体报道游戏时，就不会丢我们的脸。

因为以上原因，我们不可能马上适应这些变化。确实，我希望多加讨论，与你分享我们在Evolve的想法。我甚至不记得自己怎么给公司取了这个名称，但我越来越觉得这是个好名字。我很高兴能与我身后那支敢于挑战现状的团队共事。如果我们更加专注于质量，我们就可能把PR工作做得更好—–我只是希望其他人与我们一样为这个机遇感到振奋。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Does a Focus on Quality Make for Better PR?

by Tom Ohle

We spend way too much time in our team Skype chats talking about how to do a better job of… umm… our jobs. Granted, much of it is brought on by my own anxiety about the gradual death of PR as a profession, as well as an unfortunate rebellious streak that drives me to subvert the establishment at any cost…. but the fact is — despite a rather solid reputation (I hope) within the industry — we still struggle constantly to secure publicity for some of our clients. What follows is a look into the thoughts we have as a PR agency that wants to constantly adapt to changing market conditions to stay at the forefront of our business.

In our discussions, we’ve essentially come to the conclusion that we need to be more selective about the games we represent. In theory, by focusing on quality throughout — from the projects we work on to our media targeting to the actual content of our pitches — we should come out on top. But are we just being naive? Merely by focusing on doing a better job, will we get more media coverage? Or will we just spend less time being frustrated?

What’s the problem?

There are all sorts of reasons why it can be difficult to get coverage for a particular client or game, all of which could warrant their own blog posts:

It’s a mobile, browser-based or casual game, and the media landscape doesn’t really support much coverage of these titles beyond reviews and success stories, while at the same time the consumers of these products also aren’t looking at media for reviews. (Yes, I’m simplifying the matter, and there are some other opps for coverage here… just not many.)

It’s from a developer that nobody’s heard of yet, or who hasn’t had a critical or commercial success yet. Once you become a “media darling” it’s quite easy to secure coverage, but until then, it’s definitely a struggle.

It’s in a genre that doesn’t “bring the hits.” Particularly among more popular media outlets, this business is all about attracting traffic, which means that AAA games, Minecraft, League of Legends, etc. will get covered at will, while smaller games in lesser-played genres are relegated to very occasional coverage or none at all. “Sorry, last time we posted about that it didn’t get clicks, so we won’t cover it again.”

There’s no notable “hook.” If you can’t spot a single reason why a game should stand out amid the chaos of the industry, expect to pull out a lot of your own hair when you hear the question, “So why should I cover this?”  Even if you think your game has a great hook, it might not be as unique as you think it is.

And the one that causes me the most pain and frustration: The game just isn’t very good. With almost any of the points above, we can make a really strong case to media: “You should cover this game because it’s good. I promise.”
We’ve identified a number of issues with the game itself that could make it difficult to get coverage. There are other factors that have come up in our discussions — elements that aren’t necessarily related to the game — that can hamper our efforts to get press for our clients and their projects:

Media are inundated with games. We know — because we’ve asked — that many of them receive hundreds of emails in a single day, most of which are press releases or pitches about some game or developer or whatever. If they don’t absolutely love your game or company, why would they open your email?

Press releases and asset blasts are often pointless. Unless a writer knows about your game or company, that press release you sent to announce a new update is pretty much as useless as a second butt. Hell, let’s say that writer knows about your game but doesn’t like it. We’re back in second-butt territory.

Pitches are improperly targeted. Shannon wrote a whole blog post about this. In the current video-game-PR model, it’s expected that you send announcements to your “media list” and that said media list is comprised of hundreds of people. If only ten of those are actually in a position to cover that particular piece of news, what value are you providing to the others? Improper targeting adds to the noise.

AAA rules the day. While the indie scene has made massive strides in recent years (and even months), much of the video game media landscape is still focused almost entirely on AAA, big-budget titles. No matter how good your game is, if you’re releasing head-to-head with Grand Theft Auto V, you can expect to be ignored or turned away by all sorts of press. Sadly, most of those press who will turn you down are also the ones you feel like you need to hit (now, whether you should still think of “top-tier” media that way is another matter entirely).
That’s great. We’ve identified all sorts of reasons why it’s hard to get coverage for certain games and clients. But the question has to be asked:

What can we do about it?

There’s no point turning a critical eye inward if you’re not ready to take action and improve. Based on the points above, we can come up with some solutions or otherwise come to various conclusions:

Mobile and casual games just aren’t a good fit for ongoing PR.

We should work with clients on smaller-scale campaigns, focused on gaining some awareness among the few influential media outlets that do exist, securing some reviews, as well as basic outreach with mainstream media, where it makes sense. We can help with trailer production, game analysis, etc. These aren’t really PR services, but maybe it’s okay to say, “that’s really all you should do” and encourage developers to spend more money on ads or — perhaps more importantly — on improving the core game experience. With mobile and casual games, after all, the goal is to either be featured by platform holders (i.e. Apple or Google or Facebook) or to spread via word of mouth. Having a great game increases the chances of those things happening, and only in rare cases will PR alone move the needle in terms of sales/downloads/users.

Press releases and “blasts” should go away or become much less frequent.

There, I said it. Unless this announcement is actually useful/interesting to the person who receives it, it is not worth sending. It contributes to the bloating of inboxes and thus to the difficulty of getting a response to a legitimate, targeted pitch. If you’re working with a well-known developer, publisher or game, then blasts can be helpful, and are probably the most effective way of spreading news (real news) to a wide media audience. Until you get to that point, though, a press release or asset blast is a wasted effort. And in most cases, “We launched a website” is not a news story. Ever. Every game has a website. You are not special.

One-on-one education/pitching should be the goal.

Based on our own experiences and discussions with press, individual outreach is far more effective than a blasted press release. In an ideal world, we identify our target media — people who, based on any number of factors, might be interested in a particular game — and spend time talking to them, introducing them to the game and trying to get them interested. Once they are interested in the game, asset blasts and other announcements may actually be more useful. Identifying evangelists for a game among the media will ultimately yield regular dividends: securing reviews may become easier, for example, or we may work with the individual journalist to come up with a really interesting story to cover.

Work more closely with clients to identify hooks.

We always try to talk clients through the actual selling points of a game, but there’s room for improvement. The concept of a selling point has changed recently, as well, so this comes down re-educating developers who’ve been in the business for a long time about what’s actually a hook these days. “10 weapons” is not really a selling point anymore. Why would I want to play this game instead of ____? If you can’t answer that question, your PR campaign is going to be tough as shit, son. We have to think outside of the box here, too; in this age, it can be easier to get people talking about a ten-second video clip of intense gameplay than a big-budget 2-minute game trailer. Every little story — from the developers’ background to the tools that were used to the inspiration for a character and beyond — can be used to get publicity, so we need to work more closely with developers to identify as many angles as possible.

Related to this, we need to convince clients of a “less is more” approach. As a developer, you think that sending out these new screenshots to every journalist in the world is a good idea. As a PR rep, I know it’s not. We have to convince our clients that it’s a better idea to work with individual outlets on stories relevant to their audiences. Pray for me as I enter these discussions.

Don’t rely as heavily on top-tier media coverage.

DUH DUH DUUUUUUH. Let’s put it this way: Earlier this year we spent a crap-ton of time and money booking a press tour for Larian Studios with a preview build of Divinity: Original Sin. Despite flying a team of developers from Belgium to San Francisco and offering to go sit at journalists’ desks (so they didn’t even have to move), we still had several top-tier press turn down the opportunity. That’s fine, and was expected. We still got a number of great previews from top-tier press, though, but given that they may not have promoted the coverage extensively via newsletters, social media, etc. the stories just didn’t “resonate” with their audiences (I hate that word), and ultimately that coverage didn’t lead to a significant boost in awareness of the game.

However, when we spent relatively little time and money coordinating play sessions with top YouTube personalities, we generated close to a million video views in about a week, while the Kickstarter for Original Sin blew past our expectations rather quickly. The YouTube players’ audiences are more receptive to non-AAA experiences, and as such we had a much greater impact. My point is that while you may think that securing coverage with “big” media is the holy grail of PR, you may be living in the wrong decade. Every little bit of coverage helps. I use a brick-wall metaphor a lot: every person you introduce the game to is another brick in your big wall of potential customers. Yes, getting coverage at IGN can gain you a few bricks, but it will take a lot of effort to get there. Also spend time focusing on smaller media outlets; even though they may only reach 1000 people, that’s another 1000 potential bricks to add to your wall. We want to expand the work we do with smaller outlets and YouTubers. Simple as that.

Turn away clients and games that we can’t really get behind.

This is probably the hardest part for me, the bit I’ve been struggling with. As I’ve laid out, in an ideal world we are spending a lot of time working with individual writers, bloggers, video personalities, etc. to convince them that a particular game is worth covering, and then talking to them to come up with coverage ideas that make sense for them, the game and the outlet’s audience. Let’s say that talking to one editor in that manner takes 30 minutes. Sending a press release to 1000 people takes 20 seconds. Individual outreach and engagement is far more time-intensive, which means we either need to hire more people or take on fewer clients.

Hiring more people isn’t a great option, as I’m already losing my mind trying to manage a five-person company. It also doesn’t solve the problem of competing with our own games for coverage — there are days when we send five press releases (about different projects and from different people on our team) to the media… and I think that’s too many. As noted, press releases tend to not be super useful.

So we come down to focusing on fewer clients. It improves our ability to control the quality of projects we work on. It allows us to spend more time with one-on-one media outreach. It means we’re not competing with ourselves for coverage quite as much. It allows us to establish a reputation as an agency that only works on noteworthy projects and isn’t going to waste your time if you’re a journalist.

In theory.

Yes, it all sounds pretty good in theory. There’s a big part of me that fears the change, though. Working with fewer, quality clients means that we need to charge more in order to keep our staff employed; and many indies and other companies we work with probably can’t afford “regular agency” rates. We’re placing a lot of faith in the press to actually appreciate the effort and to open emails when we send them, knowing that they’re being sent for a reason. We’re expecting clients to say, “sure, don’t worry about sending that press release if you don’t think it’s a good idea.” We’re assuming that our theory is correct, and that this isn’t all going to blow up in our face when nobody’s covering a certain game because we weren’t blasting out announcements every few days.

For the reasons above and more, we won’t be able to enact these changes overnight. Who knows; for the reasons above, we might not even be able to enact these changes. Really, I’m hoping to get some discussion going, and to share a little bit of insight into our thinking at Evolve. You know, I don’t even remember how I came up with the name for the agency, but as time goes on I can’t help but think it’s been a great choice. I’m glad that I have a team behind me that wants to challenge the status quo. I just hope others are as excited as we are about the opportunities that exist if we all take some time to focus on quality.(source:gamasutra)