作者：Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan

几周前我写了一篇有关像Del Monte这类型以消费者为主的公司能从像《水果忍者》开发商这种以手机为主的公司身上学到什么的文章。的确，手机开发商已经破解了手机市场中受安装驱动的成功密码，Rovio便是个鲜明的例子。

Rovio凭借着《愤怒的小鸟》的成功而迅速被世人所熟知，这便是开发商使用“传统”市场营销策略去获取更多利益的典例。自从《愤怒的小鸟》于2009年出现在iPhone平台上以来，Rovio便快速利用服装，配件，小型主题公园等平台去呈现自己的游戏形象，并即将把它推向电影荧幕。除此之外，该工作室也正在筹划发行“愤怒的小鸟”版本的预付借记卡。

从中我们可以看到，这家曾经面临破产边缘的工作室能够从过去的失败中吸取教训，并从消费者角度进行思考，而不只是局限于游戏工作室的框架中，从而能够发展到一个全新的高度。

其它游戏开发商们也注意到了这点，即为了取得真正的成功，他们就需要学会像麦迪逊大街（游戏邦注：美国纽约广告业中心）上的代理们那样进行思考。以下我将列出开发商们应该采取的3大具体行动：

fruit ninjas(from indiegamemag)

1.使用跨屏幕方法

数字媒体的范围是从电视到PC，并不只是局限于你的智能手机或平板电脑。因为许多用户总是同时拥有许多设备，所以开发商们必须意识到他们是如何以不同方式去使用每一种设备。喜欢邮轮假期的人便会将iPhone上的皇家加勒比游轮公司的巡航包当成横幅广告，但是这却不足以吸引他去花钱购买这一巡航包。

谷歌最近发布的一系列案例研究证实了使用跨屏幕方法有助于品牌的发展。美国达美航空通过从单一的TV宣传转变为TV与手机的同步推广而提升了105%的品牌意识与103%的品牌美誉度。同样的，沃尔沃也通过利用跨屏幕方法将用户召回率从50%提升到74%。这两个例子都说明了跨越多个屏幕而锁定用户及其行为的重要性。

成功的品牌总是能够意识到这一点，并有效地使用跨屏幕方法。他们会使用一些屏幕让用户意识到产品的存在，然后使用其它屏幕去鼓励用户完成产品购买和下载。因为特定的设备总会引起特定的行为，所以开发商也必须根据产品所面向的屏幕去制定相对应的宣传内容。

让我们以《水果忍者》为例。

这款游戏的开发商Halfbrick从一开始便筹划了游戏的市场营销活动，尽管那时候他们还未拥有足够的资源。《水果忍者》的网页视频广告突出了两个身着水果服饰的演员被另一个扮成忍者的演员追赶着，并迅速在网页上传播开来。比起将每个屏幕都当成获取用户的机会，开发商应该学会如何让每个屏幕进行互补，从而更有效地起到宣传作用。

2.进行深度分析

10年前，开发商们总是很难瞄准那些学识较高的已婚妇女群体（她们同样也会积极地玩游戏）。而传统品牌却通过使用尼尔森（游戏邦注：全球化信息研究公司）所提供的电视用户近似值而实现了这一目标。他们还使用了Insight Express和Dynamic Logic等公司有关品牌忠实度的研究而追踪了用户对于特定品牌的终生价值。这些研究虽然费时费钱，但却是品牌管理的命脉所在。

比较起来，开发商不得不面对一系列复杂且模糊的网络信息，如Android手机网页cookie，识别码，IMEI，SHA-1哈希数以及苹果的IFA（广告商识别符），但却很少是针对于用户或目的。

最后，开发商们应该使用一些工具去获取用户数据和观点，从而找到真正的目标用户。这对于那些想要与用户建立长远关系的开发商来说非常重要。

最显著的例子便是贸易网站（如eBay，亚马逊和Groupon），旅行服务（如ERxpedia，Kayak和HotelTonight）以及流媒体（如Netflix，Hulu和Spotify），这些平台上的用户每个月可以生成5至20美元的收益。但是也有许多下载了应用但却并未真正被激活的用户（如未绑定信用卡或购买内容），在许多情况下，有超过80%的用户根本不属于活跃用户。

Groupon的财务备案资料便非常有帮助：根据他们在2012年第三季度的收益报告，只有7.9%的用户属于活跃用户；他们每个月能从活跃用户的订阅中赚取5.33美元，而从所有订阅中却只能获得0.38美元。以18个月的终身价值进行估算，他们的每订阅用户的价值为6.78美元，而每活跃订阅用户的价值则为95.94美元。当然了，识别活跃用户的能力比对于Groupon来说非常重要。如今的市场营销者不仅能够明确目标用户，同时还能监视用户的安装行为（如用户是否激活，或者是否成为频繁的购买者？）而制定用户获取策略。这是品牌可以使用的可靠方法，如今也有许多开发商已经把握了这一方法。

如果缺少了数据，外接程序，洞察力以及各种分析去衡量品牌性能，任何顶级品牌都将会迅速失去领先地位。这也是今天许多游戏开发商所重视的一点：使用一些简单的工具去瞄准目标用户，而不是利用自己所拥有的工具去创建与用户间的长期关系。基于安装后的参数，开发商还可以制定有效的性能策略（不同于安装策略）。

3.将品牌跨越屏幕而延伸至下一个新产品

像《水果忍者》等品牌也开始像全球化品牌学习，并遵循Rovio模式。

Halfbrick于去年夏天将《水果忍者》带向基于Xbox平台的Kinect（那时候这款游戏已经出现在iPhone，Android，平板电脑以及PC等平台上）。对于2500多万曾在手机和平板电脑上玩过《水果忍者》的玩家来说，他们对这款游戏是再熟悉不过了，但是将游戏扩展向Xbox平台将能够吸引一个特定的用户群体：12至17岁的高度活跃男性玩家。

Halfbrick希望把握住这些可能没有手机设备或不能玩主机的年轻用户：在去年6月，Halfbrick与国际上一些大型消费品公司展开合作，希望借此推出“水果忍者”玩具，衣服，鞋子等产品。

与Del Monte多种多样的食品供应一样，《水果忍者》所建立起的新产品合作关系也是扩展品牌的重要手段。用户花钱购买的是你的品牌，而非操作系统或移动设备。为了让游戏能够成为真正的品牌，开发商们应该专注于扩展不同属性的用户，而不只是吸引更多手机用户。

总之，跨屏幕市场营销，深度分析以及品牌扩展便是帮助开发商创造出家喻户晓的手机游戏的三大步骤。

（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）

3 things fruit ninjas can learn from Del Monte in mobile marketing

By Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on how a consumer-first company like Del Monte can learn from a mobile-first company like Fruit Ninja. Clearly, mobile developers have cracked the code on install-driven metrics around mobile marketing, but the reverse is still true – one needs to look no further than Rovio.

Rovio’s success with Angry Birds, the fastest growing game in history, is a great example of how app developers are applying some ‘traditional’ marketing lessons to drive more revenue. Since Angry Birds flew onto iPhones in 2009, Rovio has leveraged every aspect of the game’s iconic imagery via apparel, accessories, small amusement parks and a soon-to-be released animated series for the big screen. The studio even announced plans to delve into the credit card business with its launch of Angry Birds prepaid debit cards.

So Rovio, once on the brink of bankruptcy, learned from its past failures and acted like a consumer brand, not just a game studio, to reach new heights – with or without a slingshot.

Other game developers have picked up on the clue that in order to become a hit, it pays to think like the agencies on Madison Avenue. Here are three concrete actions to do just that:

1. Pursue a Cross-Screen Approach

Digital media ranges from TV to PC; it’s not limited to your smartphone or tablet. Since many users aren’t tied down to one device, it’s important to realize how they use each one in distinct ways. Someone itching for a cruise vacation may see an ad for a Royal Caribbean cruise package as a banner ad on his iPhone, but the chances of him finalizing the package purchase with this same device are slim.

Google recently released a series of case studies demonstrating the significant lift achieved by brands using a cross screen approach. Delta Airlines achieved a 105% increase in brand awareness and a 103% increase in brand favorability by extending their campaign from TV only to TV plus mobile. Similarly, Volvo observed 74% brand recall for users exposed to multiple screens vs. 50% for TV alone. Both examples point to the importance of targeting audiences and their behavior across all screens.

Successful brands understand this — and are pursuing a multi-screen approach. They use some screens for creating awareness of their product, and others for influencing the user to complete the product purchase or download. Since certain devices elicit certain behaviors, developers must start tailoring their message according to the screen that displays it.

Let’s reference our main mobile example, Fruit Ninja.

The game’s studio, Halfbrick, made marketing a top priority from the get-go, despite not having many resources to do so at the time. Clearly not made for TV, the Fruit Ninja’s web video advertisement, featuring two actors dressed as fruit being chased through a park by another actor dressed as a ninja, quickly went viral on the desktop web. Rather than viewing every screen as an acquisition opportunity, developers should learn how certain screens both complement and contrast each other in order to deliver an effective campaign.

2. Channel Your Inner Nielsen

Ten years ago, it would have been costly and difficult for a developer to target a highly educated, married female scientist who also happens to actively play its game. Traditional brands accomplished this goal using approximations on television audiences provided by Nielsen, the leading global information measurement company. They would further commission brand loyalty studies by firms such as Insight Express and Dynamic Logic to track customer lifetime value to a particular brand. Such studies are expensive and time-consuming, but are the lifeblood of brand management.

Developers, in contrast, have had to work through a tangled web of anonymous Android mobile web cookies, UDIDs, IMEI numbers, SHA-1 hashes and now Apple’s IFAs (“Identifier for Advertisers”), with little specificity about audience or intent.

Finally, there are tools available for developers to leapfrog brands in their use of audience data and insights to find the right users. This is particularly important to any developer who is looking to establish a long-term relationship with its users.

The most obvious examples are commerce (like eBay, Amazon, Groupon), travel (Expedia, Kayak, HotelTonight) and streamed media (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify), where a loyal user may generate $5-$20/month for several years. A high percentage of users, however, download the app, and then do not activate (ie. add a credit card and make a purchase), and in many cases, more than 80% of users never activate at all.

Groupon’s financial filings are instructive: from their Q3 2012 earnings report, only around 7.9% of users are active; they are earning $5.33/month from active subscribers vs. $0.38 from all subscribers. Assuming an 18-month lifetime value calculation, their value per average subscriber is $6.78, while their value per active subscriber is $95.94. Clearly, the ability to identify an active user is worth more than an order of magnitude greater to Groupon. Now, marketers are able to not only target audiences, but they can also monitor post install behavior (ie. did users activate or become frequent purchasers?) to inform acquisition strategies. These are tried-and-true methods that brands have employed, and are now in the hands of developers.

The top brands of today would be lost without data, add-ins, insights and analytics to measure brand performance. And that’s how most game developers are today: stuck using unsophisticated tools for targeting rather than taking advantage of the tools at their disposal to build loyal, lifelong relationships with their users. With post-install metrics, developers can build a performance strategy that goes far beyond install.

3. Extend Your Brand Beyond Screens and Into New Products

Apps similar to Fruit Ninja are also beginning to learn from global brands and following the Rovio model.

Fruit Ninja released its game for Kinect on Xbox this past summer (in addition to already being available on iPhone, Android, tablet and PC). The game was already familiar to more than 25 million people who play on mobile phones and tablets, but expansion to Xbox continued to strengthen the product’s recognition by honing in on a specific audience segment: highly active male players aged 12 – 17.

Halfbrick went a step further by reeling in an even younger demographic of players who may not even have access to mobile devices or play consoles yet: in June of this year, Halfbrick rolled out a partnership with several leading international consumer product companies to bring Fruit Ninja toys, apparel, shoes and more to the marketplace.

Similar to Del Monte’s variety of food offerings, Fruit Ninja’s new product partnerships are great steps forward in brand extension. Audiences buy brands, not operating systems and OEM specs. In order for games to become real brands, they must focus on expanding an audience profile, rather than just attracting more mobile consumers.

And there we have it. Cross-screen marketing, granular analytics and brand extensions are just three steps for taking a fun, mobile game and turning it into a household name. Any other ideas are welcome in the comments section of this story below. What else can games learn from brands?（source：venturebeat）