What type of game do people want?
Most creative decisions are made by opinion, but when it’s an existentially important topic, you really should be testing it in market first to see what works.
Performance Branding
Nothing is worse than releasing a product that nobody wants, so it makes sense to test and learn what resonates before defining what your brand will be...More
The good news is we’ve been given some budget to experiment with a fantasy games concept, like we asked for
I really think this is a gap in the market, because there just aren’t that many good fantasy games
We can also use AI to generate the game once we decide on a concept, keeping costs low
However we need to provide some data to management that proves we’re building the right thing
The devs are ready and waiting, so let’s roll out some tests to see what resonates
I’m thinking maybe ogres? I know you were interested in a dragon game…
This course is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, data, places, events and incidents in this course are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Performance branding is a marketing strategy that combines performance marketing principles with brand strategy. It uses in-market testing to prove which creative and messaging combinations work, before incorporating them into the wider brand as distinctive brand assets. This approach takes the risk out of the design and copywriting process, and gives teams solid justification for the normally ‘fluffy’ decisions they need to make in branding.
Tim Ferris’s book, “The 4-Hour Work Week” is a powerful example of how testing can lead to success. He A/B tested 6 different title options and ended up with the one that most resonated with his target audience. When planning a performance branding experiment, the first step is to come up with the ideas you want to test. The template provided can help teams make data-driven decisions, and calculate the budget required for the test.
Estimating the expected effect size is tricky, as by definition you don’t know how the test will perform until you run it. For most tests, 20% is used as the standard, as that was the average across 8,000 experiments. A case study from Money Dashboard revealed an unexpected insight that the best ad for one audience was the best ad for all. This counter-intuitive insight was only achieved through a robust creative testing process like performance branding.
In conclusion, performance branding offers a powerful solution to the brand vs performance debate. It takes the risk out of the design and copywriting process, and gives teams solid justification for the normally ‘fluffy’ decisions they need to make in branding. The template provided can help teams make data-driven decisions, and calculate the budget required for the test. Through a robust creative testing process like performance branding, teams can discover counter-intuitive insights that lead to success.
Complete all of the exercises first to receive your certificate!
Share This Course