Editor's Introduction: In game planning, marketing copywriting is also a very critical part, writing a good promotional copy can add bricks to the product. So, how to choose the core label and have a clear copywriting point? The author summarizes three points of thinking and shares them with you.
Many friends will have a headache when they receive a new game and are ready to write marketing copy (positioning language, slogan, app store title, etc.) for the game. Because as we all know, holding on to copywriting is a painful job. To write into the heart of the boss, it is a double painful job of technology + luck.
Starting today, I plan to write a small series of serials, combined with professional and observation experience, to talk about the directions in which directions can be started if you want to "hold" out a more satisfactory game slogan.
Before talking about the details in detail, I think we may have to establish a basic cognition, that is, it is very important to be able to write good publicity copy.
Maybe after 2-3 years of work, a new person in the industry spent time "holding back" the copy many times, and found that after writing it, it seems that neither the producer nor the player cares much. Everyone is more concerned about how to do the actual creative materials, how to package the big events, and how to convert the exposure. Copywriting, such a subjective and metaphysical-sounding imaginary thing, cannot see the actual effect at all.
I used to hold this view, but over time I became more aware of 3 points:
Copywriting is not just a word game, behind the copywriting is a long-term competitive strategy
On top of the accurate insight strategy, extracting excellent packaging copy is the basic skill that marketers should have
Words and language are the most central weapons that affect the human mind; not videos, not pictures
The above 3 points can be discussed later.
Today, let's start with the first point of writing a good game promotional copy: extract the core label of the game packaging publicity, focus and determine it.
With such a core label and the determination of 1-2 keywords, let us extend the copywriting, creativity, and marketing plan of the brain storm next, and have a point of strength. Otherwise, we write copywriting and brainstorming like a needle in a haystack, relying purely on luck to produce results. So that's the first step.
First, why is it the "core label"? How are I sure?
The label is to allow players to get the functional benefits of the product and the core value of the brand more directly and quickly in the modern network society with a large amount of information explosion. The right label is the key to opening the user's mind.
From a practical point of view, labels are also the focus of all marketing actions. Some people say that the essence of marketing is to repeat. So repetition always has to be repeated at one point, right? Otherwise, it is a hammer in the east and a mallet in the west.
Labels actually represent the competitive strategies of products and brands. Find your own unique advantages, in order to better reach the user's mind. If we ignore the refinement and promotion of labels, in my observation, it basically belongs to the "step by step" marketing method, and there is no deeper thinking about competitive strategies.
Such a label, in fact, in the FMCG market brands, can see a lot of examples. For example: the core label of Fluttery is "Supple"; the core label of Haifeisi is "Descarination"; the core label of Pantene is "Shine"...
In 2021, Pantene's label "Shine", and "Shine As She"
If you review a product and can't find the label impression of the product; then the probability of the player also feels the same way: mediocre, not worth investing time to pay attention to.
The label of game products usually has two directions of thinking:
Rational description of the game itself: type of gameplay, theme background, art style...
The positive perceptual benefits that the game brings to the user: happy, surprised, stimulated, refreshing, moving...
Point 1 should be more intuitive to see; point 2, take some time, experience the game yourself, communicate with players, and planners, and colleagues to see if there are any common conclusions.
You can ask yourself a question: what would be the word if you could only introduce this game to your friends in one word?
The term is suitable as a label for this product.
Second, the core label is refined, and then what to do?
1. Is it good to judge perception?
A good label must first have the characteristics of "good perception". The criterion of good perception is whether people's minds can quickly and fully correlate with the pictures, associations, and multi-layered concepts that exist in their minds as soon as they hear this label word.
For example, a tag called "jianghu", it is estimated that most Chinese can think of what is behind the tag; "cyberpunk" such a tag, may only be a small number of users aged 15-30 in China can get what they are saying.
2. Is there differentiation in the judgment?
The core experience that a game brings to the user may be diverse. At the same time, games of the same category and similar gameplay experience may also be similar in terms of labels that can be refined.
For example, an SLG game brings players the feeling of strategizing and strategic experience, and there is also a sense of blood and righteousness of an alliance brother fighting together. Even when we come across some games with cross-genre gameplay, we can summarize more labels. At this time, we need to judge which of the labels we have extracted can open the gap between us and competitors and form a strong degree of recognition.
A typical case is "The Shores of the Land". Before the creation of the "like" category, the typical SLG product on the market was the COK category. The difference between the core experience of Frank-like and COK-like is that COK-like focuses more on bringing players a strong sense of pleasure through intuitive numerical collision comparison, while Rate-like tests the player's ability to think long-term strategically. Therefore, The rate of soil to take the initiative to label himself "sandbox strategy", and the COK-like series of games to open up a strong recognition.
A few years ago, part of the propaganda material of the soil was expressed
3. Focus or ascend dimension
Soul Question: What if you find that your gameplay core, emotions, and competitors are all the same?
In this case, we should take a good look at all aspects of the game, and what are the points that are easily perceived by users and have a gap with competitors. The main thing is to see the subject matter and painting style. For example, the two-dimensional moba, the national comic wind moba, the national style moba, and the cyberpunk moba are all more focused subdivisions than the big label of moba. In the same way, we have also seen sci-fi chicken, space theme slg, etc.
Focus can help us at least find accurate users, expand the user plate base, and survive.
So what if you really can't find a clear difference?
I've summed up a better solution – Ascending Dimension: Try to pull your mind back upstream of the competitor label and see what factors are the basis for the label? What factors may weaken the validity of today's competitive labels? If you find it, and you can have it, you use this as a label.
A few years after the launch of the rate soil, another rate soil-like new product "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" came to the market. As a product with the IP blessing of the classic series of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and the gameplay content is almost exactly the same as that of the rate soil, they took the initiative to choose the label of "real" for themselves.
"Three Wars": the real battlefield of tens of millions of strategists
Think about it, if a strategy game is not realistic, the strategic dimension is bound to be shallow; the closer the game is to reality, the more it requires the player to have a higher level of real strategy ability.
Authenticity means that "the three kingdoms we play are the real three kingdoms and the real strategy", which means that "the three countries played by the opponent are not the most real three countries and not the most real strategy". Around this label, and combined with the publicity advantages of genuine IP, Sanzhan has made a series of marketing promotions such as Gao Xiaosong's series of advertisements to strengthen the impression label of "True Three Kingdoms".
4. Be brave and delete
When a product has many seemingly good advantage selling points, often marketing students want to find a big and complete concept and include all the advantage selling points. Sometimes even at the expense of making words, I want to be able to contain everything.
But the general concept that is born in order to deliberately accommodate all concepts must be more empty, mysterious, and incomprehensible. Such a concept can only be that the program is written smoothly and the user cannot understand it.
Therefore, it is recommended to try to sift through the standards of whether it is perceptible and differentiated, and remove the non-standards. There may be a few options left at the end. At this time, the usual practice is to speak with user research data, see what words have the best response in the player's mind, and draw a final conclusion.
Just say that we don't practice the fake style, let's review a practical case together.
3. Practical cases
A few years ago, I was going to conceive an overall distribution strategy for a big DAU-type tactical competitive mobile game. This naturally includes the development of core labels.
The core gameplay mechanism of this type of game is that 100 people are exiled to a desert island by parachute, each picking up equipment to develop, killing others, and finally only 1 person can survive and leave. At that time, the concept of such games was also called "battle royale".
There is also a background here, because for some indescribable reason, we can't use "battle royale" as our own label or direct slogan.
1. Consider the gameplay core experience
We found that the core gameplay brings a lot of experience to users. There is the discouragement and helplessness of landing into a box, there is the nervous excitement of not daring to run as soon as the gun sees people, there is the ecstasy of the success of the cautious yin people, and there is also the super sense of achievement of beating others to the end. From the perspective of theme, "Battle Royale" is a theme concept with cruel colors and desperate emotional experience.
But no matter what kind of emotions, we judge that the generation of these emotions stems from the underlying rules of the game: 100 people participate in the competition indiscriminately, and only 1 person can survive and win.
At the same time, we also found that although many users in China have accepted, understood and are eager to experience this kind of play, there are still potential users of larger plates, who have only occasionally heard of this innovative game, but do not know what the specific experience is.
Therefore, we judge that the core label extracted should closely focus on the core gameplay rule of "100 people participate in the competition indiscriminately, and only 1 person can survive and win". This is the core selling point, the source of all derivative emotions, and the core rules that need to be communicated to market users.
2. Consider the competitive label: 5V5 competitive
Strictly speaking, as a set of innovative gameplay versions of mobile games, we do not have direct gameplay competitors in the mobile game market. But that doesn't mean we don't have competitors. Games that occupy the game time of the target user are also competitors. The most successful big DAU game on the market at the time was undoubtedly Glory of Kings. As the absolute ruler of the multiplayer competitive mobile game market, the status of "Glory of Kings" is unquestionable.
At that time, we vaguely felt that this was a game that shocked the glory of the king in China, because his gameplay experience was unique enough and fun enough. In this context, I went to see the glory of the king at that time, when it was 2017, when the official positioning language of glory was probably called "5V5 open black competitive mobile game". (I don't remember it very clearly, but 5V5 black, this concept I'm sure was the main push at the time).)
We want users to have a vague memory point when they see their own advertising: this game is a game that is completely different from the rules of the Glory game, but it is fun enough or even more fun. It doesn't matter if you don't download it for the time being, this impression must be established first.
The core rule of The Glory of Kings is that 5 people open black together; the most enjoyable fun for players also comes from opening black with friends. Our core rule, as mentioned above, is "100 people compete, only 1 person can survive", and the core fun points all come from this rule. Such label comparison is enough to produce enough degree of difference.
3. Core Tag: 1V99
Based on the above judgment, we benchmarked the concept of "5V5 open black competition" and extracted a key label word called "1V99".
For everyone involved in the game, your goal is to be that "1" against the remaining "99" individuals. Because you don't have another "4" teammates to help you, you don't have a "5" squad, so you need to do whatever it takes to survive. Gang, you can; you can also tao; running away is the best strategy. All the fun comes from 1V99.
Is this label concept good to perceive? We did research, and most people hear this concept, and the feelings that elicit are gathered between "hot blood" and "fear". It comes to heroism, and it thinks of unscrupulousness. This is exactly what we want to see in user emotion associations.
Maybe some students will ask: Isn't this kind of game more fun to play with friends? Is black also a strong source of fun?
Yes, this is undeniable, but if you repeat the emphasis on the pleasure of opening black, you will lose the difference from the competitors. So we took the initiative to abandon this and delete.
With this tag, we can output three-dimensional marketing ideas around it, including but not limited to event marketing, H5 marketing ideas, TVC ideas, print material ideas, etc... It will become the source of power for all our marketing actions.
Final conclusion
At the end of the line, finally make a summary:
1. Copywriting is not just a word game, behind the copywriting is a long-term competitive strategy
2. The first step in writing a good game promotional copy is to refine and determine the core label
3. Refine and determine the core label, not only to write copywriting, but also to find the source of all marketing actions, but also to develop a long-term competitive strategy
4. What are the labeling criteria for judging?
1) Is it good to perceive?
2) Is there enough differentiation?
3) If necessary, do focusing, or ascending dimensions
4) Be brave enough to make deletions
This article is originally published by @Hanzo here everyone is a product manager, and reproduction without the permission of the author is prohibited
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol