Teodora Migdalovici: Romanian brands to play a serious part in Gaming

“Gaming is driving pop-culture today,” said Francine Li, president of the jury at the Entertainment Lions for Gaming in Cannes, this year, commenting on this industry that’s larger than film and entertainment combined. In an interview for CNN she explained its hype for the ad world: “everyone is a gamer today: 40 % of the boomers play games, 60 % of the Gen X play games and of course, 90% of the Gen Z do it, too”.

By Romanita Oprea

#TheAlternativeSchool & Good Game Industry founders, organizing “The Future of Gaming ” event on December, 14th, think Romanian brands have all the ingredients to successfully perform in the field.

BR sat down with Teodora Migdalovici, #TheAlternativeSchool founder & creativity Ambassador, and Toma Nicolau, Co-founder & Creative Director at Good Game Industry, and talked about the gamification industry, the event they are organizing, giving us a sneak pic into what to expect and the creativity industry.

What inspired “The Future Of Gaming” event ?

Teodora Migdalovici: Curiosity, pioneering and a taste for exploration are our core values, at #The AlternativeSchool. When Entertainment Lions for Gaming was launched this year, in Cannes, I saw in it the perfect opportunity to invite marketers, creatives and media people to study the phenomenon in depth, but also to explore how they can fluidly integrate gamevertising in the life of their brands, in the near future.

How did you team up with Good Game Industry for the event?

Teodora Migdalovici: Good Game Industry is a new breed of creative and consultancy company: they are educated, consistent, discrete, yet highly performant. They have built in only three years a complex portfolio of successful campaigns for the local and international market. They represent over twenty top notch gamefluencers, while being veteran gamers themselves. They have a deep understanding of the discipline and they are familiar with the gamers’ psychology. For many marketeers this is uncharted territory, so I saw in them the perfect guides.We also share a passion for education, knowledge and for everything-quality, so we clicked from the very early stages of our collab.

What are your main expectations from this edition?

Teodora Migdalovici: Beyond dissecting high quality case studies and networking in a Christmassy mood, we will encourage marketeers to see gamevertising’simmense potential to deliver results through creativity, while keeping consumers happy, and why not, to set the radar for international competitions, as a consequence.

The meeting is a straightforward invitation to work creatively on game related briefs in the year to come.

Who is your main target audience and why?

Teodora Migdalovici: We aim for marketers and creatives willing to perform beyond reasonable expectations. People willing to experiment, to walk new paths, to see opportunities in the unknown. To be honest, the level of noise on all media right now it’s kind of pushing every lucid brand manager to open at least one new territory that could break the apathy among consumers, while bringing business results and keeping the brand relevant for the times.

You constantly pushed for the Romanian Creative industry to perform internationally. What’s new for 2024 ?

Teodora Migdalovici: The event is part of the plan, indeed. We want to encourage professionals stewarding local brands to work on game related briefs, as well. Well guided, they can skyrocket. And nothing makes me happier than to see Romanian brands shining on in international creative competitions. After all, that would be the lovely closure.

Good Game Industry is a local voice that has delivered results for heavy weight brands like Garena (Free Fire) or League of Legends, Orange, BCR, ING, NVIDIA or L’Oreal. Isn’t it beautiful to see local brands guided by experienced local advisors ? Should I say that I would be around, too?

At #TheAlternativeSchool Spring Semester we will also integrate the gamevertising topic both in the briefs selecting our Young Lions for the Cannes Lions competitions and in the profile of our classes. We’ve done it before, with amazing speakers such as Sahar Lewenstein, now Creative Director at Overwolfand the number of high level trainers on the topic will grow in 2024. And it’s not only because of the hype around the topic. It’s because the formula of a well-done game-driven campaign is far more respectful towards the intelligence of the audiences and has a completely different approach on building relationships with people, by comparison with advertising as we know it. And the quality of the relationship with your audience – empathy, authenticity, vulnerability, understanding, support, you know – is something that new generations of creatives and marketers should really embed in their professional DNA.

How would you convince brands it’s important for them to get on board with gaming?

Teodora Migdalovici: It’s really simple: it’s a noisy, volatile, ever changing, unpredictable, sometimes anxiety driven world out there, in the ad world’s contemporary landscape. Everybody knows it, the cringe-vibe publicly acknowledged or not. But there is a shortcut: if well managed, gaming is a blue ocean for both creatives and media people, a safe haven for brands willing to be part of their consumers’ lives in their good-mood time. Isn’t it risky ? Only if you don’t have the right guides to show you the way. Luckily, we have the proper consultancy combo to prevent brands from being perceived as intrusive, inadequate, deaf-toned or pushy. We opt instead for supportive, charming, delightful, complicit, humorous, authentic statements. In the risky part of gaming I can only see the opportunity.

What are your projects that you are most proud of in recent years and why?

Toma Nicolau: All of our projects are, in fact, people. That’s right. We have done a documentary film about people in the local gaming industry, we have done short story films about people, photo shoots, ads, commercials, articles, events, marketing campaigns and strategies. We are proud to highlight the people that are truly successful in the Romanian gaming industry and we will always stand by their side in order to give credit to them and to their communities.

How would you characterize the Romanian gaming industry?

Toma Nicolau: Everybody shouting opinions or judgment, trying to do it louder as the next guy to get attention diverted from losing the war of know-how to the winning of small battles that don’t actually matter. There is still a lack of leadership through example.

Education matters. Hard work and dedication matter. Creating a positive environment for kids playing video games matters. These are some characteristics that the focus needs to be on.

What are the secrets of this industry?

Toma Nicolau: Let’s use an aircraft pilot as an example. One needs over 1500 hours of flying experience to get a pilot license and another 1500h to be taken into consideration for becoming a captain. So the secret is practice. In our case, it’s time spent into the gaming world and practice through industry projects spawning over ten years back.

How do you stand out from the competition?

Toma Nicolau: The answer is really simple: 9 out of 10 clients we have are competition. Many mainstream agencies want to learn to talk to gamers and we gladly help them resolve briefs for their respective clients. The difference is clear in the end: the gaming audience smells “hello, fellow kids” kind of work from miles away, so we make sure that, in this case, the message is digested organically.

What are your main expectations from the event?

Toma Nicolau: We want the audience to better understand the context of the local market, to show our work and to express our availability for 2024. The level has tocontinue to rise because there are hundreds of thousands of Romanian kids and teens growing up with gaming and esports as lifestyles; we can, I promise, and we have to use gamevertising tools to talk to them constructively and guide them to become members of a civilized society.

How did you start collaborating with #TheAlternativeSchool ?

Toma Nicolau: The challenge was: how to be better heard and listened to in a marketing industry that is fast paced and corporate capitalist in order to have access to more resources and impact more people? Connected to global trends in creativity for almost two decades, #TheAlternativeSchool is an out-of-the-box way of educating professionals. It’s a meritocracy-based platform that rewards originality, an organization that brings together people that use knowledge in a creative way for positive change, while promoting Romanian talent on the international stage. The fact that this collaboration is happening is further reassurance we have the same goals.

About The Alternative School:

• Thousands of young talents specialized in the school’s laboratories, focusing on international creativity.

• Hundreds of young talents specialized abroad, in A-class festivals: Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Dubai Lynx.

• Alumni awarded with all relevant medals, from Grand Prix to Gold and Order of Merit, when it comes to international creative competitions

• Over 30 senior professionals recommended in the Cannes Lions, Eurobest or Dubai Lynx juries, since 2005

• 18 years of top notch creative infusion for the industry

• Lobby for Romanian Talent abroad, generating a positive shift in terms of reputation in international creative jet set environments.

About Good Game Industry:

• Veteran gamers management with over 10 years marketing experience

• Collaborations with over 30 brands from FMCG, banking, telecommunications, and IT industries

• Over 60 campaigns and projects dedicated to gamers from 2020 onwards

• More than 2,000,000 gamers reached across various platforms, from Instagram to TikTok, YouTube, or Twitch, in the 2023 campaigns alone

• More than 50 Key Opinion Leaders and content creators involved in the campaigns in the last 10 months

• 21 gaming content creators exclusively represented by Good Game Industry

• Campaign profiles: product, sales, brand awareness, educational or CSR

• Unique entertainment content – live streams, videos, esports tournaments, feature films.

• Esports projects: organizing National Leagues for Ubisoft or Riot Games, for Rainbow 6 or Teamfight Tactics.

About the gaming industry in Romania:

• The value of the game development industry is €332 million in 2023 and rising.

• Almost half of the video game companies focused on creative content are located in Bucharest.

• 27 % of the Romanian video-game companies opted for cities in attractive regional hubs, such as Cluj-Napoca, Iași, and Timișoara.

• 49% of the video game landscape is led by mobile games.

• In 2023, “Stumble Guys” recorded the biggest number of app downloads.

• Women represent 27% of the total employees in this industry, with 22% in leadership positions.

• Women stand out more in business/logistics/sales than in creative roles

• Almost half (40%) of the industry employees are fresh out of school

About the gaming industry worldwide:

• By 2026, the gaming industry will be worth $321 billion according to PwC. Of this, 75% ($242.7 billion) will belong to social or casual gamers.

• The gaming industry is larger than the film and music industries combined, with the most successful games generating more revenue than major blockbusters.

• Netflix has been flirting with integrating gaming into subscriptions since 2021, stating that association with this industry is a long-term plan.

• Globally, the list of brands opting for gaming as a media platform is dominated by various brands from the food, beverage, commerce, FMCG, electronics, automotive, and technology industries.

• With 47 entries at Cannes Lions 2022, Burger King is the brand with a declared creative strategy related to gamevertising. Activision, Microsoft, Samsung, and AB InBev are joining the club.

•In 2023, Cannes Lions launched the Entertainment Lions for Gaming category.