 Good good afternoon. I'm Andrew Stavo co-founder and CEO at seriously We're building entertainment brands focused on mobile platforms We have an office here in Helsinki where we build out our products and Do our create a lot of creative development work and then we also have an office in Venice Los Angeles, California where we do our marketing and business development I'm gonna talk a little bit today about what we've learned over the last four years since we started seriously and Some of the things we've learned along the way working to build a mobile focused entertainment brand tens of millions of people know about best fiends and The interesting thing about our first game is that we spend as much time Building out the game design Mechanic making sure it was super fun as we did Investing in the characters the world and the story behind the property best fiends is set in the fictional world of minutia and Ten years ago a property like best fiends would have got built first as a book or a television show or a Film but given the huge audience shift from traditional media platforms to mobile We felt like the best place to introduce our world was there The markets changing super fast I Used to work for 20th century Fox and we could see there the audiences were moving from platforms like television movie theaters and we're moving to mobile and Our bet was that the next generation of big entertainment brands would get built there first If you guys may have seen there's a lot of consolidation happening in the media space and that's because mobile engagement and consumption is eating Traditional media revenue streams is lunch for example Just mobile in-app purchases alone Around the world is bigger than the Hollywood global box office significantly bigger and growing much faster in Addition Subscription video on demand services are emerging because content providers like Netflix and Amazon realize that they need to be Vertically integrated and own the content and be directly connected to their audience What we're building out is a world on your mobile Based on the intellectual property and the care and love we put into the world and the characters It just so happens that the first two apps that we have best fiends and best fiends forever Have been downloading downloaded 75 million times and Are played between one and a half by one and a half million to two million people every day Generating around a hundred thirty five thousand dollars a day in revenue and the engagement is high at ten million hours a week and that's one of the main reasons for that is because people are building an emotional connection with the IP Over the next 12 months. We're also working to extend out the world and the brand through new games We have one in soft launch right now called best fiends rivals but also building at our community and We're working very hard on our first television series, which is in the early stages of development Having a big vision to try and create a next generation entertainment property Really has allowed us to attract some of the world's best creative talent to help us build out our world I'm really lucky to be working and co-founder the company with Petri Yavoletto who is our chief creative officer and Previously built remedy entertainment focusing on their creative brands like Max Payne and Alan Wake We've also worked with Miguel Francisco who leads our character art and used to run the character art for Angry Birds and Some amazing other talent including Stuart Burns who's a lead writer on the Simpsons hate or Pereira Who has produced the music for despicable me? Having a big vision allows you to create a really interesting potential IP but in a world where many Companies particularly focused on mobile are most primarily focused on the arbitrage Between the CPI the cost of an install and the lifetime value of that install Where we've tried to differ from that is to care about our creative experience That the players in our games have So we've actually taken a different approach to many other mobile games companies Focused on investing into the creative process, but also into interesting creative channels for marketing One of the key things we learned when building an IP is the story has to be super authentic You have to believe and love it and actually the story of best fiends was inspired by Petri who has a whole load of Spanish Invasive slugs in his Espo Helsinki garden every autumn and has to clear them out and Tells a story told stories to his kids as they were growing up of Little cute creatures that fought a battle against those slugs in his garden That was the that was the early stage for our story that we started building the world out on Our IP is very focused on the whole family. We have a saying that it's subversive yet sweet Something that can appeal to adults and kids at the same time I think what's super interesting about it all is that as a content creator We're actually directly connected to our audience for most Big entertainment properties the content is created and then distributed through somebody else's platform the beautiful thing about mobile is we get to be connected to the audience and Therefore treat the game like a live service ultimately updating it and Introducing new characters worlds and events regularly and often What's interesting about that for us is We get to leverage the data and really try and marry our Creativity validated by the data as we look to build and optimize out our experience One of the things we we did this year that we're super proud of is we launched our first two animated shorts Where we integrated the stories into the game and packaged up a really interesting marketing proposition as we tried to Drive a new audience and re-engage our current audience the first animation we did being viewed over seven million times and It's called best fiends It's called bootcamp and it tells the story of the rather hapless slugs who are so excited to join a slug army But when they get to their boot camp their army training camp they find out That they're actually being set up to fail. Here's a 30-second clip from our first animation I'm also super excited about how we innovate innovating against our games. We've just put a game into soft launch in Finland and in Australia called best fiends rivals that takes our best fiends experience To a new level when you start to compete against your friends or your rivals in the game So encourage you to download it and let us know what you think Building a big brand or trying to build a big brand It's really important that you have good underlying values as you build it out For us, we have three brand statements that we take very closely to our hearts Number one of which is doing the right thing and making sure that we use the media platform that we build out for good And we've been really lucky to work with some amazing partners in this vein. I Told you about subversive yet sweet as kind of directing and leading our content style But just like the characters in the game the small fiends who you have to level up to make them more fiendish and Powerful so they can fight against a battle against the slugs that have invaded their world It's really we really believe that it's small things that make a massive difference Whether you're playing the game or whether you're part of the team that's helping build our world and our business We really lead with creativity creative efforts at our company and we validate everything with the data Four key things I'd say that we've learned over the past few years Are really focus on the brand the story the world the engagement and the retention Don't think about your audience as users think about them as players and ultimately potential fans and Really focus on their experience and then the money can follow after that on Marketing it's really important not to focus On the same marketing platforms that all of your competition are thinking about When we first started we called up other CMOs of other mobile game companies And we asked them what's working for you and we got a lot of people telling us Facebook and traditional Mobile acquisition channels But what was super interesting was what wasn't working and a lot of people said to us YouTube's got a big audience But it wasn't working for them in terms of being able to drive in stools from it And that was a great opportunity for us as we started working with influencers pretty early in the space and drove a big awareness for our brands and our RIP The other thing you can do in mobile that's amazing Particularly compared to say film and movie marketing which tends to be all about kind of big television buys is On mobile you can really measure the return on your ad spend by tracking the cohort that come in and then measuring The revenues that that cohort generates So that's been a really great thing for us as we try and kind of have super creative campaigns and try and measure them When we're marketing through non-traditional methods And then the last thing really is I think that what's great about a world and an IP in a story Is that you get to build an emotional connection between your audience and the IP? We noticed it a few times in our life cycle most recently we had the first best fiends wedding Where a lady in Paris met her future husband playing the game and her phone ran out about you and they met and then got married And we actually created a community story video for that kind of sharing with our audience Kind of the connection between people and and what we're building and I'd say that It's really important that you have these moments when you can really believe in your IP Because in a world of all these unlimited content choices It's really important that your brand has a chance of cutting through So we've been making some nice progress this year as we've built our business up to a 50 million dollar annual run rate But ultimately we think with some of the things we've got coming next year We've got an opportunity to take it up a level and really just today wanted to share a few of the lessons We've had along our journey so far Thanks so much everybody for your time