Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Fortnite: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Wildly Popular Game with VP, Head of Content at GreenSlate, Chris Anderson
Look closely at your competitors. Is there anything they do better than you?
Maybe it’s their messaging, their branding, their logo. Whatever it is, it doesn’t hurt to “borrow” ideas from them. We won’t call it stealing.
That’s just one of the things we’re talking about in this episode as we take marketing lessons from Fortnite with the help of special guest, VP, Head of Content at GreenSlate, Chris Anderson. Together, we chat about borrowing ideas from your competitors, providing opportunities for customization, and making pleasingly digestible content.
About our guest, Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is VP, Head of Content at GreenSlate, a best-in-class software that simplifies and streamlines payroll and accounting for TV and film productions. With over 15 years of experience in digital content, content strategy, and digital media, Chris has built and led teams, created and executed regional and global strategies, and launched and managed multiple brands and products across various industries and platforms.
Previously, Chris was a Managing Editor at Gong.io, a revenue intelligence platform that helps sales teams win more deals. There, he oversaw the editorial process of content creation and distribution across the marketing department, working with various stakeholders and using tools like Asana, Marketo, and Salesforce. Before that, he was a Managing (and Senior) Editor for Asia at LinkedIn News, where he continued to grow a strong personal brand with over 100k followers after previously being selected as the #10 Top Voice in Media on LinkedIn in 2016. He also has experience in banking, gaming, education, and journalism, working for organizations like HSBC, Hong Kong Esports, Hong Kong Baptist University, Turner Broadcasting, HuffPost, and Business Insider.
About GreenSlate
GreenSlate advances the business of content production by seamlessly integrating people, process, and technology to meet the essential business needs of content producers. GreenSlate builds the industry’s most intuitive production accounting software, paperless payroll processing, and digital workflow solutions, with more innovative applications and products on the way. From budget to delivery, GreenSlate technology, tax credit management, and benefits services enable production teams to focus more on what they do best - creating inspiring content. GreenSlate. Evolving the industry, one production at a time.
About Fortnite
Fortnite is an online video game that was launched by Epic Games in 2017. It has six game modes: Fortnite: Save the World, Fortnite Battle Royale, and Fortnite Creative, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival. It’s available across platforms like Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS and some Android devices. It’s incredibly popular with over 500 million registered users, and around 230 million active players each month. The game has generated around $26 billion since it launched.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From Fortnite:
- Borrow ideas from your competitors. If your competitors are offering a product or service you don’t have and it’s doing well, build it out for your brand too. Chris says, “In 2017 PUBG (a game called PlayerUnknown’s Battleground) was the big battle royale, and Fortnite was primarily focused on their pay-to-play model, which was Save the World. But they recognized in their competitor that there was a mode that they did not have that was very good and popular. And they understood that if they changed course and put it out as a free-to-play model, that was worth it. They were flexible and they adapted and they put something out that was fun and engaging for a different audience.”
- Provide opportunities for customization. Ian says, “One of the ultimate B2B lessons is making the customer feel like they're getting exactly what they want and none of the features that they don't want.” Fortnite lets players choose what game mode they want to play, what they want their character to look like, and what emotes they want to use. It gives players ownership of their character and how they feel about the gaming experience.
- Make it short and sweet. Whether it’s a newsletters, blog post, article, email, whatever…make your content pleasingly digestible. People should be able to consume it easily and in a short amount of time. Ian says Fortnite is super addictive because of “the speed in which the rounds happen. If you're out, you're out for a little bit, but then you can go back in and do something else. It's just got this built-in super fast pace that makes it really engaging.” And Chris added that he can knock out a game in a matter of minutes.
Quotes
*”Epic Games is really good at understanding their audience as well as their potential audience that they don't have. They capture these different audiences across the board in these different categories. And they're pulling in all these people from different places because they have this platform that's flexible enough to build on top of it. It's quite brilliant.” - Chris Anderson
*“There's a difference between what you think people want, what you want them to want, and then what they actually want. In B2B you can put a ton of effort into building a new feature because maybe you've done some market research and you think that, ‘Oh, people definitely want this. This is something that they're interested in.’ You build it, spend the time, you put it out there and it bombs, or for whatever reason, it just doesn't resonate. It's hard for people to pull back from these sometimes because you put all that energy, all that effort into creating that product.” - Chris Anderson
*”It's hard to bullshit people. You could be really good at content marketing and really good at pushing narratives. But if the product itself can't back it up, you're going to forever be chasing a dream.” - Chris Anderson
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Chris Anderson, VP, Head of Content at GreenSlate
[1:12] Discussion about Fortnite in B2B Marketing
[1:17] What does Chris’ role at GreenSlate entail?
[1:17] What makes Fortnite remarkable?
[4:21] What are some B2B marketing’ takeaways from Fortnite?
[38:57] What is Chris’ content strategy?
[50:03] What can we learn about content calendars from Fortnite?
[57:45] What advice would Chris give other marketers?
Links
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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