Here at OutsiderGaming, we were lucky to have Chris Erb, a real powerhouse in the marketing and brand management world. We chatted to Chris, founder of Tripleclix, a marketing firm that works with video game heavyweights like Blizzard and Xbox. Chris Erb has an impressive resume that includes roles as VP of brand marketing for EA Sports and executive vice president of legendary entertainment, among others. Being an expert in the gaming industry’s complex marketing landscape, his dedication to gaming is the driving force behind his success.
We discuss Chris’s early days in this exclusive interview. Chris managed marketing at the iconic GameWorks arcade in Seattle and contributed to the launch of Pokémon at Wizards of the Coast. From the Atari 2600 all the way to the revolutionary Grand Theft Auto series, Chris’s gaming history is vast. We explore his varied gaming background, which includes sports games and the transition from top-down to 3D Grand Theft Auto.
Insights into Chris Erb’s podcast, which he hosts expertly, include memorable moments such as an interview with Mark Fernandes, a key figure in Rockstar Games’ music licensing. Exciting anecdotes about smoking weed, driving a Porsche around New York City, and choosing the best music for Grand Theft Auto.
Come and be a part of an interesting discussion in this exclusive interview with Chris Erb or watch/listen to the full interview over on our YouTube channel.
OutsiderGaming’s Interview with Chris Erb
Paul:
Welcome to Outsider Gaming. I’m your host today, Paul, and I’m lucky enough to be joined by Chris Erb. Chris has oodles of experience in marketing and brand management, and he is currently the founder of Triple Clicks, which is a marketing agency which collaborates and joins forces with the likes of very popular brands and the gaming industry. Before this, Chris was the executive vice president for Legendary Entertainment in their brand marketing departments. And prior to that, he was the vice president of brand marketing for EA sports. Um, currently, some of the popular gaming industry giants that Chris works with are the likes of Blizzard and Xbox but I’m sure nobody’s ever heard of them!
When he has any spare time, which I’m sure he doesn’t with all the things he does, he’s also a master podcaster, so hopefully he can give me a few tips and pointers on how to get some brilliant guests, because his list of guests is very impressive. Hello and welcome Chris.
Chris:
Hey, thanks for having me. You got most of that, right! I don’t know about the master part of the podcast, but, uh, thanks for having me. Excited to talk.
Paul:
Delighted to have you. So even to step back a little bit, when talking about your career, it seems very much like marketing, marketing, marketing, which is great. Like, obviously it’s very, very focused. Well, I would say, master, you know, at this stage you’ve mastered it. So, what led you from early days, you know, working for other companies to eventually branching out on your own? And also, where does gaming come into it? Like, why did you choose that niche?
Chris:
It’s really about kind of, you know, I grew up in a house where both my parents were executives and, and I learned, like, do the things that you love. So, when I graduated from the University of Washington, I liked video games. So how do you get a marketing career in video games? Marketing was kind of my major in college and I wanted to get into that. So, I lived in Seattle at the time. I worked at a store we opened called GameWorks, which was an arcade. Steven Spielberg kind of big arcade thing. So that was my real first kind of foray into gaming.
I got to work at GameWorks, and I was kind of the marketing manager for that and had fun with that. And I thought about my career, how do I do multiple things? Part of it was venue based. Part of it is brand based, part of it is advertising based. And so that was kind of my first kind of start at GameWorks and then I had the opportunity to go to a company called Wizards of the Coast, which was in Seattle. I had a great time, and helped launch Pokemon at the time, which was fun. Worked on Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering. And so, a really good kind of my first foray, if you will, into the brand side of the business. Um, and so just kind of grew from there. And that was really kind of the catalyst that got me started.
Paul:
Wow. Sounds pretty cool. So yeah, your passion for gaming is kind of what made you want to see if you could earn a keep doing it. So going back to then, you’re doing those live venues, the Steven Spielberg stuff. What was your game of choice and what would you love to play?
Chris:
Uh, you know, in the arcade it was probably the sports stuff. I played a lot of Blitz, a lot of, you know, the shooter games and kind of some of that stuff. I grew up in an arcade, so like Gauntlet, and all those things back in the days, so I just, I loved everything from that side. My first console was an Atari 2600. Like, I’m that old! I got that the first year it came out. And I’ve always kind of been a fan ever since. Huge. Obviously, everybody in our generation, Nintendo was huge, and then Sega and the Sega CD even and playing off that stuff. And then there was a console called the 3D, which was unbelievable just from a graphics perspective, playing a lot of Road Rash and kind of fun games on that system.
So, I have kind of owned almost every console. Just because, you know, you kind of get addicted. So, um, a little bit of everything, I don’t think I, you know, I was a huge sports fan. And in Seattle in the 70s and 80s, the Seahawks and Mariners sucked. So, uh, I had to win all the championships on the field myself. So, I played a lot of sports games. But then, you know, Grand Theft Auto was huge on PC. Just the top-down version, probably GTA two, from the top down. It was probably my first foray into it. I remember going to E3 that year where they actually debuted, Grand Theft Auto three, and nobody was playing it. It was in this little back area of the hall, and I was like, I wanted to play it because I liked the top down. And when I saw it, it was a completely different game and it blew my mind. So I have been there since day one and it’s fun to see that. But I try to play a little bit of everything and kind of dabble in everything.
Paul:
I’m going to show my age because you mentioned GTA, like, uh, in our secondary school, we had a computer lab. So, you know, lots of PCs now, they weren’t very good PCs, but somebody had managed to bring in GTA on a disk and had installed it on every single computer. So anytime you know, a teacher wasn’t present, we’re all like playing away. It was one of my favorite games growing up. Yeah. And then yeah, completely revolutionized when it went 3D and became a beast.
Chris:
Um, but yeah, it was so fun. Top down. You don’t need to change it. I don’t need the 3D. This is amazing. And then you’re like, oh, all right, I see what you did.
Paul:
Like it kind of works. Yeah, yeah.
Chris:
It was decent! HaHa
Paul:
So yeah, I think the second game was kind of futuristic wasn’t it. It wasn’t the same as the first. Uh, and I remember there was a London one as well. It was like an expansion. Um, but yeah, I loved them, played them.
Chris:
It must have been easy just to change the map and move stuff around and color the sprites in differently. And it’s fine that the guy who didn’t build it seemed so easy.
Paul:
Absolutely. Uh, speaking of Rockstar, you’ve actually I know from your podcast you’ve interviewed, Mark Fernandes. He used to work with Rockstar Games. Did he not? Did you get any crazy insights into how games were made back then, or did he get to work on any of the Gtas?
Chris:
Yeah, I think he did. I think he managed, if I remember correctly. I think Mark worked on the music side of it and kind of did a lot of the music licensing for that stuff and told a good story in my podcast about driving around New York City in a Porsche, smoking weed, and just listening to music to feel like, what is the music that would kind of fit in the game? And so, he did it with some of the founders, and they just drove around to see, like, what are they feeling? And, you know, just what was working. And that’s I think that’s how they were kind of picking music. Um, it was funny, I became friends with Mark just from the gaming space, but really from Marc Ecko, he was Marc Ecko. And so it was a big Marc Ecko fan. I actually saw Mark at Comic Con this weekend. So they were like just a fun collab. And Mark Fernandez was always kind of into the gaming stuff. And you know, when Mark did Ecko, Get Up and all those. Yeah, it was an amazing kind of thing. I was running at the time, the Madden franchise and I used to bring him up to the draft every year and kind of hang out and tell good stories. I had a friend named Nathan that also worked at Rockstar and worked on The Midnight Run or The Midnight Club and some of those. Oh yes, as well. So a lot of good stories came out of those buildings.
Paul:
It was one of the first games, I think, on PlayStation two. Yeah. Was it two? Yeah.
Chris:
Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Paul:
Very good.
Chris:
Trying to make Los Angeles as authentic as possible.
Paul:
Uh, nice. Tell me a bit about Madden because you uprooted your life just to go work on Madden, is that right?
Chris:
Yeah, so I was at Wizards. Wizards had a ton of brands. I was working on everything from Duel Masters, to Neopets, to Dungeons and Dragons. We had a book division, so I actually worked on Wheel of Time with Robert Jordan and brought that stuff into the fold. Um, and got a call. A friend of mine that had worked at Wizards named Tom Gatti had left and went to Electronic Arts, and I was like, oh, video games would be awesome, because Wizards was very tabletop and card games. And I probably bugged Tom for a year. Finally, there was an opening and they brought me down, and I interviewed to run the Madden franchise specifically. So, yeah, I took over the franchise, I think, in 2004/2005 and spent a decade in Florida. Obviously, when you get a call, you want to work on the Madden franchise, which is iconic in the sports space.
So spent ten years getting to work on that stuff, which is amazing. Um, all of the franchises we had the first five years I worked, specifically on the P&L and managed the Madden franchise. And then the next five years, I kind of took over the rest of just the EA sports brand and started building up a brand and doing a lot of those collabs.
Paul:
Yeah, I know, like, for us, FIFA is huge. Um, and anywhere in Europe, anywhere UK based. I think FIFA is huge, whereas maybe in the States it’s Madden isn’t it?
Chris:
Yeah, I love FIFA and there’s a guy named Matt Bilby who’s still at EA who was amazing. He ran the FIFA franchise. So, we were very close. And I’d send him a jersey from the cover of Madden, and he’d send me, you know, a Messi jersey or something like that. We stayed connected because I loved that at the time. I think in the US, I think Madden was just the biggest thing in the world. I think the FIFA numbers were big, but the Madden was just so much bigger here. But I think if I look at the numbers now, I’m sure FIFA kind of caught it in the US. Like I think FIFA, the game is so big, um, that it’s probably the same size as the Madden franchise. And I remember a lot of the NFL players, you know, Chad Johnson, like all those guys were playing FIFA anyways, like those guys, all the athletes loved FIFA. So, it was a super fun franchise. But it was, at the time, you know, college football and Tiger Woods, and NASCAR. And we had a really good lineup of a ton of fun games that, you know, kind of really cross-pollinated and really built that brand pretty strong.
Paul:
Sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of taking it back a little to Tripleclix. So, you’re big into your games, you’ve massive connections in the gaming world. Going through EA, going through all these different gaming companies and meeting all these different people over the years. What’s the elevator pitch? So, let’s say I’m Coca-Cola. Why would I want to be, you know, working with games?
Chris:
Sure. Let me take one step back. I started as an agent, so I left EA and I moved to LA. I had twin boys and I wanted to live. I’m more of a West Coast guy, so I was like, I want to come west. And so, I took a job at Legendary Pictures, and I was the head of theatrical. Um, and the first thing I noticed was when I was at Wizards and I was at EA, there’s no, like, marketing agencies that could help me. Like we literally had to my team. We always had to do everything ourselves and kind of build that stuff up. As soon as I get to Legendary, there’s like 10,000 agencies that do movie promotions. And it was just kind of a light bulb, like, the gaming industry needs all this. So, uh, I had a good run there but really wanted to kind of get back into gaming. And so, I started Tripleclix just based on the idea of, how do I help companies do all the stuff that I was doing in Wizards and EA and build it out. So, our Tripleclix is two kinds of sides of the business. The first side is helping publishers and games market the game. So, we work closely with Activision, Xbox, PUBG, Krafton, Epic. All the fun games. But the other side of the business is really helping brands authentically come into gaming. So, to the Coca-Cola question, you know, if you look at the size and scale of gaming, about two thirds of the US population consider themselves gamers.
Chris:
The gaming industry globally is about $185 billion. It’s bigger than the global theatrical business, the global TV streaming business, and all of North American sports combined. Games are bigger, right? So, 98% of Gen Z play video games, 100% of alphas play video games, probably 94% of millennials play video games. If you want to have authentic conversations with these audiences, gaming is the platform to do it. But you have to do it right. This is just a different audience. It’s not a movie audience. You know, most of the theatrical programs I worked on, Pacific Rim and Godzilla and some of those, you can just kind of, hey, go see our movie and do a Snickers deal or a Doritos deal and just put the movie on the bag, and it’s gone in two weeks. Right. And it’s a quick hit.
Gaming like Fortnite. I think Fortnite is still in beta after four years! So, I have my kids, all they do is play Fortnite and they have been playing it for three years. And so, if you want to get into these things instead of doing movies, which is this really small window, how do you do something authentic? That kind of hits this audience the right way. So, we tell brands, hey, if you’re going to do this, you have to do it the right way. What are you adding to the culture? Not what are you taking away from it? Don’t come in and market things. How do you build, how do you kind of build a relationship with them? Because I think there’s two ways, from a marketing perspective, you can market to people, or you could build a direct relationship with people. I don’t think either one is wrong. I just think it’s a different path. Um, and so if you want to build relationships with these audiences, you have to give value and you have to do things that make their experiences better.
Chris:
And so how do we help brands start to figure out the best way to kind of go down that path, as opposed to just marketing it? I think sports games are as good as good competition. If I was launching a beer company, I would build a beer. I’d think about my retail distribution, I think about my marketing, and then I’d go to ESPN and I’d buy a bunch of advertising and I’d market my thing. Some brands are like, okay, let’s just buy Twitch. And it’s kind of backwards, right? You just don’t go buy the media and then, okay, what are we going to do? Um, which is what a lot of brands do, is just kind of come in and just kind of, hey, everybody yell Froot Loops and we’ll do some stuff, right? How do you have a more authentic experience of it? How do you have Pringles make suspicious stew flavored Pringles, right. And then you can do something authentically within the space, and then you can have Mr. Beast come in and tell your story.
But you have to build something that the fans will appreciate and love, or at least kind of laugh at or not at, or just something that’s kind of authentic, engaging, um, and then build programs around it. And so that’s what we try and help brands do, is kind of have a better space in gaming. And how to have a more authentic relationship with gamers?
Paul:
Yeah. And is it a blank canvas or will they come to you with certain ideas or certain, you know, limits to what they’re willing to say yes to?
Chris:
Yeah, it’s different with every single brand. I think there’s some brands that will be like; I don’t know how to do gaming. What should we do? And so, we discuss what’s the overall brand strategy. What are you guys trying to do for the next 5 or 10 years? How do we authentically kind of plug that into the gaming space? Swarovski is probably a good example of that. Hadn’t been in the gaming space and in the US, Swarovski is probably a little bit different than it is. You know, globally, it’s kind of a premium, elevated brand. In the US they have retail stores. So, it may be your mom or your grandma’s brand. So how do we kind of bring that in authentically to gaming. And they’re all about anniversaries and awards and stuff like that. So, for the 20th anniversary of Halo, we made Swarovski Halo Master Chief helmets. We actually didn’t sell them; we made a certain amount of those helmets. You know, what Master Chief wears on his uniform and 117 and kind of built that out. And we, we kind of start to get people to think about it. And then we followed up and Swarovski has built Epic’s Fortnite Championship trophy for the last couple of years. So again, authentic in the space.
But then, you’ll do a program with a Rockstar energy drinks, or Doritos, or Mountain Dew. And then it’s kind of how are you giving value instead of buying content within the game? You know, Fortnite makes, what, $1 billion every 60 days from people buying microtransactions instead of getting you to spend your money on those. How do I get that content that I love on products that I buy? So, if you buy a Kellogg’s product, you’re getting mine coins for Minecraft. Or, another example, right now on Doritos, there’s six different bags from all the different games on Xbox. And there’s a piece of content for each of those games. So, giving value back and again, adding to the culture instead of kind of taking away. And so, you don’t see a lot of movie promotions giving value when they’re on bags from a gaming perspective and from our thing is like, hey, what are we rewarding people with for making this purchase and giving that value?
Paul:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, you’ve mentioned movies, and TV… Games are unique because they’re not passive. You know, you watch a movie, it’s 90 minutes, two hours and it’s gone. If you’re playing a game, as you mentioned, I could be playing Fortnite for years, but even a single player game, you’re going to pump 100 hours into Elden Ring and stuff like that. So, it makes more sense that that’s interactive. They’re invested, they’re playing that thing, and then to be able to get something from that, you know, from Pringles or from Doritos or from whoever it is. That’s great.
Chris:
So, we try to tell the brands, you may love a movie that’s coming out, but you’re going to spend two hours in the theater, and then you’re going to come home and spend 200 hours in a game right now. Elden Ring, a great example of it. Right. So, these IPS and these worlds are much closer to the heart, to the audiences than the films are. Right? Like, I love Andor, but I don’t get to play and live in Andor’s world. Right? But I do in these worlds, and I can explore and do all these things. And so, if you want to have that more authentic connection with this consumer, it’s, you know, celebrate the worlds that you want. Part of the challenge is always, you know, and the brands that we work with have been really good about it.
But like some brands want to show up in the game right in the universe, like you want Master Chief to drink a mountain dew. It’s not a good idea. It’s definitely a 90s trope of making your brand show up in the game. What people love is they love the games more than they love your brand. And so how do the games show up on your brand? And that’s the thing that gets people excited rather than having your brand disrupt their experience in the game. So, we fight very hard about not putting brands in games but putting games on brands. Um, because I think that’s what the consumer loves more. Um, and so, so it’s an interesting conversation to try and get brands to kind of be kind of collaborative. I think it makes sense, in sports, like if I play as the Seahawks or if you play for Manchester United, you have certain kinds of signage in the stadium already. It’s fine to put those authentic brands and then the brands in the games make sense because it adds to the experience. If you’re playing Midnight Club and you’re driving around Los Angeles, you want to see certain landmark stores or retailers and that stuff. So, there’s moments where it makes a ton of sense. Um, and then there’s times where it’s very disruptive and you don’t want to do that. And so, I think it’s kind of threading that needle around whether the brand should be in the game or whether we should do things outside of the game that could be fun.
Paul:
Yeah. A couple of examples. Just when you said it like that. Death Stranding from a couple of years back, Monster Energy drinks and you know, he’s in game and there’s really, really high textured models. No, no no, it’s very jarring, very weird. You’re just shoehorning this in. And then more recently, Marvel Spider-Man 2, they must have a deal with Nike. And, you know, (spoilers for everyone). Towards the end, Miles gets a costume that he’s made himself and it’s all Nike. And then Nike are selling those inspired trainers from the game, which isn’t the worst, I guess.
Chris:
I like that one because that’s probably who Miles is. If you and I haven’t got that far in the game, like, yeah, I haven’t played far enough to get it. And I know bait. There’s a store called bait, um, that shows up in Spider-Man and that’s a real world New York City. It’s a great brand. I like how that shows up. I didn’t work on the Spider-Man one. But like, I know that they made a shoe for the first one, but they had to take it off there because of licensing issues. So, it was good to see it authentically in the film. And then you get to see it in the game. And so, I think that connection, like if you think about who Miles is, like he’s definitely Jordan’s kid, right?
Paul:
Yeah. Yeah. He’s into his fashion.
Chris:
Yeah, it feels good. The Mountain Dew was a good example. Or the monster in grid integration is a little bit tougher. And that’s a harder one for sure. And I think that’s the stuff that we try and authenticate like I would have done, like if they gave us New York City, we’d bring in like Prince Street Pizza and we’d bring in all these brands that kind of like, yeah, when I’m here, I really want to hit these spots. So yeah, I think it’s probably different for everybody, but I think those are two good comps on different sides of the spectrum. You can’t overdo it. And he’s like, hey Nike. And then there’s an ad and then there’s all this stuff.
But if you can, you know, authentically I look at what FIFA did and uh, I think we did in 2013 where the Coke one was a really good example is when, they had an athlete that you had to play in the game, and Coke actually signed him as an authentic kind of sponsor. And then as you’re playing through the game, as you level up in the game, you finally get to the Premier League and you actually get to film a commercial. And that’s really big for your character, and you have to film a Coke commercial. So, like it’s an ad integrated into the journey of the character, which made a ton of sense. So, I think if done properly, brands, there’s a place that brands can really kind of make this story better. You don’t want somebody to watch a commercial to go through a thing, or even having Mercedes Benz in kind of, uh, when you think about Mario Kart, like you don’t want to put a Mercedes in a Mario Kart because, like, it’s not the real world, right? You don’t want to break that belief of that world. And so, I think you have to be very careful about where to apply brands.
Paul:
Yeah. I know the simplest thing is discounts, but I would prefer rewards for players. So, imagine, you know, talking about Spider-Man again if you say they have that deal with Nike. So, say anyone who owns the game can have a 10% discount, but anyone who gets the platinum trophy or finishes the game, gets maybe a 15-20% discount, kind of appealing to the competitive nature of a player.
Chris:
You know, we yeah, we did it with Call of Duty. I think the discount is tough because you’ve probably got 100 million people playing it. And so, I’m sure on the Nike side, the risk of the discount is a little bit tougher. I think it’s a great idea. We did it with Call of Duty and Adidas, where we actually worked with a musician named Pusha T, and he designed a shoe. And the only way you had access to that shoe is you had to prestige your character up to 100 in Call of Duty, and that would unlock the ability to buy the shoe. Gotcha. So, I think kind of finding ways to reward things, we’re always careful, you know, if you play Fortnite at all, you know that the difference between the skins and all that stuff is just kind of decorative, right? It doesn’t affect gameplay. My kids will tell me like, hey, the hitbox is wider on this character. So, I’m playing as a girl and I’m going to be like green so I can hide in bushes. So, there’s some competitive things to it, but like, they’re hardcore. Like for those kids on the competitive side there’s some things there. But you can’t have a Nike in the game that makes you run faster. Right. You’ve got to keep it balanced. And you don’t want to make it look like, oh, if you buy this, you’re going to be better. You shouldn’t have these hurdles that people have to spend money to be better.
Luckily, the publishers are totally in line with that thinking. Sometimes the brands are a little bit tougher to be like, hey, you should be able to jump higher or run faster. Or if you drink this beverage, your power goes up. So, like managing some of those thoughts, our job is to make sure that we’re protecting the game or protecting the brand from the gamers. Right. How are we making sure that the balance is the right way? And we’re kind of that connective tissue between the publisher, the brand and the consumer and making sure that like kind of everybody’s winning the brand, and the game is getting some marketing that they love. The brand is getting that close association. But the consumer experience is like unlocking things for behavior. So, I think there’s a kind of a tight wire that you walk, just to make sure that everybody is kind of passionate. I mean, when a brand hires us, the first thing we say is we’re going to promise that you’re not going to show up on Reddit, right? Which feels like a weird brand promise, but like, we’re going to do these things the right way, and we’re going to make sure that you’re not getting called out for it. And the idea of these programs is to turn these consumers into evangelists for you.
And so how do you get them? Hey, where did you get that scan? Oh, I got it doing this or with this brand or we just did a program. We have a restaurant called Ihop in the US, which is an awesome breakfast restaurant. We just did a Magic: The Gathering kind of promo. We made five different pancakes for Magic: The Gathering from all the different characters. And we encourage people to kind of come in, you know, have fun and you earn points there and then you can turn in your points for pan coins, which is a reward thing for the restaurant. Instead of getting free pancakes, you can actually use those to get XP in arena for Magic. And we gave away card sleeves, Ihop card sleeves and playmats and all these kinds of programs. And it was so well received, and it was like, hey, 20 years ago, I used to go to Ihop and they used to yell at me and I couldn’t play games on the tables. And now it’s like, this is what we do as a culture. And Ihop totally gets it and totally understands it and wants to support the communities. And so like, yes, come in, bring your decks, play magic, play D&D, enjoy the tables. So, I think the way the world has changed with gaming and brands being able to celebrate where they may not have 20 years ago, they’re now kind of celebrating and being very creative in the space.
Paul:
It sounds good. And you’ve mentioned so many different campaigns. I know, like even on the shelf behind you, Rockstar drinks, I know you’ve done stuff with Halo with them, you’ve done stuff with Cyberpunk with them. Is there any campaign in particular that you’re very proud of or is very creative or, you know, just really successful that you’ve done?
Chris:
Um, yeah. Good question. I think probably the best examples are not the ones behind me. We do a lot of lifestyle collaborations and kind of bring things to life. As you think about the gaming space, we say 96-98% of gamers of the entire generation play games, which means the number of female gamers is on the rise right over the last 5 to 10 years, I think 46% of gamers are women now. But you don’t see a lot of female specific promotions for stuff, which feels weird, right? We make men’s small shirts for men and try to sell them to the ladies. So, the program that I love that we did was a collaboration with OPI, which is a nail polish brand. They’re kind of the Jordans of nail polish if you’ve never heard of OPI. We did an Xbox controller. Um, it was a long conversation with OPI. I think I talked to him for 2 or 3 years, kind of like, hey, here’s the gaming pitch. Naming is the big thing with OPI and the polishes.
So, any females reading this will know, like, Linkin Park After Dark or Big Apple Red, or, like, they have these kinds of famous names. And so, they let us do a collaboration with Xbox with the spring collection, where we got to rename all the nail polishes. And so, when you buy ” You had Me At Halo” you would get a character in the game based on that color. Or if you bought “Racing for Pinks” or “Trading Paint” you would get a Forza car based on those colors. We did something very specific for an underserved audience that never really got programs for them specifically. And listen, a lot of guys now are wearing nail polish, so it’s a very inclusive program. And that was really well received. And we did a ton of things around that one. So, I love that we just helped Porsche celebrate the 75th anniversary of Porsche, where we made 75 different Xboxes with liveries from all the Porsche cars that were iconic moments in Le Mans history and built out some things like that. The Swarovski stuff is great. So just the things that are unexpected, like when we did OPI, like, no one’s done it before, it was a massive program. I think we got 4 billion impressions the first 30 days, and it dropped in 33 countries. Like no one saw an Xbox nail polish collaboration at a really premium level before. Nail polish is named after your favorite games, unlockable content and games like it was. It wasn’t a logo slap kind of thing. It was an authentic well thought out program.
To your point, it went so well but, I spent three years convincing him to do it. And like week two of the program, they’re like, what are we doing next! Um, and so the Xbox controller that you mentioned, the next year, we actually took the summer colors and we debuted them on an Xbox controller. So, that’s how they announce their colors for that year. So again, that natural kind of connectivity of doing things the right way but doing them at a really premium level and not kind of the logo slap stuff. Those are some of the collaborations that I love. Obviously, being on 100 million bags of Doritos and 800 million cans of Mountain Dew is like, that’s the authentic stuff. Now, how do we get content that gets people excited and how do we do that? I love the scale of those programs and the relationship because, you know, Doritos, I actually did the first ever Doritos video game promotion back in 2009, when I was running the Madden franchise. I let Doritos consumers pick the cover of Madden. Um, and back then I had to spend a lot of time convincing Doritos why that would make sense for them. And how do you take your chips off the bag? And let’s put Shaun Alexander from the Seahawks on your bag of chips and try to vote for the cover. And so, we did it. And it was the biggest promotion in Doritos. And now they’re endemic to the space because they do so many programs over time. Working with those kinds of iconic brands is amazing. But the things that are kind of unique and different are really what gets us excited.
Paul:
Yeah, I see, this is more a personal thing, I’m looking to get clothing, like gaming clothing. It’s kind of what I want even for Christmas. I was just saying I’d love to pick up some gifts. I know video games pay my bills now because I write about them. So, I want to wear gamer gear with pride. I want to, you know, get a hoodie, get a zip top, get whatever. Um, but I don’t see many options. You see a lot of food; you see a lot of the energy drinks. You see a lot of that. I know you’ve done a few Call of Duty promos. Love it, love it. Yeah. So, are there more promotions like that, coming down the lines?
Chris:
Yeah, I think we try to do them authentically [Chris shows the Hoodie he’s currently wearing]. This is from Antisocial. We collaborated for the championship. So, this is kind of like Call of Duty finals, League finals stuff. We’ve been doing a lot of those. There’s a brand called The Hundreds, which is a like, iconic street brand, uh, based in Los Angeles. Bobby is an awesome kind of driver of culture in the community. And so, we did an Xbox collab with those guys. So yeah, I think you’ll see a lot more of those kinds of things. What I would like to do is have them not be as hard to get. We did an Adidas collab for the 20th anniversary of Xbox. We made four different shoes with Adidas. Um, and some of them were kind of friends and family only, but a couple of the shoes, we wanted to make sure everybody had access to them. So, we did pretty big global drops of those. Also, Nike does a really good job of like super limited edition and then super mainstream. And I think we need more of those collabs in the space. But I also want to make them less chase and less hard to be a part of. And how do you kind of have those programs be a little bit more accessible? To your point, on some of that stuff? I’ve seen Nintendo’s done some fun collabs and we definitely have a big collab coming next year, the Japanese brand that everybody will love. So, there’s more things coming, but it’s about doing it the right way and making sure the accessibility is there and I think is really important. We do a lot with Billionaire Boys Club, with Pharrell and his team. For the Halo anniversary, we did on November 17th. We dropped 117 shirts exclusively. So, there’s fun ways where you can have drops, but then making stuff, you know, attainable is really important.
Paul:
Yeah, absolutely. And you’ve hinted at a Japanese campaign coming up. Can you speak more about any future campaigns?
Chris:
Uh, yeah. Q4 is kind of like, this is the moment where we’re starting to lock down all the partnerships for next year. And so, there’s a lot of things coming, whether it be from the CPG worlds or the lifestyle stuff. Some of them take a while to build out. So, we’re really in the middle of trying to lock some deals in and start to kind of ideate on how we bring things to life authentically. I think the Porsche thing that we had talked about this year, uh, you know, took a while, but being able to announce that with Geoff Keighley on the Summer Game Fest and building those things out, those are the plans that are just starting to come to fruition now. And so, I wish I had a couple of things I could share with you, but not yet. We’re in the lab trying to put things together as we speak.
Paul:
Absolutely. Yeah. I have a couple more questions for you, but before we kind of wrap up, I just want to say to the viewers at home, if you like this content, please hit subscribe. We try to get out videos at least once a month. And also hit the notifications and please leave a comment if you like what you see. Tell us if you don’t like it. You want to see something else, something different? Stick it in the comments below and we’ll come back to it.
Um, so a couple of things. You mentioned Geoff there, which I really have to get to your podcast. Like, it’s a who’s who of celebs in the gaming world. It really is like, uh, we’ve Aaron Greenberg from Xbox. You’ve got, we’ve already mentioned Mark Fernandez who worked with Rockstar. Geoff Keighley for me is probably the biggest name out there. I mean, we’ve no E3 anymore. So, Geoff is the guy. He is the guy! He is front facing doing those events, showing us all the games. In your own words, which I loved. You said he is the Ryan Seacrest of the gaming world because everyone who meets him just loves him. So, speaking of your podcast, have you any plans to do any more episodes?
Chris:
Yeah. Uh, it’s great timing. We’re bringing it back next year at the beginning of the year. Next year is our 10th anniversary. And so, we actually have a ton of plans for next year. A caveat, Geoff and I are pretty close friends. We’re actually doing some things together next year, so we’re building some content together. So, caveat to that, but I love Jeff. Like take out the kind of we’re doing stuff together part of it. But he’s been so important to the authenticity of the space. Like I won a game award from him in 2007 when they used to do the monkeys. Um, and so I was actually on stage accepting one of those awards for Madden back in the day. But you know, the difference from the monkey that I collected on Spike TV to kind of where it is now, I think back then, I think 700,000 people were watching the Spike TV broadcast and for Jeff to take that over to get to 100 million people watching it globally around the world. Um, and the premium nature of the space and the debuts that he shows and all those things, it’s just awesome for our space.
I’m a huge advocate of the gaming space in general, whether we do it or somebody else does it or what. Like we are passionate, you know, Xbox is a client of mine, but I definitely have a Spider-Man machine I call that sits here so we can play the games that they launch. I’m an advocate of this space in general and no industry has a better voice for them. There’s nobody in the movie industry or the music industry that has the voice that Geoff brings to this industry. So super proud of what he does. And when I tell people that I work in the gaming space, I think people get excited about it because of the games and because of the publishers and all that stuff. So, it’s pretty exciting. I think we’re going to bring the podcast back. I’m going to have Geoff back. We’re going to talk about some things that we’re doing. I try to do kind of an organic, authentic lineup. Like I think we have everybody from Joe Manganiello, the actor who’s the biggest D&D player in the world.
Paul:
I didn’t want to say his last name because I knew I’d get it wrong!
Chris:
He’s actually a friend of ours. We do a ton of stuff with him. We all read comic books and play video games and do D&D like, you know, when Joe was in the first Spider-Man, his first Tobey Maguire movie, right? Like, he’s been around for that while. But he was the captain of the football team and also the dungeon master of his school. And back then, he had to make sure that those two groups of people were nice. Right. Um, but nowadays, like, all that stuff kind of comes together. And so, I think he’s a good representation of how you can be a big part of the community and still be proud of being a gamer. When I first started at EA, you know, we’d have like, hey, you know, Robin Williams doesn’t want people to know that he plays D&D and plays these games, right? People kind of hid, you know, their passion for the space and now everybody is very proud and puts that out there.
So, I like to have those kinds of conversations. I think we had Bobby Hundreds, and he has an amazing real story. We did a Hundreds collab. It was his first ever video game collaboration. Uh, the real reason that we did the collab, because he doesn’t play but his brand, The Hundreds, is all about the life he leads. And so, somebody introduced him to me because his kid’s Fortnite account was locked. He couldn’t figure out the password. He couldn’t get his account unlocked. And somebody sent him to me, and I said, hey, if I unlock your kid’s account, can we do a collab? And he said, sure. And so, I got his account unlocked in like five minutes, and he’s like damn it. So, you know, if you listen to the podcast, he’ll tell you that he could sell ice to people that are in Alaska. But he just tells a funny story of how he doesn’t play games, but all of his employees do, and his kids do, and his life is surrounded by it. And so that’s how we make an authentic collaboration because his brand is about the world around him.
And even though you don’t get on the sticks, just like we do a ton of stuff with a band called Run the Jewels, um, that we’re really close with, with Alan Mike, who doesn’t play games, but I think Al plays. Mike doesn’t play, but like, they love the space. They love the world. They want to be a part of this community just because they’re so passionate about it. Um, and so it’s fun to do things like that. So I think the conversations are always kind of interesting to find out where people’s passion points are in gaming. Hopefully you’ll see the podcast and you’ll see maybe somebody you didn’t know but kind of learn a little bit about the space. So probably January officially is when we’re bringing stuff back.
Paul:
Cool. And just for our viewers, where can we find your podcast?
Chris:
Everywhere podcasts are available. So, I think we’re on Apple and we’re on Spotify and some of those, it’s just the Tripleclix video game marketing podcast.
Paul:
Yeah. And it’s directly on your website as well. It’s linked there too. Yeah, we’ll stick links below. Brilliant. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Uh, wonderful to talk to you. I hope you know; you pass some of these amazing podcasters my way. Just slip me their emails and I’ll annoy them and see if they collaborate. HaHa
Chris:
Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.