The legend is true. There are still deniers out there who walk among us who do not even have a social media account.

Some of them are even business owners, so what do they do?

It depends, if they have a market without a digital footprint, guaranteed they have an excellent historical reputation and are already well-known before the “.com” blowout.

These are historical operators who will do just fine in future with business purely because they have a good name. However, there are exceptions.

Business is getting tough, not because of the economy, no, it’s because we are either becoming greedy or more people are jumping onto your business idea by the swarm.

So what do you do?

Beat them in the digital realms.

How?

By relating to your customer and your audience and keep it real!

In 2017, I provided services to a gaming company in London.

No names, because we left on terrible terms, and I will tell you why.

It was a dark and stormy night, just kidding, but it felt that way.

“Assassin’s Creed Origins” was just released. For those that don’t know what it is, it’s only the best damn game franchise to have come out. Well, except for GTA5!

It was another meeting which was a follow-up from the previous week’s meeting which was a follow up from the meeting the week before that. You know what I’m talking about.

There we all sat, eight marketing guru’s, 3 UX experts, the “bosses”, the developers, my team leader, his three colleagues and then little ol’ me.

So 16+ people sitting around a typical start-up company daycare centre board room.

“We were discussing our 3-month-old strategy on how we are going to market the game release, with like a super brilliant like social media campaign.”

Effectively, I interpreted this meeting on how we are about to waste another £ 9,500 on spam posts.

As the meeting progressed on how to do AB testing, acquisitions, channels and analytics, with a slight undertone of boosted egos and appendage measuring, I had to endure a 60-minute presentation performed by a very confident and rather attractive ‘lady-guru’ showing her asset strategy to market.

To recap her hour strategy: “Like, literally, they were like going to take over this campaign with really cool ideas, literally”.

They had already spent £4000 (or so) on marketing and noticed an increase in traffic. That is great on graphs and the figures looked like super awesome, btw. But like did someone not like not pass the memo to the bean-bag room that traffic is not proportionate to sales?

Next on the list was Michael (not his real name, of course). Mickey and his merry team of followers had contacted a YouTube influencer to promote the game. The agreement was that they were going to give him a stupid amount of money (enough to retire, possibly), for a 30-second plug on a game which is pretty much available from any other play-store.

And we all applauded this outstanding achievement.

Bradley (his actual name, because he read the book “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck), was next.

He looked pale and unsettled because he too was suffering from concussions caused by banging his head on the table and receiving self-induced face-palms throughout the entire strategy session.

He stood up from his chair and approached the front of the audience. Saying nothing, he connected his fancy laptop to the smart projector and googled Assassin’s Creed Origins.

He then said, the following:

“Assassins Creed is said to be this year’s oil strike, yeah?”

“We want a chunk out of this action, yeah?”

As he hyped the room with excitement, his war cry continued. “We aim to be the leaders in the game market, yeah!?”

And the troops roared and went wild as they bashed their shields.

He smiled at the response, nodded his head and like an honourable General, he strutted over to the high-tech-smart-white board and wrote the following:

“How the fuck does a 16-year-old blogger, and his mates who live in his mother’s basement reach Google’s top 7 page ranks?”

I had no idea that this was the start of Bradley’s resignation speech.

His gripe with the situation is that the gaming company had hired “gurus” at top rates to perform their magic.

Meeting after meeting, stupid campaign after stupid campaign, and here we were, beaten by kids, whose “marketing budget” included chicken wings, chips, Red Bulls and a few Skittles.

Needless to say, Bradley and the team were all escorted out of the playroom when we all quit at the same time.

Why did this happen? (I am not referring to us quitting before being fired)

Because there are no gurus, there are only people who think out the box and can connect and resonate with people, and those that don’t.

The campaigns failed because of the wisdom of the hiring processes to hire the “best of the best”, but not too smart enough to outrank their line managers.

It becomes a game of ego and pecking order depends on terminology and likes.

Moral of the story, keep up with your market because this is a new religion that will stay for a long time.

Your budget means nothing if you are not capable or are not willing to resonate with your client! So keep expectations real!

Quick side note: The company eventually folded in late 2019, just before the pandemic, which during the pandemic would see the largest surge of online gaming sales, like ever!