This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nikolas Badminton from Blast Radius. He’s one of the Senior Digital Strategist at the company. Blast Radius has been around since 1997 and works in the online space. Their goal is to help major consumer-facing brands revolutionize marketing and branding. In part 1 of this interview, Nik and I get into what he does at Blast Radius, how strategy has changed over the last couple years and what one thing he would love to change about our business. In part 2 we talk about the three tiers of media and what some of the major changes that are going to take place in the industry.

What do you exactly do at Blast Radius?
I’m a Senior Digital Strategist at Blast Radius. I’ve been with the company since August after moving from the UK to Vancouver. Most of my clients are in the video game and entertainment space including Nintendo and Electronic Arts. We help clients start develop a business strategy and from there we look at what technology or tactics might make sense for them, which include websites, gaming, widget, or social media.

How has strategy changed over the last couple years with clients?
We’re finding that a lot more clients are starting to adjust their media mix spend.  Instead of spending a lot of money on a media that will quickly fizzle out, clients are transferring a lot of that money into digital media. Many companies still believe that TV and print are the vehicles that ensure good reach and return – where in fact these are just ‘rented’ spaces for marketing at the end of the day. Digital marketing (including social marketing) ensures a persistent relationship between your client, customer and their purchase. Leaders in their fields, such as Disney, ESPN, Electronic Arts, Starbucks and Nike (i.e. Nike TV) see the benefit from moving funds from traditional media to digital.

For digital to engage video game consumers and bring them back time and time again, they need to think beyond traditional digital advertizing and ensure that customers have access to fresh & consistent content on their different digital platforms:

• Up-to-date information on their site, blogs, widgets etc.

• Compelling content
o User-generated content, ratings and feedback
o Original content videos provided by the companies (interviews, tips/tricks, behind the scene’s)

The ability to share & syndicate the content across multiple communities, forums, blogs, and social sites on the web is the real key to helping connect our client(s) with their customers. If we build a relationship between our client and their customer that can lead to doing some cool campaigns with lifecycle (permission) marketing to help communicate updates and bring them back once again.

If you could change one thing about the industry/business, what would it be?
If I could change one thing it would be that all parts of the video game business start thinking holistically about consumer relationships. Games studios, brand managers, product managers, marketing (traditional and digital) all collaborate from the 1st moment that the game is discussed and leverage their knowledge to help build those relationships with the consumer.

Stay tuned for part 2 where we talk about the three tiers of media, what some of the major changes that are going to take place in the industry and who some of the major players are that are making these changes a reality. You can contact Nikolas Badminton here.

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