Leveling Up Brand
How Jason Bunge, Chief Marketing Officer at Riot Games, is leading gaming into new creative territory and entertaining broader audiences by elevating the brand experience for all of its audiences.
Episode Notes
With games like its played-the-world-over League of Legends, Riot Games has a history of developing entertaining, rich worlds for highly devoted and skilled players. Now, Jason Bunge has joined Riot as the company’s first CMO, and he’s focusing on building a brand unlike any yet seen in gaming.
In his talk with Jesse, Jason describes his journey from advertising to tech to gaming, with stops along the way at Saatchi & Saatchi, Microsoft, EA, and now, Riot Games. He discusses how he believes Riot uniquely hybridized product and culture, and how he’s helping push the brand into new creative territory— maintaining Disney-like ambition—without abandoning the legendary player centricity Riot Games is known and beloved for. Jason talks about the importance of versatility and adaptability in his career; the role of emotion in B2B marketing; the experience of building Microsoft 365 into a cloud platform; the respective roles of the game brand, studio brand, and publisher brand; his role in building engagement and community at EA; and his advice for incoming CMOs.
Guest Bio
Jason Bunge joined Riot Games as its first Chief Marketing Officer in 2020. He oversees the Global Marketing organization, which carries the torch for marketing and publishing excellence across all the company’s games, products, and player experiences and includes overseeing strategy and execution for brand, creative, channels, and community communications globally.
Prior to Riot Games, Jason held leadership roles at Electronic Arts, Trulia (Zillow Group), Skype, Microsoft and Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising. Most recently at EA, Jason led the company’s games portfolio, including the record-setting launches of Apex Legends, the SIMs, and that franchise’s first TV series, as well as partnering with Lucasfilm on the successful suite of Star Wars games. Jason graduated with a BS from Boston College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Helpful Links
Forbes Article: In a World Let Loose, Video Game Makers are Doubling Down
Jason’s hiring announcement
Jason on LinkedIn
+ Episode Transcript
Jason Bunge [00:00:00] At Riot, we absolutely care very deeply about the League of Legends IP but we also care very deeply about Riot Games as a brand. That is as much for our audience, as that is for our employees who are super passionate, who come to work every day, who care very deeply about our games and our players. And so you want that brand to stand for something. I think it's really important for those levels that you referenced to be equally reinforced with specificity, investments and intent. And so that's something that we're definitely doing at Riot.
Jesse Purewal [00:00:37] From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences.
I'm Jesse Purewal. On the show today, how Jason Bunge has combined adaptability, curiosity, and a love for creativity to evolve and transform software experiences at Microsoft and reinvent gaming and entertainment, first at EA and now as chief marketing officer at Riot Games.
I am here with Jason Bunge. Jason, thank you for joining me on the podcast.
Jason Bunge [00:01:24] Jesse, great to be here.
Jesse Purewal [00:01:26] Congrats on the move to Riot Games last year, Jason and the chief marketing officer role there. Talk about what it was like to move from the team at EA to become the CMO at Riot during the pandemic and remote work and all of that madness.
Jason Bunge [00:01:40] Yes, it was an interesting journey. I loved my time at EA, there's just some amazing humans there that I got to learn from and work with. I love the video game space and what the industry is doing right now. And I think throughout my career, I've looked for opportunities to take on new challenges and build new things. And Riot was offering those with the combination of what I thought was some pretty amazing ambition for redefining entertainment. I've played games my whole life and so working at EA was that quintessential dream job. And it absolutely delivered on that.
And what I was able to kind of learn as just a consumer of that content is the industry itself is super young. It's not the movie industry that's been around for decades and decades and decades. One of the things that was really clear is the power of IP. It won't surprise you as a marketer saying that brands matter. And I think within gaming, there's this interesting duality, which is of course the game itself has to be great and fun to play but increasingly the IP of that game is also very important to players. And so as I kind of saw that and worked on lots of great IP at EA, Riot, League of Legends is a world phenomenon, and yet it still has a ton of runway ahead of it.
And when I spoke with folks at Riot, they talked about this aspiration of really becoming the next Disney. And when you hear that, you're like, well that sounds super interesting, also by the way, super hard. And I think if you believe that gaming is the future for entertainment, then it's not so far fetched to say that the next Disney, if you will, will come from games. And while there is great IP at EA and Activision and Ubisoft and others, to invest in that IP is actually quite difficult. And I think the plan that Riot has and our ambition for League of Legends and where we're going to take that just was really compelling and exciting. And I was like I have to be a part of this.
And then the flip side, I've been a marketer, my whole career, I kind of bleed it every day. I love what the discipline is about, I love that everybody at any company I've worked at thinks they know how to do marketing really well when they're not even in marketing, so I love that. That's engagement, I love engagement. And I think Riot really understood that it was at a stage where it couldn't just rely on the amazing ability of their game creators to make great games. The portfolio was expanding, the ambition outside of games was there, e-sports for sure, we've just launched our entertainment arm. And so the notion of brand building and how you have those conversations with your, in our case, players, that is marketing. And I think they absolutely understood the need for that. And so thinking about bringing on a CMO for the first time, it just felt like a good timeframe.
Jesse Purewal [00:04:23] The Disney analog strikes me as so interesting on many different levels. I go back in some ways to the Walt Disney 1957 strategy drawing of having talent in studio at the center and it's branching out to all these spots. And maybe the analog is at Riot today games would be at the center, but you could imagine a multifaceted sphere of different experiences coming off of that. So my question for you is, can we realistically posit a world where Riot and other companies in the category once we're known as gaming companies, but then have become actually multifaceted entertainment and experience companies in every sense of the word? Or do you think there's some magic to sticking to the knitting in gaming and not overreaching where the brand might have permission to go?
Jason Bunge [00:05:11] I think it's important for any company to understand what they're great at. And I think in our case, we are not confused that we are a gaming company first and foremost, and we believe we make some of the best games out there. That will absolutely persist and continue. And frankly if it doesn't, to your point, we get distracted by some of these other adjacent very important areas. Our players start to get confused as to who we are and why are they spending as much time with us as they have been.
I think the other side of that though is it's there to take, right? So someone's going to do it. There's also this interesting challenge because it's not just enough to say we're going to make a movie about our game IP. You have to interconnect it in some way. And that is really what Disney again, to your point, did phenomenally well, and they do that. But that is the aspiration for sure.
Jesse Purewal [00:05:59] And obviously you were at EA long enough to have developed an educated perspective on what Riot was up to. As you went through the process of evaluating the potential move last summer, what were your reflections on the Riot brand and where it could go?
Jason Bunge [00:06:16] You know, a lot of my career is spent in tech and so I have a very deep appreciation for the journey that startups, for example, go through. Riot or any video game company really goes through the same process. Since their ten-year-old inception, the two founders, Mark and Brandon really made sure the company was focused on a singular idea. Which is we're going to take care of our players and they did that. I'd say from an outside perspective, one of the things that we all knew about Riot Games is that they had this amazing relationship with their players, that a lot of studios were envious of.
The thing that I would also say as an observer was they haven't really had their moment in the light. There's this notion of, as you mature as a company and as a brand, you have to start to find your own narrative. And it's not enough to know that narrative yourself, you actually have to be able to say that in the market and to your players, to your competitors, to your partners. And that is a journey that we're really just beginning.
Jesse Purewal [00:07:13] You're also at that inflection point where undoubtedly you're thinking about not only how to continue to celebrate folks that are in your community today, but folks that you want to start to attract, how have you thought about the potential there and the intersection between new audiences and some of the traditional core?
Jason Bunge [00:07:33] Yeah, it's an interesting perception, I think, outside of gaming and COVID has certainly contributed to this, which is like, wow, everyone's playing. And that in large part is true and that's across the board for lots of different games, mobile, console, PC. But the reality is gaming is a percent of someone's time. And so when you think about the humans of 100 widgets of time during the day that the 100 widgets doesn't go up, there's 24 hours in a day, let's say you get your eight hours of sleep. I mean, so there's a limited amount of time that you're basically competing against the Netflix's of the world, family time, work, reading. So there's this interesting kind of challenge where sure we can look to bring in quote unquote, new types of potential audiences and players, but it's actually the reverse that is more important.
Every gaming community out there large and small has a core group of players that is the lifeblood of any game. They will be your best advocates, they will be your harshest critics, but they will be with you as long as the quid pro quo is there. They will be with you throughout the journey of the game. So that's super important. And this is the job of frankly marketing at any gaming company, I think. How do you take that gravitational pull of that community and start to give other types of audiences a reason to enter the ecosystem. Most people in the world and I think about sporting events, the NBA, the NFL, football around the world, viewing of course is orders of magnitude larger than the people that actually play it. That is not true in gaming. And so how do you kind of reverse that inversion to say, actually, we want more viewers. You don't have to play, but like watch these amazing talented professionals.
And then of course with entertainment, we just announced Arcane with Netflix a couple of weeks ago, that'll be around later this year, which we're very excited about. That's also going to introduce the IP to different types of audiences. And so it's not so much about, I want to acquire a certain percentage of players or audiences in these areas. It's much more focused on that central ecosystem and the core of players and how do you think about bringing in different people. You want to give players different avenues to enter that ecosystem, but that takes a lot of time and investment in thought as far as like how you connectthose pieces.
Jesse Purewal [00:09:43] Jason, you mentioned COVID and the fact that the volume of play went up for obviously obvious epidemiological reasons. Talk to me though about what you think that unveiled in terms of society's readiness, willingness, desire, to step into a new model of thinking about community in a more deconstructed, decentralized virtualized kind of way? What legitimately is the opportunity and the obligation for Riot and companies in its category to step into this moment and help redefine community in interesting ways.
Jason Bunge [00:10:20] Yeah, I think at the core of it, and I think this absolutely played a central role if not the primary role for the uptick we saw during the pandemic, which of course we're still in, but it's the social nature of games today. Our friends at Epic have espoused this since the introduction of Fortnite, which obviously has seen tremendous success as a platform for bringing like-minded individuals together and celebrate different events and gaming capabilities, but the social fabric of games is where more humans are spending their time together. I think there's a stat out there, it's roughly 40% of the world has played a video game or has been introduced to video games.
And so you're talking about three billion plus people. And the number one reason why they do that is because their friends are there. The number tworeason is because they're fans of the IP, whether that's Star Wars or Harry Potter or Call of Duty, et cetera. There are massive entertainment properties out there that are popular because they tell great stories. And anyone in the movie business will tell you that in essence is the most important thing that they can do is tell great stories.
Gaming is no different. The biggest difference with gaming and the reason why we're seeing what we're seeing is because of the social nature of games today. It is where your friends are. It's where you communicate with your friends. It's where you obviously play. And it's not perceived as this, "I could be doing something else with them." It's where people want to interact. And then certainly when things were shut down, it was the only way to interact. And I think that reintroduced to a lot of people this very special, very deep level of engagement with either IP that they forgot about or their friends were just like, "Look, let's jump online and let's have fun for an hour playing a game together and we can talk along the way." And it's a rediscovery, frankly, of the power of what games are today.
Jesse Purewal [00:12:12] Jason, I heard you say at the top you love the video game space, you love to build, but I'd have to also believe there is an element of versatility and adaptability in someone who wants to think about the next decade of gaming. So talk to me about where you started to earn your stripes around becoming an agile person and how early in your life that started.
Jason Bunge [00:12:34] Yeah, I would go way back to the beginning, which is I grew up an air force brat. It required us to move a lot. And it really I think in hindsight, taught me this notion of adaptability, both from the standpoint of inserting yourself in environments and adjusting and learning and listening, but also with people. I definitely believe that one of the things that I can offer folks that I work with is this notion of a lack of prejudgments, a genuine willingness to understand, and like just significant flexibility to pivot and evolve. And the thing that I said to folks that I've worked with over time is I'm definitely an amalgamation of everyone I've ever worked with. Probably some really good things in there and maybe some things that aren't so good in there as well in terms of habits, but I love that though. I love that. I'm absolutely a sponge when it comes to wanting to learn from others, and I've had the privilege of working with some pretty amazing leaders throughout my career who absolutely have had lasting impacts on me.
Jesse Purewal [00:13:32] And you started your career in advertising, if I recall, and what I know of your story is that it's not a typical route into advertising. What do you look back on and say, "I am so glad for those first few years."
Jason Bunge [00:13:43] Yeah, I'd probably say three things. One, at Saatchi & Saatchi, Jim Fitzgerald, he was my first manager. And I think one thing I gleaned from him immediately was attention to detail. Words matter. It was a little bit of like, "Look, I'm working hard. Isn't that good enough?" And it was always like, "Well, no, because this is the bar we need to set for ourselves in terms of the quality of our work." And so that was just something he instilled with me early on.
I think on the creative side, there is just something very special about individuals who have those magic powers. I am not one of them, but who have those magic powers of creativity, whether it's through arts, writing, a video today. You have to respect the craft. And what does it mean to risk take but from a creative perspective? Which is highly subjective, of course, but until you go through those machinations and the discomfort of some of that risk taking, you just don't know what it is. And so I think that was something incredibly powerful for me that absolutely sticks with me today. And I use it every day. And then the third thing is just seeing what good people leadership looked liked was something that, again, today is super important to me in the role that I have.
Jesse Purewal [00:14:47] And I think you went from Saatchi back to Boston to get your MBA. And then after that, you head to Microsoft working on stuff mostly on the consumer side.
Jason Bunge [00:14:54] Yes.
Jesse Purewal [00:14:54] And so talk to me about how intentional that was and what was going through your head and all the things that took you from east to west.
Jason Bunge [00:15:02] Yeah, looking at the journey I had in New York, the agency side, I think what it also helped me understand was I really wanted to do the client side stuff. And I loved advertising, but it was a piece of marketing and I wanted the whole experience of what it meant to manage a brand and think about that. And coupled with that, the dot-com bust was kind of just happening, but clearly that was where the future was going to be. And so it was just a priority for me to find a way out there. Microsoft made a bet on me, which I am very thankful to this day. And I used the 10 years I was there to just learn as much as I could about marketing at a product led company, which is very different than CPG. Not better or worse, it's just different. Marketing's role, it just shows up differently.
At Microsoft, you're working with some incredibly talented engineering leaders who have built these products for most of their careers. And so I think for me, it was learning... And I say this in an incredibly positive way, but a little bit of learning your place. And what I mean by that is I think one of the pitfalls of marketers is when they get a little too wrapped around the axle on things not going their way, marketers are very passionate individuals. They're very smart, but you have to know your place. And I think in tech, you have to understand where the company is at, where the product is at. They're not equal. There's definitely not a one-size-fits-all.
And I think the ability to navigate that is something that I really enjoyed learning. It was definitely not easy, but whether... I think Vizio was my first product, which is a tool that very few, very hardcore IT professionals use. And so marketing for that is incredibly different than marketing a $12 billion office business, at least at the time. It's much bigger now. And so it just required a lot of that adaptability, but I loved it. I loved it. It was super fun. And again, like Microsoft is the kind of place, at least at that time, where you could just move around and do lots of different things. So I was very greedy in that perspective. I tried to learn as much as I could in different roles.
Jesse Purewal [00:16:58] What about the role of emotion in B2B specific marketing? Some of the accounts you got to work on at Saatchi in the consumer zone, eventually you'd go into gaming. High degree of emotional connection. But at that time at Microsoft, what was your reflection around whether the emotional component was either underleveraged and needed to be brought in a more clear way and you're bringing product and engineering teams along to understand that? Or was it like no, we actually need to be going into a much more kind of functional speeds and feeds direction in order to drive demand and win over hearts and minds?
Jason Bunge [00:17:35] I think the easy answer is like, well, no, there's no emotion in B2B marketing. It's the speeds and feeds and it's IT departments buying these products. They're being judged based on return on those purchases. And so it's very scientific, if you will. That certainly is an easy perception to have. And I think it's probably misplaced. I think the word emotion just shows up differently in a B2B context. Even when you think about those same IT departments, they're buying largely based on brand. Yes, they want to get a deal and yes, the economics have to make sense and yes, the features and a spec list has to be there, but in many ways, that's not terribly different than a player deciding whether or not they're going to purchase a game. They're going to want to understand like what genre is it? What can I do in it? How long is it? Those are all very similar things.
And so what I did learn at Microsoft is, and this is a bit obvious to say perhaps, but Office is an amazing brand. Windows is an amazing brand. Excel is an amazing brand. And make no mistake, those products sell the way they do because of that brand. So I think the notion of, hey, is there a role for emotion in B2B marketing? I think the answer is probably yes, but it's specific to the emotion of that IT department. And that just shows up differently than if you're a consumer of League of Legends or Call of Duty. I do give my old colleagues a hard time because it's like, "Come on, that's easy marketing." And they just shake their heads at me. And we all know that's not true.
Jesse Purewal [00:19:00] So tell me about how you observed the evolution of software at Microsoft, because you're there as packaged software is giving way to the cloud and getting a front row seat for all of this. And you're experiencing it as a product leader, as a marketing leader, as a product marketing leader. Just a wonderful and interesting vantage point that I'd love your reflection on.
Jason Bunge [00:19:22] Yeah, it was an interesting time that I was there because the iPhone really was just coming out and finding its place. The App Store was a brand new thing that everyone's kind of looking at and not really sure what to make of it yet. Touchscreens, also very new and not clearly identified as like is that a valuable thing or not? And then of course, mobile in general. But I think Microsoft would be the first to say they kind of missed that window with their mobile phone efforts. But what I would say isthere was no shortage of people who were anxious to feel the urgency to change and evolve. But it conflicted and the friction, and this exists at any company, it conflicted with like, well, but we have a successful business. We're not suffering on these other areas. And so how disruptive do we want to be to ourselves? And so I give the company a lot of credit. The surface came out for the first time when I was there. As you mentioned, Office 365 was launched as the first subscription to a business that was always sold as a box on a shelf for consumers or an enterprise agreement with enterprise customers. And that was hard for the company. I mean, we were approaching a hundred thousand people to understand, why are we doing this? And then others would say like, "We're not nearly going fast enough."
Apple is crushing it with the iPhone and we're not making these turns fast enough. And so what I saw was an interesting, forced evolution and Satya took over. He just accelerated that, I think again, to his credit. But I would say my firsthand experience was one of intentional internal disruption, which again, like most companies have a really hard time to do, but at the same time, understanding what it means to still make great software was very top of minds. And to your point about someone's signing off on a super large deal, it doesn't happen very often. There's got to be empathy for that. And you got to provide safety and confidence. And so I think that safety and confidence is that emotion that you referenced. But at the same time, I think the company has to figure out ways to continue to deliver and evolve.
And I'd say that part was hardest, which is, "Hey, I released a product. It is what it is. We'll get to the next update in three to four years. In the meantime, please use it and have fun." Today, as I think we all know, that doesn't work for any customer of any type. It's like there better be updates every week or two, based both on my feedback, but of course, broader feedback. And you better show the ability to evolve with both featuresand need states, et cetera. That kind of evolution was just beginning when I was there.
Jesse Purewal [00:21:49] In some ways, as a marketer, you're trying to keep pace with the technology and you're trying to keep pace with consumer trends. And you're also a little bit of trying to stay ahead of like where things might go. And so there's this research basis, there's a futuristic basis, there's a trend spotting basis. There's all these things. That all of a sudden, even though no one is genuflecting to you as a marketing leader in a tech based company, in some ways you probably have more potential sources of truth coming into your collective brain on the team than anybody else.
How do you wrestle with that accountability that you could go chase so many different sources of insight and sources of truth, but in the end, you've got to be at high velocity or you fail.
Jason Bunge [00:22:33] Yeah. I mean, I think that's the challenge for every CMO out there today. I tend to look to compartmentalization, I think, to help. You first have to anchor yourself on really what's most important. When I joined Riot... Actually, one of the reasons why I was excited to join, is that the company takes its player centricity very seriously. And there was a phrase in my interview process that someone used with me around, "We actually think about how players will feel about decisions. Not about what players will think, but what players will feel." And I was like, "Wow, that's a really interesting word. How do we do that?" And I can tell you, it is the anchor that helps keeps us focused on how we think about the products we build, the updates we provide,the marketing we do.
I think part of a CEO's job is you have to have the confidence and the wherewithal to have those points of view where it says, "Look, these are our audiences. This is the space that we think we can go. This is what we're hearing. This is what we're seeing. This is what we think the product trajectory looks like. This is what we think the opportunity spaces." So it's a combination of certainly using some data, but you don't want to just be the marker that trots out the spreadsheet all the time. I don't think that's what good looks like either. I think you have to package it in a way that represents an understanding of where the company's at, right? So the last thing that your partners want to hear on the product side is this espousing of a vision that has no chance of reality, or doesn't actually reflect an understanding of their reality, which is, do you know how hard it is to get a biweekly update out the door on these games?
Do you know what it takes to localize this around the world in 160 different countries? And so I like your question, because what it also represents is this growing need for a CMO, and marketers in general, to really have their hands on lots of different wheels. Not to steer, and I think this is again where you kind of step into the pitfalls, but to help guide. And I think that is something that if you can figure out how to do that, you will have a ton of success at any company, but that is the balance.
Jesse Purewal [00:24:31] So Jason, talk to me about the time in your career when you were at Skype and then you were truly seen from 10,000 feet, given the long tenures you had at Microsoft and at EA one might interpret those and we sort of wanted to do something else. But on the other hand, it's often in those kind of moments that you need to take a magnifying glass and go, there's some huge learnings there, huge reflections, big pivots, meaningful time spent thinking hard about the future. What was happening in those moments of your career?
Jason Bunge [00:25:04] I think in both those cases, my time atSkype and Trulia, they were really good examples of something that I think throughout my career, I've just gravitated towards, which is this opportunity to build something that is yet to be defined. So it's Skype, they just got purchased by Microsoft. Tony Bates was still running it. He had just hired Elisa Steele as their CMO. And as I met with her, it was super undefined. And it was like, "Come help. Help me think through this. Help this team that I'm putting together think through this." And it it was an easy decision. Also, I tend to be an adventure and nomad. So I love experiencing new places. It was a chance to get to Northern California. And so it was an obvious thing for me to jump into.
And as anyone knows, when you get acquired, there's a period of time where there's that really special place where you can be who you are and really set the pace for what it means to be a part of that company and brand. But ultimately your parent company decides kind of where that direction goes. And I think without any kind of surprise and full expectation, after about a year, I think the piece has started to get folded into broader Microsoft, which was totally the right thing to do from a business perspective. And then Kira Wampler took a chance on me. At Trulia, she had just joined and really to help build out their first consumer marketing muscle. This is a company that just IPO'd, very successful in the real estate space in the U.S. Obviously a massive competitor in Zillow, and it was like, how do we compete? How do we grow?
And so again, a chance to build with her, and she's still, I think, an amazing leader and one of my favorite people out there. And then of course I learned what it means to be a small fish, sometimes in a big pond. And so Zillow acquired Trulia much because of the fact that we were actually doing well at our jobs. We were growing our audience quickly, which was great. And they said, "How about we just buy you?" Which at Microsoft it's, you're buying, you're not getting acquired. And so being on the other side was very informative as far as... What's your role in that circumstance? When Kira decided to move on, I kind of stepped in as an interim basis and worked directly with Pete Flint, who was the CEO of Trulia and worked with the board and just like an awesome experience to see what that was like and how does that work.
And so I look at those two instances as, not the longest by any means, but I think you said it really well, which is you have to find and seek out those learnings that are just giving you opportunities to do things you've never done before. And I've always been a fan of this, despite how uncomfortable it might be, you got to jump in the pool. And sometimes it'll work, you'll find your way to the surface. And other times you won't. But in both cases, the learning itself is invaluable.
Jesse Purewal [00:27:36] Got it. So you head over to EA and for your first few years there, you're leading engagement marketing and growth. So for those who don't know, talk about what engagement marketing means generally, and what kinds of ways you were able to put it into the world at a company in the entertainment and the gaming space.
Jason Bunge [00:27:53] Yeah. Chris Bruzzo, who hired me, he was Electronic Art's first CMO. This was his doing, which is, it was an engagement acquisition team, but Jason, I'm going to put engagement first. And the conversation we had, was really around transforming the perception that marketing was very much the trailer building team that drove excitement prior to launch and got people to buy in week one. And while that's very important, to be clear, that is not all that marketing can and should do. And so I think the very intentional reordering of those words was meant to signal, sure, we want to be able to acquire players to buy those games, et cetera. But what the reality is, and is incredibly true today, is if you don't keep them, it doesn't matter.
When you think about box products and you pay a single price and they come back three years later, pay a single price, one could argue, why does it matter? They're going to come back and you're going to acquire them again, and you get the business, so why does it matter? And the reality is it matters a lot. Whether it's a year between releases, or three years between releases, or 10 years between releases, a brand's ability to engage its audience in a conversation about the products, about what they like, what they don't like about the brand, about things they would like to see, you have to be able to do that. And it's something that in general video games just really didn't do. And I think today, in EA it's like this certainly today, if you think about live services, which is basically just means games that never turn off, you are talking with and conversingwith your community on a daily basis.
It's not about the tactics. It's much more about a mindset, which is I have to be able to engage an audience on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, even when there might not be a new something to buy or purchase or use. How do I do that? And that really was the center of the thesis around engagement marketing. And it's definitely something that I'd say every company in the industry right now is doing.
Jesse Purewal [00:29:56] All right. So let me ask you anotherbrand question, paying homage to the next role that you had leading brand that you had at EA. There's a lot of analogs to having to share the pie of brand equity, whether you think about like an author, a book title and a publisher, or you think about in the mobile world, the handset brand, the network brand and the software that might sit on it. I don't know that for my money, there's a category where there's more claim on brand equity up and down the stack than in gaming. When I think about the console, the title, or the studio property, and then the developer. How do you think about building brands in that tri-fold way, or maybe it's even more dimensions, and what are the opportunities you have as a marketer to have all of that at your disposal, but yet the challenges of like, well, where do I invest and how do I focus?
Jason Bunge [00:30:45] It's a great question. I think the order that you're speaking to, as it relates to gaming, which is kind of the game brand, studio brand, publisher brand, for a long time, and I think this is true todayto some extent at certain places, the game brand matters most. So Battlefields, Call of Duty, League of Legends. The studio brand is probably second. Your hardcore players know who you are. So Dice makes Battlefields, for example, and those Battlefield players, they know Dice and then in the Electronic Arts case, that was always last.
And it was last as both a, hey, it'll take the hits, it'll take the bullets. There'll be the protective shield for those two other brands that are more important. But I think the thinking evolved and it's something that I absolutely do believe in, which is a brand's equity isn't just for your audiences externally. It's also as much for your employees internally, as well as future candidates to join your company, et cetera. And I think the war for talent and particularly creative talent has never been tougher.
So I think the mindset of, well, the game brand's all that matters, I think is shortsighted. To be clear, the strength of the IPabsolutely is the most important thing, but again, not to bring up Disney again, but they understand that. They're not confused that a particular movie IP, a character IP, et cetera, is what really their fans care most about. But because that's backed by, in some cases, Pixar, in some cases, Lucas Film, but ultimately Disney, that means something to their audiences and it means something to their employees. And I think that's a missed opportunity if you're not thinking about that holistically.
It does require different approaches. So for example, at Riot, we absolutely care very deeply about the League of Legends IP, but we also care very deeply about Riot Games as a brand. That is as much for our audience as it is for our employees who are super passionate, who come to work every day, who care very deeply about our games and our players. And so you want that brand to stand for something. I think it's really important for those levels that you referenced to be equally reinforced with specificity, investment and intent. And so that's something that we're definitely doing at Riot.
Jesse Purewal [00:32:59] Love it. Okay. I have two questions for you about CMO. You're a CMO who stepped into chair fairly recently. How would you counsel senior marketers, CMOs, other titles close to that? As they think about stepping into the role first 90 or 100 days from outside an organization, what needs to be on their mind? What needs to be on their agenda as they come into the organization?
Jason Bunge [00:33:21] You've got to give yourself time to just observe and genuinely listen, which is not just to say, "I'm going to ask a bunch of questions." That's important too, but giving yourself the time to listen and just see what is out there going on is super, super important. Particularly again, in a creative industry where credibility is important, relationship building is important. And so I'd say that's definitely one thing.
The other thing I'd say is you have to know where your support is with the CEO. Are you stepping into a situation where the CEO really expects you to tear it down quickly and build it back up? Is it a situation where the CEO is like, "Actually it's working pretty well, so I don't expect to see a lot of change," or is it something else? And so if you don't have that clarity, you must get it fast because you have to know where your boundaries are, which doesn't mean you can't think differently about it. But I'd say knowing where your support is pretty essential.
Which leads to the third thing, which is, I think people evaluation is one of the hardest things that any leader has to do. It doesn't matter whether it's marketing or anything else. And there's always like the two ends of the spectrum when you start a new role at this level, on the one hand, you could clean house and bring in all your people that you know already, on the other hand, you can inherit and keep what you have and develop that. And I actually think those are probably not great ends to be on. And so it's this balance. You want both the time and the ability to identify great internal, sometimes diamonds in the rough, sometimes people who are there as leaders already, but I'm definitely a believer in balancing that with bringing in external talent as well, where it makes sense.
Jesse Purewal [00:34:52] And in terms of then the theme of change, how do you see the role of chief marketing officer evolving or not evolving over the next couple of years? Not just in gaming and in tech, but more broadly across sectors.
Jason Bunge [00:35:04] Yeah. On this one, I smile at the articles that are in abundance. The headlines either range from like the death of the CMO to, we need to call it something else, chief customer officer, chief market officer. And I just think all of that's very silly. Marketing is a function that is going to exist as long as there are businesses and brands out there, full stop. I think what marketing is absolutely, if there's ever a discipline in the business world that I think changes and evolves as an entity, it's going to be marketing. The speed at which that happens, I would put up there against any other discipline as far as pace. And so I think more than anything else, if you're going to be a marketer in this time and day, you have to be very comfortable with change. You have to embrace that, frankly, as an opportunity to improve things and do things differently.
But I don't want marketers to apologize for being marketers. I think that's crazy. I think you should be proud to say that I'm a marketer at this company, on this brand. The things that marketers do today is definitely growing, myself included, I'm sure lots of other CMOs. You have creatives of course, communicators, yes, brand leaders, yes. But you now increasingly havecommunity managers, engineers, you have tech platforms and certainly data analysts, business planners. And so it is becoming, I'd say more strategic. And I'd say, if anything, it's not the death of the CMO. I'd say the CMO as a title and a space is being reborn.
Jesse Purewal [00:36:33] I love it. So, Jason, one final question to take us home. For the builders listening here, if they wanted to know what the most important piece of advice they should take from you given the world is you've helped build it. What would that advice be?
Jason Bunge [00:36:47] Wow. I guess I would offer to two pieces of advice for what it's worth. One is take the long game view on things, and that doesn't mean don't have urgency and it doesn't mean don't be proactive and take initiative on things that are important. But I've been around long enough and I fell into these traps in my career. So I can say this with the scars to prove it. If you have a long game view on things, it's a wonderful way to help you feel very calm as things evolve, because there is no situation where going from point A to point B is a straight line, but what you want to be able to have confidence in is that we're going to get to point B. How we get there, probably different than what I would like sometimes, and definitely different than what I might think.
But if you have that long game view, you're going to be in a great mental place, which kind of is for my second thing. And that's, I like marketers who have a sense of purpose. I like marketers who take their jobs seriously,but there's an element of fun that must be there, must be there. And I think too often, we lose sight of that. I mean, in video games, my goodness. I mean, if we're not having fun in a video game company, there's a problem. And so I think a lot of people struggle with that. And I think the last year has been even tougher for folks to where it's every single day, every hour, I feel like I'm on Zoom. How can I possibly have fun? And so I think as leaders in particular, making sure we're finding ways for our teams, but definitely for ourselves as well, to have fun, I think is super important.
And I lied. There's one more I would add, which is, if anything, the last year has taught me, it's be opportunistic and don't be afraid of change. I still honestly, can't even believe that I did what I did and I'm doing what I'm doing in the middle of a pandemic and still haven't met anyone at Riot yet in person. That's just crazy. That hopefully will change soon, but I think embracing change has served me really well. And I know I'm doing it when I'm actually uncomfortable. And so I would just say, don't be afraid to jump in the deep end of the pool. It has always served me well. And I would say, if you feel uncomfortable doing it, that means it's probably a good idea.
Jesse Purewal [00:38:48] Well, Jason, thank you for allowing me into the deep end with you here for the last little bit. So appreciate your candor and just to spend the time. Look forward to talking with you again soon and hopefully being on that list of people you get to see in person before long.
Jason Bunge [00:39:01] Awesome, Jesse. I really appreciate the time. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
Jesse Purewal [00:39:10] Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review, it really does help other people find us. And please, tell your friends.
Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, presented and produced collaboration with StudioPod in San Francisco. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. Our writer is Todd Bagnull. From StudioPod Media, Deanna Morency is our show coordinator. Editing and production by Katie Sunku Wood. Additional editing and music is provided by Nodalab. Our designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Website by Gregory Hedon, photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, James Wadsworth, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.