Today I’m joined by a marketing leader of 14 years who is now chief marketing officer at Nordcurren, the studio behind

Cooking Fever and Airplane Chefs, whose Tik Tok ad had nearly 1 billion views. Branding or messaging is not what you

say about yourself, but what people are talking about you. And that’s exactly how that creative happened. It was just

a girl playing a game ridiculously fast. Without our sponsoring, it had already I think like half a million views with a

little boost from the current and right channels, you know, close to two billion views. We started using it in our UA

strategy and paid and it’s just converting very beautifully. What do you see personally in 2025 as

the biggest challenge that people are trying to solve? From marketing side, I think catching the users, retention, keeping the

interest, the loyalty, all questions sadly which transparent all the industries the same way.

We talk about what’s actually working in 2025, how user generated content on Tik Tok are driving installs, and why

talking to your players before making your creative changes everything. Would you say this is only a strategy for

someone who has a game who there’s already UGC content out there? Totally for any kind of small games.

Make it as possibly not branded and not artificial and not corporate and not

addy or adl looking as possible. What’s the difference of that done well and that done poorly? Well, I think

from someone bringing fresh eyes to one of mobile’s most successful casual studios, this episode’s guest and chief

marketing officer at Nordcurren, Adah Mosheimer.

Adah, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. All righty. So,

Adah is the chief marketing officer of Nordcurren. So, one of the leading casual game developers right now,

responsible for some of the most successful casual games. got Cooking Fever with over a quarter billion downloads. So 10 year plus game. A lot

of people know that. Also, Airplane Chefs, which is kind of all the rage right now in China and has over a

billion views on their ads, which is not easy. So we have over 14 years of

marketing experience. And today we’re going to break down scaling a thriving casual gaming community in 2025. So,

what that means is we’re going to cover casual gaming in 2025, what players want, industry trends, power of

community, so how UGC and engagement is driving long-term success right now, and also the business of gaming, talking a

little bit about brand partnerships, scaling, and monetization. So, if you’re game developer, marketer, and you want

to know a bit more about things you can apply today, then this conversation is for you. So, first off, Adah, I want to

start with you’re actually new to the games industry technically. Yes. So, how has it been the last seven

months? Cuz I’d love to know that story. Oh, well, uh, so 14 years of industry experience in mostly services, banking,

aviation, you name it, I probably did it. Uh, except gaming. So, to be honest, the

beginning I thought what where did I go? Everything is crazy. Uh, everything is

very different. Uh I find it to be honest the funnel of conversion one of the hardest um comparing to e-commerce

services uh and definitely a very different journey because the conversion is much slower as well. It’s difficult

to convince people nowadays to download apps uh rather than just to engage some activity online. Um but seven months in

I’m starting to feel like a mini expert knowing all the games gaming myself now. Wasn’t a gamer now. Yes. Um, it’s a

wonderful industry. Not an easy one for sure. Uh, not a cheap one as I’m

laughing in addition to that, but definitely very interesting and very dynamic. Sweet. So, I’m curious, what are you

seeing now as the biggest challenge for developers, marketers, because you’re coming in with this fresh perspective.

What do you see personally like in 2025 as the biggest challenge that people are trying to solve? Well, I think from

development side again, you know, I’m learning as I’m going, which makes kind of a fresh attitude and approach. It

takes a while to create a good game and the train trends are changing so fast and then, you know, start developing

something takes a year or two. You go to soft lounge is not that applicable anymore. So, you know, at the moment we

have a influx of casual games and of cozy games. So, you know, that’s very popular. people are jumping on

developing that and then by the time it’s over you know God knows what’s going to be might be neon colors and

stuff like that. So I think uh keeping up with changes both from design from trends perspective and also the move of

the technology because everything’s again so dynamic the AI is developing uh so that’s from the development side the

side that I comment the least but that’s what I’m hearing and that’s what we’re seeing with with our uh pipeline from

marketing side I think overall in gaming and everything one thing is catching the users retention keeping the interest the

loyalty all questions sadly which transpar and all the industries the same way. Uh customers are not interested,

tired, exhausted from all the information and it’s hard to keep them with the brands and the services.

All righty. So with that in mind, like what do you see working right now? Cuz you have firsthand experience with two

very different games, right? You got one that’s been 10 years old and it’s still going well. You have this new one which has awesome creative. like on our first

call that we had. I’ll try to put it on the screen, but it’s got the cooking.

This is the one with the chef. So, the airplane chefs like it’s a very ASMR type ad for anyone who’s listening to

the podcast. And it’s just, oh, it was so enjoyable to watch. I’m like, wait, it’s an ad. I like forced myself. Sorry,

I didn’t force myself. Like, I was watching it as pleasure. So, what do you see as working right now when it comes

to like sorry, you’ve kind of acknowledged the challenge that is to

get these players, but like what’s actually working when it comes to getting new players to sign on your game?

Well, of course, amazing games that are created by Nur that works. The game itself has to be good for sure. Um, but

I think if you we talk about marketing and catching them, what we try to apply besides the UA strategy and actually

integrate with the a strategy is actually listening to what people are posting and talking. So there’s this

really kind of old phrase that you know branding or messaging is not what you say about yourself but what people are

talking about you. And that’s exactly how that creative happened. Uh the one there’s two types. The one that is close

to billion views uh is a lady who has ridiculous speed playing airplane chefs

and airplane chefs for the ones who haven’t tried is this just I call it the perfect middle between enough of pain

and pleasure. It is really difficult. You need to be really fast but you become very I don’t want to use the word

addictive but it’s it’s u it’s like a good candy. So the girl she’s uh she’s

just playing it amazingly fast. It’s unbelievable. You watch it and you think wow. So what happened is we started

looking for content that people are liking and engaging naturally organically and then we started working

with strategies how to use that content to spark it uh which is a Tik Tok word for those who don’t know you can spark

content which is like promote content in the page of the person. So you’re not only using it, you can take a content

and use it for your own ad strategy in different networks, paid and so on, but there’s a way to actually put money to

promote content in your own for you page. So for example, you post something and we pay we put money to promote what

you post, which is kind of a very beneficial way of user generated com

content uh because a lot of people and that might sound bad, they don’t know

that they’re engaging with the post that has been promoted. they’re looking at the somebody’s post on somebody’s content which is not even very

advertorial because in itself there wasn’t you know like a typical user generated content which you imagine a

woman saying like oh I play this game it’s wonderful it was just a girl playing a game ridiculously fast so

without our sponsoring it had already I think something like half a million views uh with a little boost from the

current and right channels you know close to two billion views and it’s actually afterwards we took it out as a

content and we started using it in our UA strategy and the paid and it’s just converting very beautifully. Um on top

of that based on this we started looking into another creators um who do the same

thing who create the content for us and we start promoting it within their own uh what pages. So that’s one of the

things that works really really well and uh what we started doing a lot and I I actually talked uh recently to a couple

people the same thing is um with this amount of information that everybody has you know we’re exposed to ridiculous

amounts and the attention loop is non-existent thanks to Tik Tok as well you know when you watch 10-second video

on a times two speed is to listen to what people are doing and try to respond

when even on creating creatives try to see what’s what people are talking about you and use that instead of trying just

to put your own message and what seems interesting to us kind of very simple

but that’s that works really well. Well, I think you say it’s very simple but like I don’t see I don’t hear at

least many others doing it um I guess effectively. Um I want to give an example of like LinkedIn. Um, LinkedIn

has the same feature. You could promote someone else’s post and it’s called um

trying to remember but like a thought leadership they call it instead of spark but it’s quite expensive on LinkedIn because you know B2B or what have you.

But again on LinkedIn it just says suggested or sometimes promoted but like you said

a lot of people don’t see it and don’t realize it and I can tell by the comments that they don’t really realize. So this is very interesting. I’m just

thinking for the person at home listening, if they have a game of a certain size,

then I’m guessing they can just go out and look for this content that’s out there.

Would you say this is only a strategy for someone who has a game who there’s already UGC content out there or could

we kind of spark someone to start making the content and then promote it? I think it can be totally for any kind

of small games. So there’s a couple ways you can approach it. So there’s tools where you can do social listening and we

can talk a bit more about it later but there’s the more kind of expensive very

very good tools the one we’re using is actually quite uh I would say affordable even for the smaller teams like I I

don’t want to you know promote but you can try something like brand 24 which basically scrapes internet and every

single day on real time finds you the content. So it’s because a lot of content gets lost in the part where

you’re not tagged, you know, it’s it’s just the keywords that you put in and even if it’s not tagged, you you see it.

That’s the way we actually find all the content. So brand social listening tools

are very very useful and even for the small small teams. However, if you do not have a lot of um yet content

creators that are, you know, talking about your game, I would suggest reaching out to a couple of really micro

smaller ones who because if you look especially at Tik Tok, which I think is platform that shouldn’t be slept on

because especially for casual games because if we’re talking about Twitch, you know, you won’t find any creators or

barely anywhere playing lives or posting about mobile games, especially casual ones. uh on Tik Tok it’s a it’s a huge

you know space where people are doing that. So I think finding micro or smaller creators that can actually you

can invite to play your game and afterwards spark uh and promote their own content that might work even for

small games. So what’s the difference of that done well

and that done poorly? cuz as uh I’ve been on the receiving end of this, someone saying, “Hey, make a few

sponsored posts.” And I get really low ball because I asked a friend who worked with them in the past. So from I guess

the developer perspective, how do we do that in a tasteful way? I’m trying to

think of the way to phrase this question like how do you do that in a way that will get both parties happy?

Um well I think if talking about the content itself as I mentioned uh the

audience especially on social media and overall we’re educated what is advertising and there’s a lot of fatigue

with the influencers because we know we’re being pushed things and very little of what they’re actually promoted

is organic natural and they want to sell it. So, as I’m laughing, you know, take

seven years ago and people were not, you know, you could still, I don’t want to use the word fool them, but you could

put them in a situation like I’m offering it because I think it’s good. Nowadays, someone is promoting it, you go like, how much did you get paid for

that? Yeah. Even if they don’t mention it like sometime they can just assume. Exactly. So, my point and suggestion

would be like of course you need some kind of a hook why the game is interesting. Uh, in case of airplane

chefs, that was the speed cuz that’s the number one amazing thing. That’s just like how fast she’s playing. So, you

need to find some kind of a hook of the game that would be interesting to watch. Uh, and second to make it as possibly

not branded and not artificial and not corporate and not addy or adl looking as

possible because it’s a very simple thing and I think it’s very basic in marketing. you know, we are buying much

better from our friends or people who think are like us versus somebody where you feel like it’s promoted or paid for.

And uh that’s opportunity also, I think, for the smaller game creators because the micro nano creators, they’re less

likely to be sponsored than the big influencers or the big gaming, you know, streamers and stuff like that. So, this

could be like kind of a, you know, get 10 15 of the smaller ones, combine them in a bigger space. uh use tactics like

Tik Tok lives which are huge. That’s just Tik Tok. Does it actually convert like Tik Tok live into downloads? When you say huge,

what do you mean? Yes, it does. And actually Tik Tok, it’s not live yet, but they’re preparing a

there’s a gaming partnership on Tik Tok and they’re going to have a separate area for lives and there’s a lot of

incentives which can be both incentivized monetary and with the in-game rewards. And not only lives are

incentivized for the ones who create but you can in incentivize sorry the people who watching the lives. So it’s again

it’s a whole ecosystem of like a lot of gamers who are sitting both on Tik Tok

and on games. And I think if we think about gaming you know we are borrowing

time from TV or we’re borrowing time from social media. So, uh I think gamers

who don’t want to skip on gaming but don’t want to skip on social media because of its social aspects and stuff like that. That’s why it integrates so

well. Um and that’s why especially again for casual playing it’s it’s a great space to promote and and communicate.

Oh, I like that because I grew up with watching MMOs on Twitch. So, I grew up

playing MMOs and then I became an adult more disposable income. What did I do? I didn’t actually play the game. I just

watched other people play the game and I had a phase at ADA where I was the guy who just dropped like the 100 gifted

subs. So I was like, “Ah, I’m giving all these people my time. I might as well like invest.” So it’s interesting cuz

now like we have that for mobile games, but I guess Tik Tok is going to fill in that space. It sounds like because I

know YouTube has live streams, but I don’t know something about it where I don’t know if it converts. What works

for us quite well is shorts and there’s some statistic which is I don’t know how you know how much you can base it but

like some internet statistics states that about 60% of casual games are found

through Tik Tok or YouTube shorts because so when you say shorts do you mean organic shorts posted on your account

that but as well the ones you can create for the micro influencer so you cannot

do yeah you cannot do on Tik Tok sorry YouTube what you’re doing on Tik Tok yet ma is joining that train soon as we’re

speaking as far as I know. Um but not YouTube yet. But then you can work with micro influencers and especially if you

have some kind of the base. There’s a lot of content creators who just want to create content and became you know

gamers. um for us why Tik Tok is so important. We do have YouTube as well and we have an okay channel with I think

about 350,000 followers for a casual game which I think it’s quite strong again because our casual game has a very

uh kind of a same technique you know time management which is not strategy 17

different layers the new worlds don’t open so you know we go through new restaurants and that’s our kind of updates um but I think Tik Tok

especially for casual gaming is because Tik Tok is casual so you know That’s

that’s where the things meet. It’s in alignment, right? It it matches it meets them where they’re at the

players. Absolutely. And also I think you collect like again I I told I joined as

non-gamer and I still am a person where I do not understand why people watch other people play. It’s just different.

I can explain it if you want the explanation. I’ve spent too much time watching people play games. You see and I go like just go play the

game. Just go play Adah. It’s all this is the this is the best f way I found to explain it. We

have a an amount of mental energy. So playing game takes mental energy.

Sometimes I have too much mental energy, which was the case in high school. I have all this time bored out my mind at

school. I come home, I’m ready to grind out six hours of Runescape. Now it’s the opposite. I have eight hours, four of

them on Zoom. I have to do this like document task. I finish work. I’m like, ah, what do I do? I’m going to watch

someone on YouTube play Batra. let’s freaking go. He can have the mental energy and I can be like, “Oh, yeah,

that’s cool. Oh, that’s cool.” And it’s just like I’m just like baseline. And I

think it’s the same thing with sports. Like sometimes you play a bunch of sports and then you’re exhausted. What

do I do? I want to relax. I go and watch someone play sports. You have, you know, you have your horses

there probably. You’re watching something, you support, you’re you’re not supporting. Horses in games, too. I have there’s a lot of games which are

multiplayer, right? I want this person to win. I want this person to win. Also, if it’s a rogike,

there’s stakes. Is he going to make it? Which is most of the games I play. And same with casual games, the

start and finish, I find is like there’s a finish. So, like, is he going to finish is the kind of like

opens the loop, which I want to finish, um, so to speak. I mean, I get it. That’s my doom scrolling and my, you know, Tik Tok trot

card readers. Love those. But, but, uh, I get it. I mean, I’m very happy there’s

people like that. I’m happy they’re converting and I think you know platforms like Tik Tok because there’s a

lot of activity going on you get to expose the games to the people who didn’t know it by any chance and they

get hooked by watching it. So um so yeah definitely a platform and definitely a

thing to look into both from life’s perspective and especially from sparking other people content just because of

loyalty and and simplicity. Sweet. So before we move on to the next topic, is there anything you’d share

about sparking? If anyone’s at home thinking to start sparking content on Tik Tok, anything they should consider?

It is a bit of a we’re laughing, you know, a magic thing cuz sometimes you don’t know what content is going to work

and sometimes we’re trying the content when in our team we’re like this is never going to fly. This is just a man

eating a banana or whatever and you go, okay, 20 million views. So uh I think

it’s not to be scared to experiment for sure. And for me it was a thing is to

take off my I know hats and I know what would work because different ages, different categories and different

social networks require different content and some some of it is you know

does not cross generations does not cross cultures and you just like don’t know why it works. So not to be scared

of the weird stuff. Experiment with different things. Um and also if you

want to spark on Tik Tok I think it’s very important to stay on the trends and understand what’s happening not to be a

bit late because if you compare in my opinion of what we see Instagram and Tik Tok the dynamics is very different very

very different and if you jump on a on a trend set trains in Tik Tok it works

Instagram is much slower and I think it’s not as important to be very much

with dates uh as in Tik Tok. Yeah, I find it funny. So, I don’t open

Tik Tok. I have on my phone. I treat it like the once in a blue moon treat. I’m more of a YouTube short guy, but my

brother and my girlfriend, they use Tik Tok. And then sometimes they’re in conversations and they say, “Ah, this

trend’s going on right now on Tik Tok.” And I’m like, there’s a I swear there’s a trend every other day. But then when

they say trend, like they show me their feed, it’s like they get like 20 out of

the 40 videos is this trend and it’s mad. So like what you said was it’s

sometimes like you have to go now like if you want to cannibalize, but when we’re a company and there’s real money

involved, right? There’s someone who cost a decent amount of money to spend their attention. They have to make the creative and then publish it, maybe put

some money behind it. like how do you actually do that before the trend kind of fizzles out?

But that’s that’s the beauty to to first put on top of that. If you’re using Instagram, you will see those trends

after two weeks. That’s my husband. He always brings me. He’s like, “Look at this.” I’m like, “I saw it two weeks ago. Come on.” You

know, stop. I’m that guy. I’m literally the guy I show to my brother. He’s like, “That’s

last year’s trend.” Exactly. That’s like, “This is so old.” Um but what we did is the beauty of Tik

Tok is if you look at it the quality you you don’t require very high quality

creatives a lot of terms of trends are very easy easily implementable with you know simple tools for video editing and

so on we have actually our marketing team is not very big but we have a lot

of couple very creative genz people who just jump on it and do it themselves and we just you know we use takeouts from

our videos, from the games, from the gameplay, and we just use whatever trend it is and try to spin it. So

Oh, interesting. So it’s a proactive thing. Like they watched it on their own on Tik Tok, came to work and was like,

“Guys, this is a trend we could try.” And then there’s no one who’s like, “Hey, what trend are we going to do

today?” It’s the other way around. Like one of my favorite ones that worked very well, and it wasn’t a sparked one

because you also can spark your own content and promote. So, a community manager for airplane chaps came in and

he’s like, “Look, there’s a really funny video of the man talking about uh like how to meditate and how to be peaceful

and so on.” And he’s holding this chi who’s just going crazy and biting and screaming and he’s like, you know, and

this is calming you down. It’s like we should do it with our game, you know. He just smashed the airplane chef’s logo on

the dog, you know, going mental and it’s like, oh, I’m so calming and so on. And it just fits our thing. They created in

like, I don’t know, half an hour. And I think with the spark it has something like 25 million views and people are

engaging and we can review. So yes, you need to be in Tik Tok if you want to be cool on Tik Tok.

That’s a very nice practical tip at the end. Yes, you got to be with the youngsters.

Yeah. Sweet. Um question for you. This is just a logical one for me. Like can you track downloads from a sparked video

or is it not easy to do that? Yes. Yes, you can. There’s game you can put game anchors which leads to installs

also for the sparked videos you can treat it fully as a install or purchase companies from UA perspective.

Cool. So you can be like ah that creative led to this downloads which is worth X to us. This was a good

very cool. So it’s not like um billboard where it’s like no no it’s it’s not just cool to have

and we don’t only base it on like oh we have 20 million views that’s so awesome. No. Um and our U8 team basically what

we’re trying to do is to have a a huge bud batch of like videos uh that we work

with Tik Tok one platform which we one thing organically look for content but also we are at the point where on Tik

Tok one we’re ordering content. So we’re writing briefs and we’re saying hey guys can you do these kind of things and

they’re just testing 10 15 videos at one time. See what works. You do small tests the ones that have

traction you put more money and you just go and see how it works. Nice. I like it. Um, this is a maybe a

cheeky question, but if you have two videos, one has 10

million views and the other one also has 10 million views, but then one of them has a lot more downloads relative to the

views. Do you know why that would happen? Because I’m guessing you’ve seen a few of these.

Honestly, no. the honest question. I mean maybe somebody can you know comment

and tell me but as I said the things that work and on on Instagram we see

patterns we kind of see you know and even we we have another game called pocket styler which is a lot about UGC

in the game and outside and it’s it just the audience is a bit different age and they’re in Facebook and we we understand

what works there we kind of see in Instagram what kind of content could fly though now it’s starting to overlap in

Tik Tok sometimes It’s just the most random thing works better. And why is it? Nobody knows.

And I have colleagues coming and you know they’re like, “Oh, that that went viral. Let’s do more like that.” And you

go, “A doesn’t work like that. That’s a marketeteers cancer thing. Let’s make a viral video.” I’m like on it. But uh but

also in a way like sometimes a similar technique or even the same creator, you know, he tried to reproduce it just

doesn’t work. So sometimes there’s content fatigue I think. But also it’s it’s random magic. It’s the algorithm is

quite crazy. Uh and sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. So that’s why a

lot of testing because there’s not a really big pattern you can just base it on and say if I do ABC that’s going to

work. Yeah. No, that’s interesting. And same thing with LinkedIn by the way. Like I repurpose content and sometimes the next

time I post it does a lot better, sometimes it does a lot worse. But to be

fair to myself, like sometimes I change the visual hook or the hook, but sometimes I have this gut feeling that

it’s just because I’ve got a bigger audience now. It had a bit more fluid uh fuel and then it popped off where last

time it didn’t. Um so yeah, I think like you said, it’s hard to because it’s an

algorithm. It’s a live breathing thing. You can’t just at least for now can’t feed two videos to a bunch of

I also I also think that you know that’s part of the business. My Korean marketing 2,000 years ago started with

search engine optimization, a keyword that still nobody knows fully how it works because if we would, you know,

that’d be there wouldn’t be all these agencies charging a stupid amount of money. Yes. And also probably just, you know,

doing uh meta tags, subdates and stuff, but but I think it’s the same with the social media content and algorithms

there because if there would be a formula, it would be very easy to just for everybody do the same thing. and uh

part of the business that you have to test. Spend a little bit of money, find the good one, then spend a lot of money. And you know, money makes the world go

around. So I think algorithms will never be very straightforward and will keep us a little bit tortured, you know, trying

to guess what works. Well, if it was easy, it would be boring. I have that. So we wouldn’t be

here talking about it. Absolutely. I want to talk about community now because we’ve mentioned Tik Tok, but

I’ve had to think the correct me if I’m wrong. A community would be better on a

place like Discord where it’s controlled in a sense where they’re like, “Ah, that user is there.” But Tik Tok, I guess

that’s a community as well, but I guess it’s not one that you like own, but they can like stop by. So like

and I think that’s where we have a certain game specific again cooking

fever airplane chefs they have a game specific of a similar you know technique

time management and if you go on discord because if you look at our social media contents 99% is give us more gems give

us more fuel give us you know classic need more resource so discord would be

very boring and also people wouldn’t wouldn’t have too much to discuss because it’s uh it’s about the speed how

much how fast you do it and so on with you there’s not as much strategy to talk about versus another game like one

that I’m following a lot is Batro there’s a thousand things you can talk about on Batro but with this one I guess

exactly there’s not too much strategy either either you’re good at it and you do it and you know you hustle until you

do it or not so there is another game uh pocket styler as I mentioned so that’s a fashion game which has multiple multiple

layers one thing is you create outfits as a stylist then you upload People are voting, you get points, but also there’s

a this designer hub where you can create actual outfits yourself and then sell them for internal resource. Now, that

has a very strong community because it’s female and surprisingly the audience

that chose this game is female that is I would say well 30 40 plus interestingly

enough of course we have a younger players as well. Yes. But so they have um very very active very passionate

Facebook groups where you know they they hold the conversations they have the

leaders of the groups they have this kind of all community which we are if you’re listening pocket styler players

we are there we’re just silently watching. Oh interesting you don’t own those groups they community run.

No is that a choice? Uh yes that is in a way a choice because

um as it is a lot of content in the game is UGC user generated content. So they they

generate items themselves. So naturally somehow they kind of create like fashion

clans and they have groups they vote for each other and so on. And uh again as a

game creator we’re very happy to listen and to collect the feedback and bring it to our developers and go like this is

working this is not working and so on. But I think if they would have a conversation with us directly I don’t

know if that would change too much um because probably would be a lot of like just

I want to say criticism but you know ideas how to change which we see anyway. what they do they create communities

which they vote for each other they promote their own items they create and there’s you know the big whales that are

like the leaders of the group so for us it’s actually not even useful to own

that community because we wouldn’t be controlling the conversation and we would not like to control the conversation as it flows very naturally

actually creates the actual feeling of a community versus a place which I control what you say so u so this is for for

pocket styler and I think because of the specific target audience. They don’t use Discord and things like that. Now, for

airplane chefs and Cooking Fever, there’s also Facebook groups. Cooking Fever, I think initially because the

game celebrated 10 years uh just last summer. So, and uh overall our fancy

social media listening tools give us that the sentiment is like it’s amazing game and there’s a lot of nostalgia

because you know you used to play it as a child, your mom used to play it, now you’re playing it again and uh what changed? So, and also because at the

moment it’s not peer-to-peer game. Um, it is more about your own achievement, you know, and again, not too much

strategies kind of showing off like, okay, I unlocked that 45th restaurant or I did something like that. So, it for us

again, I don’t know how much could we help out or increase the conversation. We do that with our, you know,

infiltrated agents if needed. Um, other than that, our main community

communication happens within our Instagram and with Facebook where we do a lot of competitions. We do a lot of

updates and announcements, tournaments and everything and the conversation goes holds very very well there.

Very interesting. It’s interesting to me because I recently had a guest on who

owns a company where they facilitate Discord communities for gaming studios.

And because of AI now, what you said like the sentiment checking, there’s some really cool things you can do like

plugging into Discord where it like has a nice dashboard and whatnot. And I’m reflecting that works very well for

multiplayer games. Uh or there’s an element of peer-to-peer and there’s an element of what we discussed earlier

like meeting the player where they’re at. The switching mental cost of getting someone to Discord is just not worth it.

Like it’s just not happening. If it’s a new game, different story, I think for your game, it makes complete sense to

not own it. We have no current has it card labs and we’re creating games for PC and consoles

and that’s a different thing. Awesome games. Check it out. Very amazing. Wait a minute. Can I double check? So

Nordcurren makes mobile games, but you’re now also making like crossplatform as well.

Absolutely. Yes. So, Narcan and Labs is our kind of a in-house daughter

situation. Yeah. Nice. Um, so we have released a couple of games already. Very amazing game is

coming out. It’s called Eric’s Home. It’s just gorgeous. I’m not a gamer and I was like, I am going to play that

game. Uh, so definitely recommend checking it out. And so for those games, PC and consoles, Discord, Reddit, yes,

absolutely. Because it’s a different conversation, there’s strategy, there’s, you know, do you get stuck or do you conversate? You know, even like you know

the statistics and practice talking to developers is very very useful because you have a different relationship to the game that different story but casual

time management games and discord for me to take that you know our average player is a female who’s like 25 to 45. So for

me to get her you know to discord it would be very difficult. Yeah. I think you meet the players where

they’re at. Absolutely. We try to we try to kind of you know make them group together where they are and Tik Tok in a

way works as well. Um again Tik Tok for example for us is working very well now on airplane chefs because Tik Tok is

very big in Asia. Uh airplane chefs is like number one in China on tablets and it’s very popular in Indonesia.

Is that a separate Tik Tok for airplane chefs for China and like the western? Do you

need to do separate stuff? So for China yes but they also use Tik Tok but they have additional apps. uh

which we’re not at the moment. Uh but Malaysia, Indonesia, they have the same all Southeast Asia is the same. So our

community for Southeast Asians on Tik Tok is huge. And again, we we uh support

a lot a lot of them creating lives and actually spreading the message of the airplane chefs. But it’s very

interesting to see there’s again it’s like a little ecosystems where they do

these things where they kind of try to cheat and then they email us like this creator is cheating. don’t like to do

that. And it’s like honestly it’s like a little world where all the cool ones know the other cool players, others are joining, they’re teaching each other,

they’re they’re helping each other with difficult levels. It’s it’s nice to see and we just kind of a what we try to do

is again support lives now to encourage them to do more to create content just even the social media listing tool. Uh

the first reason for that was in our size we have the capability to keep the conversation with a lot of people who

posting of us uh about us or making videos and so on. So, you know, when a little creator posts something about the

game they love and the game, you know, just comments back saying, you know, thanks for playing, it just always goes,

you know, so it’s like a because, oh, I got noticed. And and it’s really funny. Like, I was laughing yesterday. We got a

comment on a video. A guy posted about airplane chefs got maybe couple hundred likes and he’s like the caption was

airplane chefs, please talk to me so I can tell my friends something good. And we’re like, sure, buddy. And it’s like

friends started commenting. So I think for a lot of people gaming you know it is big part of the day and culture and

every day watching gaming and if you keep the conversation which again is easier for us in these platforms that is

also way to build the community. It’s a two-way communication we’re there we’re very achievable as well.

Exactly. And there’s not a stupid cost because like you already told me the marketing team isn’t humongous. So like

this is all manageable for people who aren’t at Nord current size either. Absolutely. Well, to let you know, uh,

just marketing without the UA, we are in single members. So, there you go. So, all all possible here.

Amazing. I want to touch on things I guess we could do outside of the game

because you mentioned on our first conversation about the restaurant partnership and how I think you tried to

use your previous experience before coming to games and I wanted to do you mind sharing the restaurant story with

us? Yeah, I’m not going to tell you any brands because I’m still, you know, crying in a corner. No, so basically

it’s it’s about brand partnerships and games do a lot of brand partnerships and the bigger ones of course has a lot of,

you know, huge ones. You can talk in Supercells and Brawl Stars and Toy Story and and a lot of things like that. And

um Norcar also had very good experience with brand partnerships. We had very

cool partnership with Coca-Cola, with Barcelona football club and Cooking Fever, which seems like what? But it was

extremely successful. But uh the way I came in again from another industry and

what I’m seeking and I’m kind of trying to communicate that a lot of brand partnership is just putting a product or

a logo in the game and just kind of you know like again very push advertising and it’s one way like I’m going to put

the brand and also what was very surprising for me and it’s just me because I didn’t know gaming is that if

we work with the brand the game pays the brand and for me it was like I’m giving

you advertising space. Why am I paying for licensing? You know, so for me, for everyone at home, the game has to

pay a brand for the brand’s logo to be displayed in the game to potentially

millions of people. And that’s Yeah, it’s interesting how

I mean, exactly. Do you get a discount like with that in mind? Like, by the way, you’re going to

get all this awareness. So when again apparently very normal practice because they look at it as licensing and the

idea is that because I have a brand the game will perform better and sometimes it does on a kind of you know on an in

inapp purchase and so on but the way I see it again because I am not from gaming I see it as an amazing intimate

advertising space where you can do interactions not like just push put a brand you know put some kind of a

product into the game because that’s not going to affect too much. So the idea we had this dream restaurant we want to put

in the in a cooking fever and I managed to get a contact with people who deal with their licensing and I think that’s

that’s the problem and I said look guys you know we want to we want to and we were ready to pay even that we’re ready

to pay I was like we want to you know we want to do a restaurant based on your brand which means you know the restaurant will be your name the menu

will be your menu everything’s going because we had a good partnership with the GI Fridays last year so it’s kind of the same thing or or we had a hard rock

cafe restaurant. So everything is basically a digital restaurant with dig digital menu which is the basic again

basic partnership. But I said let’s do this. Let’s do that the people who play our game after they finish whatever easy

level five which is five minutes they open a secret QR code and that

restaurant has an app that is world used worldwide you know and within that you open a secret menu and you go to a

restaurant and they can purchase that menu only with that QR code. So you know I create uh again intimate advertising

and so on intimate relationship but another thing we connect the offline and online which is very very nice because

you kind of you know merge two worlds and not if we do like combine communication very very wisely

again don’t want to mention the restaurant but they’re they’re quite big you know secret menus is always a thing people talk about and they you know it

goes always viral because they want yeah because then you get another UGC content for the restaurant for the everyone’s winning

and organically. So for us the benefit would be because you know what we’re seeking is mostly installs from these

kind of partnerships. So for us because of the brand partnership and the content going viral and people maybe wanting to

try out the secret menu they would download the game just to play it out. You know the retention is risky thing

but we would get the installs. You guys would get sales because again

you know average 8 to 10 million monthly players. You want a limited geography no problem. We can limit geography you cho

you chose and the implementation again we can do it either through API which is a bit more difficult if you want we can

just do a once off you know originally generated QR codes for each player. So basically we were just like let’s try to

do this because it has you gave it on a plate pun intended. Yes. While agreeing to pay for it

ourselves we’re like we will pay for that. Um and that discussion has been

going on for well since I joined because it was literally first weeks when I joined I managed to get the contact. So

seven months and in the end it was like no no we we want you to just put the restaurant pay a very

let’s just say fatty amount of money and uh and let’s not do that. And again for us

if we put a brand like again for example Cooking Fever we do about three new restaurants three new locations every

year on average. Are they branded all of them? No no no most of them are not. Most of them are like seashore or you know

Chinese or whatever different theme. So for us the influx of like um activity

and inapp purchases whether we just release a restaurant that is new whatever would be Christmas themed or

whatever theme or we do a branded practically doesn’t differ because people are seeking new things they they

played the restaurant they finished the level they want a new restaurant if it’s branded or not they it doesn’t affect the inapp purchases so much so it

doesn’t affect our revenue so for us to pay you know amount of money what we

seeking conjoin marketing so we can have more installs and attract new people. Yeah. uh and then also you know benefit

our own players and um and that’s just you know for us

just putting um a brand and paying you know seven number sums for that is it’s

not going to be effective and and that’s the thing that is a bit difficult for me to digest and what I’m trying kind of to

approach differently that I think in these situations like with us for example or with many games we should

approach it not from the licensing perspective but an advertorial real kind of innovation partnership because you

can combine online and offline. You can combine online and online and you can drive sales for both. Um because I’m

laughing and always kind of saying example I’m a doom scroller and that’s my guilty pleasure but I don’t I’m

hardly influencable nowadays because of the amount of content and I just doom scroll doom scroll doom scroll you know

the morning comes you’re tired day is over. I don’t have like intimate relationship with the brands or because

I know it’s advertising in the game. You can do activizations for online purchases. You can do checks. You can do

little mini games. You can create a different kind of relationship especially if you launching some kind of

new products updated product. I’m just thinking like discount codes like would that just work? That’s that’s the simplest thing you can

do. You can do discount codes. You can do in-game lotteryies where you can generate users to um you know collect

emails, collect data a lot. I mean the possibilities are endless.

Oh yeah, the emails is crazy. Like register to their app and you will get five store credit. Like Starbucks is

basically a bank because of their app, right? Like that’s how they make their money just on all the interest. So like I see personally the benefit.

Um, I’m thinking for for people at home, Ader, cuz I’m actually going through this myself. I have an event happening in 5

weeks time in Manchester. So, it’s like a game summit and I’m doing outreach to sponsors for that event. And I figured

out this podcast can be sponsored for very big amount of money because it’s very niche and it’s all the right

people. Like, it’s games industry professionals. There’s not many out there. And you could get six figure deals a year for a sponsorship like this

because it’s super aligned. So you have the exact same situation like a super aligned audience. Yeah.

People playing a chef game and some of them who you know have spent money and like they have disposable income. So I

see the alignment. I’m wondering because I’m in a little coaching community where

they have like people who’ve already done it before and what they found very successful for like getting sponsors

attention is pretty much always like we did it with this your competitor. Do you

want to do it as well? like that has been like the go-to for like the first couple messages. So, I’m wondering is

this the situation where because these guys don’t have the incentive to try new things that won’t work because they’re a

big company and the gatekeeper, they don’t have the incentive that me and you have where like we want to see the number go up because that’s my

incentive. But sometimes their incentive is like don’t screw things up or waste time. So they they have a very high

negativity bias. I’m wondering if we have to prove the concept and then present it to a big guy.

In a way, yes. I think one of the problem is the way we treat it again because it’s already it’s always put

with the people who deal with a license and licensed partnerships which is mostly you know t-shirts, pajamas, toys,

stuff like that. So they just they know that and then I come in with gaming. It’s very difficult to even you know I’m

telling things which are very simple to me but they go like let’s you know royalties how do we pay that I’m like what if we do fix fee and so on. So I

think it’s the attitude and when I start now kind of trying approach the the

chief marketing officers the people who are you know working with with the with the product itself they like oh wait

okay that many million people oh million people a day play this game and I can interact and um and we’re like again

open to do you know not necessarily we don’t have to pay each other we can just do things together because we both

benefit for me I think um the problem at the moment and again seven months baby

and maybe you know let’s talk in two years I’ll be like that’s how it’s done I was stupid but put a note in that we’ll do we’ll run it

back in two years and we’ll do the I was wrong I’m sorry I think it will be I have learned and I

was learned yes yes I I’m no I’m always happy to say that you know I was wrong um but the way I see it is at the moment

is just the way it’s treated especially for the games that are not you know GTA

6 or Roblox the partnership I don’t want to say it’s like arrogant

attitude of like you will put the brand therefore you will benefit it doesn’t work always that way and I think um it

is hard to reach the people who would look from it in a marketing perspective

versus like I will give you know earning money from putting a brand from licensing so are you having this conversation on a

video call email in person because I wonder if this would work in person because it’s quite a complicated

well at the I’m just talking people to find the right people that you know for example

we will have a partnership now with Puma uh launching very soon end of March with like our first big athlete leisure and

we’re dealing with people who deal with gaming. So for me to come in and say you know hey we are this you know good big

game provider and this is the game maybe you know it maybe we don’t but to me for me to get to the people who make this

decision is quite difficult. So now I’m kind of again warming up. I have some really like opportunities where I think

they’re just so perfect. If they would pass up, I will I’ll cry again in the corner. Not the first time. But

remember, no is never no, it’s just not now. So like follow up like I mean

that’s my business. Like one of the one of the business is ghost riding. The other one is outreach. So we have like four clients we do outreach for. Some

clients literally just said no, but then we got them on a call and they signed a contract after four months of just

saying hi. And oh yeah, now we have budget. That’s true. So for me at this point I think it’s

just um whoever I talk to from like uh smaller brands or the brands who are not

necessarily a good fit and we just kind of you know checking the concept. I’m like you know am I am I delirious here

and I’m talking nonsense or does it make sense? I’m like no that makes sense. So now it’s just about approaching the

right companies and uh a lot of them are quite granular and you know you have the

VP and the 20,000 people underneath them. Um, so yeah, different tactics

we’re trying to think about now. But I do think that’s at least I agree if we would have at least one successful

partnership from the perspective of let’s do as a joint marketing venture rather than you know I put a brand in my

game and let’s see how we can benefit each other both utilizing our community and your social media and maybe even

interactions outside because the beauty of the games that we can do geographical things you know we can limit if one

market is more important than another. So I agree that yes, I need that one good chair in the top and then I can

wave it and say, “Haha, that’s how it’s done.” So wish me luck. Honestly, I this podcast is a very good example of

that. You might not be here if I didn’t have someone else who agreed, right?

Because I had people say, “Not right now. You’ve just started. You have two episodes. Fair enough.”

But my first seven episodes were people who didn’t care. They wanted to do the podcast for podcast sake. But then it’s

got a bit of a critical mass now where there’s not that many B2B gaming industry podcasts where if I ask the CTO

of Sansoft who I had on recently, he will probably say sure because I’ve had the president of EGDF for example.

So it’s almost like we want the tier A. If we go first to tier A, then we have a

hit rate. There’s not 0%. But like if we present tier A like, oh, here’s all the

other partnerships we’ve done. here’s what they benefited in numbers. Do you want the same or otherwise we’re

going to do it with this other restaurant which is their competitor like whoa whoa whoa calm down. Um I

found that is the play when it comes to getting like the big fish anyway. Um is

to always just be like time’s up we’re going to do it with these people. Yeah and I fully agree. Again the only

thing is like uh the big brands are agreeing to do it the way they want it. I want it a bit more beneficial for

both. And I think in the most important thing more beneficial for the player

because it’s much more fun to have interactive things and that’s where uh trying to introduce a newer concept and

break you know a hard build patterns becomes a bit more difficult because I’m like what if uh but I’m sure you know

bit by bit give me more seven months and you’ll we’ll be I think it has to happen. I don’t I

don’t it has to happen. It’s just it’s just too good of an idea. Exactly. It’s it’s so simple. It’s just

like take my people and you know talk to them. That’s all I’m sorry.

If you know someone who owns a restaurant, please reach out to a not necessarily restaurants. We’re open

to airplanes, air aviation, airlines, uh any kind of products. We surely Ryan Air is going to snap this

up. Like I’ve seen their Tik Tok. They’re pretty Larry. Ryer, if you’re listening,

we’re here. We’re ready for you. We can even make, you know, if you want bad service on the airplanes where you can

get points for not serving people. I think we just comment on their Tik Tok.

Yeah. Yeah. Could be. Could be everyone. That’s another funny thing I realized once is like the person who runs

Supercell’s LinkedIn page, it’s not Supercell, it’s a human being. So every person they see replies to their

comments. Some of Supercell’s posts get like eight comments. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you’re like the person who comments, they’re seeing it every time.

So, like I found that’s an easy way to get attention, but like for the clients we do outreach for, they just do a little

comment or a little like before sending the request, they’re like, “Ah, it’s Harry.” So, yeah. Um, warming them up in public

is a is an option. Awesome. We’ll just challenge them. Yeah, exactly. I mean, just call them

out. Call them out. You suck. You’re not in a game. Come. We’ll create we create I mean

we’re offering to create a plane you know all branded by the plane with a specific food for the country and so on.

Good opportunity. No 100% very interested. We can have a

in two years we’re going to present the Ryan Air deal and the very big restaurant deal.

Sweet. So you mentioned just there I wanted to touch on it. Um making it

right for the player. If anyone’s at home thinking, “Cool, I don’t have the

restaurant saying no to me problem. I want to do a brand partnership for my game.” How do we do a brand partnership

that benefits everyone? So, the licency, maybe not the right word, the studio, but also the player, like everyone’s

kind of enjoying it like do you see any good examples of that? Well, I think you know uh if you look at the casual games at the moment, it’s

again it’s a lot about dynamics. probably the trends and keywords of the year is the all the live opportunities,

the live ops, the games, stuff like that like you know special events for the occasion. Um so I think that’s one of

the ways to do it is where you integrate the brand partnership in activities that are beneficial both from resource

perspective you know extra offers extra special things uh events you can

participate that are branded by the by the partnership that are not only the

same in the game but maybe like mini games could be could be done very well also uh because again I think you want

to create a special relationship and the player to be excited the brand is joining So if you I don’t know take

let’s take Coca-Cola as an example and you integrate it in the game and if you have some kind of special Coca-Cola

miniame or challenge or live event where you can get resources you celebrate the fact that there’s a special thing and

then you know good sensitive good emotion and and everything goes. So I think it’s a it’s not just integrating

simply but creating extra activities and extra benefits that the client would celebrate the partnership rather than just like okay cool. uh we do not have

things like mods and different things but in other games you’all can also see like again we mentioned Super Brawl

Stars with Toy Story they they did very like many characters different things some you can get for free some you have

to purchase of course but then you know people are excited because they have extra I don’t play Brawl Stars my

husband does but he was very excited that some of the guys are very strong and have some superpowers which help

them win so again making an occasion making it special I think that’s one of the key things rather than just kind of

a treating it as that advertorial. Yeah. I think if it’s just a skin, then

you’re missing the trip. If you make it more of like a celebration, like you said, it’s like, wow. And also, I’m guessing the time

limited part makes it more exciting. That’s always necessary, I think. Otherwise, it’s not as special and you just become, you know, a game that is

branded for something else. So, time limited event. That’s what we’re doing with Puma. We have a special collection

coming out in a fashion game. And within the special collection, you have limited items who are going to be only out for a

special event. So only limited time you can get those and they give you extra points automatically and so on. So it’s

kind of a the need to jump on that time and celebrate and that actually those items will increase your possibilities

having high scores and and winning special titles. So you want to participate and you want to interact

with that. Nice. Beautiful. And the good thing about mobile games is all tracked. So

the amount of time, the amount of players interacting with your brand is not random, which is I find really

interesting. Absolutely. All right, Adah. So given what we’ve discussed

today, there’s a developer marketer listening to this, what from today would

you have like to give more context on or any advice for anyone who’s marketing in today’s world?

Well, I think you know I I read this very fancy line. It’s like uh community is your anti- churn kind of a shield. So

I think you know concentrating on communities because these are your ambassadors and these are people who are

you know possibly spending money, spending time and investing and this is your key. Um then basing on communities

and people who communicate about your game. Listen to that. Listen what they’re saying and what’s important to them. What messages and triggers and

then spinning the advertising messages towards that. Because a lot of times we think, “Oh, this is the point of my game.” And actually for the player, it’s

totally different trigger or totally different hook that works. So listen to what people are saying. They’re talking about your brand and actually you are

what they’re talking not what you think you are. And I think um utilizing UGC

because it’s it saves not only time, not it can save a lot of money as well, you

know, jumping off from having to create creatives and adverts uh where you can just use what people are already

creating. But again um different approach because of the trust you know

things communicated by people versus things communicated by brand different relationship. So that would be probably

my top three things I would advise. No I’m seeing that a lot in the LinkedIn

world. So if a post looks like it’s not an ad, it will perform better, get more

engagement, community and more call to action like response. Absolutely. And I think like you know

things on I I personally have allergy to LinkedIn and then my PR agency is making me you know be active which I understand

why but I said look guys if I’m going to do LinkedIn I’m going to do it my way with my horrible sense of humor and uh

it works because it’s human. It’s you know you talk about branded things but then you you put kind of yourself you

put authenticity and then it works 100%. Like what you just said is hitting

the nail on the head. like it needs to feel right for you and then be human. Um

100%. Amazing. Ada, let’s end it there. That was really really enjoyed. Really

enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for having me. Time flew by. Yes, it did. How can people get in touch

if you’re Ryanire? If you’re someone who just wants to chat more, how should they get in touch?

If you have a knife company you want to promote on Cooking Fever, um well, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh simply yeah

by going aden or current I’m the only one. Uh yeah that probably would be the easiest way.

Lovely. So everyone check the bio for the link and everyone at home thanks for listening. Hey you’ve come the whole

way. We have two marketers on the podcast. So I’m going to ask you subscribe. Maybe pop it in the Slack

channel. Share this episode because I think it will be worth it for them. Amazing. All righty. Everyone at home

goodbye everyone. Bye.