LOVEFiLM: We can be "ally" to games industry

Mail order subscription firm LOVEFiLM, which is best known for its movie rental service and white label deals with the likes of Tesco, has told GamesIndustry.biz that it can be an "ally" of the games industry, and bring its content to the existing videogames platforms.

Simon Morris, the company's chief marketing officer believes that consumer data, a strong brand and a positive relationship with its subscriber base are all elements that it could bring to the table.

"LOVEFiLM is a brand that people like, relate to and trust, and one that works to those three principles that I keep banging on about: value, range and convenience," he explained. "In the next 6-12 months we're looking at ways of bringing more of that and more of the games industry to our consumers.

"One of the things that we're really interested in is the games platforms themselves as they are entertainment platforms, we have content that we can put on these entertainment platforms and so we can clearly see a symbiotic relationship emerging between us and the platform holders.

"I think that we are really uniquely placed, not just in terms of our distribution method, but also in terms of the social networking side of things with the number of users that are actively speaking to one another and creating content for one another. It'd be interesting to look at the heavy-usage gamer market as I'm not so sure about that.

"We have the data, a good relationship with our customer base and we've got a great brand, if you add all of that up I think it shows that we can be a natural ally to the games industry and we're in a position to score a three way win: a win for us, a win for the games industry and win for consumers."

LOVEFiLM has already begun to work with publishers on advertising deals, with the latest venture involving Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II, which was featured on the packaging to selected subscribers.

"Over the last six years we've built up LOVEFiLM to be the UK's largest online subscription community and the third-largest subscription business of any kind in the UK, after Sky and Virgin Media," said Morris. "We've done that through our focus on great customer service, great products and great brands and based on those three key principles of range, value and convenience, we've also developed a very clear understanding of what our brand is all about: it's an entertainment platform. During this time we've collected a huge amount of data to aid with our marketing.

"Fairly early on we saw a big crossover with the games industry, and I'm sure you've seen the data about games generating more revenue that DVDs and Blu-ray for the first time last year. What we're able to do is examine the film and videogame tastes of our customers and so target the advertising of relevant products at those customers; the advertising of Assassin's Creed II was specifically targeted in this way."

The full interview with Simon Morris is available now.