Supercell at the Super Bowl
"It wasn't about getting our game in front of however many millions of eyeballs"
During a panel at today's F8 Facebook conference Supercell media lead Jimmy Lee explained the genesis of the Super Bowl commercial for Clash Of Clans.
"The decision for us to be on the Super Bowl was decided by a bunch of guys in a hot tub while we were on an offsite," he told F8 attendees.
"Everybody closed their eyes and voted on whether or not they wanted to see a Super Bowl spot for Clash and everybody ended up saying we want to see this on the Super Bowl.
"It had nothing to do with economics or monetisation, it was our way of thanking our players, our way of acknowledging that this is a game that's worth playing and trying to retain them a little bit longer. It wasn't about getting our game in front of however many millions of eyeballs that were watching the Super Bowl."
The commercial, which starred an angry Liam Neeson, was estimated to have cost around $9 million dollars.
Lee also spoke about the importance of thinking about your current players, rather than just constantly chasing new users through advertising.
"When we do marketing we don't always just think is this going to drive acquisitions, the question that we always ask ourselves is what are our current players going to think about this?" said Lee.
"If they saw this on television or they saw a particular banner, what are our current players going to think about it? If you think about it whether you're Supercell or King or Zynga or anybody else, the players that you have in the bucket is going to be bigger than all the existing players outside the bucket that could potentially become your next set of users.
"At some point you're going to have to look in the mirror and decide whether or not you're going to focus on retaining your users and doing stuff for your current players or going after every single last user. And that's really how we approach the equation."
