Pokemon: B2B Marketing Lessons from Pokemania with Fractional CMO Veronica Saron

Over 85 million people play Pokemon Go every month.* 

They’re out there, wandering the real world, finding, catching and battling with their cute little virtual creatures. 

But the experience is real and the people they play with are real. You could say it’s one of the most successful in-person activations ever. 

Pokemon Go is proof that in-person activations act as an extremely effective marketing strategy.

That’s one of the lessons we’re taking from Pokemon in this episode with the help of our special guest, fractional CMO Veronica Saron. 

Together, we also talk about providing game balance, paying attention to metrics, and much more.

*As of the first half of 2024

About our guest, Veronica Saron

Veronica Saron is a marketing leader, formerly of Niantic (Pokémon GO) and AI-powered Neeva (acquired by Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) in May 2023). Her journey has led her through the worlds of gaming, DAOs, artificial intelligence, web3, and the metaverse. Recently, she led the marketing team at Neeva, revolutionizing the search experience by embedding AI answers into an advertiser-free search engine. Her team’s efforts around Neeva's AI-powered positioning – paired with frequent high-profile updates – illuminated their innovative approach, attracted industry leaders and led to their acquisition by Snowflake.

Over a decade ago, Veronica co-founded OwlSpark, Rice University's entrepreneurship accelerator, marking the start of her tech journey. After serving Fortune 500 and Global 2000 clients as a strategy consultant and having a stint as a coordinator at Google, she joined Niantic. There, she led the team that transformed Pokémon GO into a global phenomenon, collaborating with esteemed partners like Google, Apple, Samsung, Nintendo, McDonald's, Verizon, Longchamp, Gucci, Northface, and 7-Eleven, as well as countless global SMBs, community creators, and influencers. 

She has since stepped into roles as an investor and advisor, shaping the future of tech startups. Outside of work, she enjoys stovetop espresso, practicing muay thai, and playing the saxophone. 

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Pokemon:

• Provide game balance. Veronica says, “ When people talk about gamification, it needs to be at the right level of difficulty for you to not just get frustrated and give up. A really good game  will start you off on level one and then you progress through difficulty levels.” And when you apply this to marketing, Ian says, “ Your sales process getting really hard for no freaking reason is the most frustrating thing ever.” So take your customers on a journey, and give them the experience appropriate to where they are in their buying process.
• Look at the metrics. And give them more weight than verbal feedback. Data speaks louder than words. Veronica says, “ When Pokemon Go was in beta, the metrics were really good. Like the retention rates, the activation rates. All the metrics were up and to the right. But people were giving really bad feedback. They were like, ‘I hate this. Why is it not like that? Why isn't it working this way? Why isn't it doing that? Why isn't it doing this?’ And the reason why the team launched the game is because the metrics just spoke louder than what people were saying.”
• Plan in-person activations.  And create immersive environments for your audience. Veronica says, “ When you think about B2B events, you think about conferences and these kind of old school vibes, and I  don't think that's the cutting edge anymore. If you want to do B2B marketing well, take a page out of B2C. There've been some incredible in-person events.” When she worked on Pokemon Go, they were able to do successful in-person events even during COVID and they were able to grow the business despite restrictions.

Quotes

*”  With Pokemon Go and with any product, there's always going to be core users who are like super users. And they will have all these ideas. They'll want certain features. They'll want certain things fixed. They will be really loud. And then you get the rest of everybody that’s the silent majority. A huge part of what product marketers have to do is prioritize feedback based on what is actually going to move the needle in terms of our goals. Because if you just listen to the core users all the time, you'll just make this thing that's only for a very specific super user. You have to balance that feedback with what's going to work for the majority as well.”

*”Figure out what problem you're solving. Who is it for? Figure that out first and then you can start to think about being precious about your brand. Once you have something to protect, like the Pokemon company, then you can get precious about it.”

*” Sometimes we get caught up in our own core mindset and we forget we have to take the customer through a journey and through a ‘balanced game,’ if you will.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Veronica Saron, Fractional CMO at early stage startups

[1:33] Veronica's Journey with Pokemon

[5:02] The Origin Story of Pokemon

[10:07] Pokemon's Global Impact

[16:01] Marketing Pokemon Go

[29:16] The Business Model of Pokémon Go

[35:06] B2B Marketing Lessons from Pokémon Go

[35:53] The Importance of Game Balance in B2B

[41:46] Brand Consistency and Product Market Fit

[46:44] The Power of In-Person Events

Links

Connect with Veronica on LinkedIn

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

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