Product Marketing, the One Winning Creative, and AI’s Taste Problem

Tap to unmute

Everyone in mobile marketing is being told the same thing: make more. A thousand creatives a week, infinite AI variations, scale until it hurts. Matt Veysberg has spent 15 years making the case for judgment over volume.

Matt is Director of Global Creative Marketing at Plarium, the studio behind RAID: Shadow Legends. His path runs through film sets, then in-house creative marketing at MyHeritage, Lightricks and Lumen, and now a 50-plus-person creative org.


From film sets to the creative bridge
Matt started in filmmaking, hustling as a PA and writer. He found his lane in the gap between business decisions and creative direction, a role that barely existed a decade ago. That bridge is now his whole discipline.

What product marketing really is
Forget the PM explaining game mechanics. Product marketing is a marketing lead embedded in the product, the person who turns deep mechanics into motivation and messaging. "It's essentially a marketing lead." Most studios still don't hire for it, and it's the missing link.

You only need one winner
The networks push everyone to scale from 20 creatives to 1,000. The biggest live titles run the same winner for months. "The thing is that you only need one." Volume feels productive. Finding and owning a winner is what pays.

The algorithm has no taste
Meta doesn't laugh at your joke, it just distributes impressions. "The algorithm doesn't have a taste." The edge is methodology: creative pillars tied to real motivations, a reason behind every test, and the discipline to read the results.

Gaming vs everyone else
Gaming is ahead on quality, scale and cinematic firepower. B2C and e-com are ahead on data-driven design and targeting. Matt's steal: hire the marketing designer from B2B who reads dashboards and creates straight from them.

Build around disciplines, not seats
"I never build around the headcount." He builds around the functions the business actually needs: creative strategy, production, project management. The strategist is the translator who turns UA data into briefs artists can run.

Launching a new game
Split creatives into pillars, one per motivation, and test what stops the scroll upper-funnel. Build confidence burst to burst before betting on the big cinematic. Committing to a global launch trailer before testing the pillars is how budgets burn.

Brand is a two-year bet
Brand is a two to three year investment, and it is not performance marketing. A celebrity is not a brand. Great brand makes you feel something, the way RAID's cinematics or the Coca-Cola Santa do. "If it doesn't make you feel anything, this is not brand, man."

IP is speed dating
Alice, Predator, He-Man, Assassin's Creed. Each collab is a fresh reason to give the game another look. "It's like speed dating." It only works when the IP is a natural fit, never a brand slap.

Where AI leaves the human
Soon a schoolgirl will make a high-end cinematic trailer. When the tools are free, the edge is taste, experience and knowing your audience. AI lets a team of 30 hit like 300, so embrace it and take the time back. The human still decides what's good.

The throughline
The whole industry is sprinting to make more. Matt is betting on better. One winning creative beats a thousand guesses. A brand people feel beats a celebrity people forget. And when AI can make anything, taste is the only thing left worth paying for. Make the one thing that works, and know exactly why it did.

---

The Full Transcript:

Amit: Matt, my friend.

Matt: Hello.

Amit: How are you? It's great to see you. So here today in Unpredictable Hits, we have Matt Veysberg. Said it correctly?

Matt: Yeah, you did, yeah.

Amit: Perfectly. So we have here Matt, works in Plarium, has a vast experience in creative marketing, in AI, in everything that you can imagine of. A great guy. Matt, please tell us about yourself.

Matt: Well, well, well, I actually don't really like to talk about myself, so like… it's gonna take me a while. So, I've been in the, like, in the biz for the last 15 years. I think I've started out, like in filmmaking mostly. I was a kind of a end-to-end kind of guy, doing it all, hustling…

Amit: Hmm

Matt: … doing creative, writing, working in production, being… I was a PA for quite a while.

Amit: PA, wow.

Matt: Yeah, production assistant.

Amit: PA, wow.

Matt: Like, for, like, few years. And then at some point when, you know, my folks called and said, "You, you gotta decide what you wanna be like when you grow up," I said… "I actually wanna do both." Like, I wanna be, like, in this kind of creative vertical, but I also really love marketing. Like, I want, like, these two worlds kind of speak to me, of, like, being somewhere at the bridge between, like, you know, making the business decisions and translating those into the creative direction, right? So, like… And that's kind of something that didn't exist back then, and that's also funny 'cause you can see a lot of the companies, like, have started, like, hiring people working in creative marketing for the last 10 years or so.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: And that's, this is where I… That, that was my starting point, essentially. So, like, I've recognized that I'm good at, like, both, and I've went through multiple cycles with different B2B and B2C companies. I worked, in-house for MyHeritage, Lightricks, Lumen, and more. In each and every company I did, like, different kind of gig, but, in the end it was kind of this connection between, you know, taking the narrative from, from, from the business and then translating into how you can visualize or naturalize it for people to engage with it in paid, in paid media. So that's kind of a quick…

Amit: Insane. And today you're in Plarium leading all of the creative marketing efforts. In the past, like you said, you were in MyHeritage and Lightricks. Where do you think is the mobile gaming ahead of regular B2C, like non-gaming B2C, and what do you think gaming should learn from companies like Lightricks, like MyHeritage, in the world of creative marketing?

Matt: Well, that's a good one. I think where gaming companies are way ahead is, the quality. It's like, well, look at this. Look at Supercell, look at, Scopely, look at, like this, like Zynga. So many great companies out there doing, like, these kind of brand-focused campaigns when you just say, "Wow, that's, that's, that's amazing." Like, "This, this is so f- like, this is fantastic." Like, "I wouldn't even imagine seeing this collaboration, this celebrity, this com- like, this come to life." so the scale, the quality, this is definitely where gaming, the gaming biz is way ahead. I think in terms of kind of, you know, the D2C and e-com, the diversity, the volume, that's where those companies are, are actually doing really, really well. So you can…

Amit: Hmm

Matt: … you can see that from, even from the little things, the kind of the volume or the variety of how they test the creatives, of how many creatives they launch on the weekly basis, how advanced they are in terms of identifying the specific personas that, engage or, like, resonate with a, with a specific type of messaging. So, like…

Amit: Hmm

Matt: … this is where they are at a, at a peak. So, so yeah, that's…

Amit: Like, seems like more classic old advertising, and games is a bit more, you know, the world of creative marketing that we know today. In terms of productions and creative level, it seems like from what you're saying, they are very good, like the B- the B2C, the non-games in, you know, targeting, messaging, like more properly and stuff like that.

Matt: Yeah, there's a reason for that. Like, historically, most of those companies didn't really have that much of a scale. Like, would you imagine a, like a e-com brand invest 400, 500K in this, like a high-end cinematic trailer? Most likely not. Like, so, like, that's not how the business works, and that's also kind of… This is the derivative of the business. So, like, gaming is a, it's a totally different animal. Like, you can see that. You can… The, the competition is insane. The, the players are, you know, are highly sophisticated. You need to find the right path to them.

Amit: I think this is, you know, this is the thing, that in games the players are… The users themself are highly sophisticated.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Amit: They're really sophisticated.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: And the funnel of, you know, at the end of the monetization and the retention of the stuff is, like, in most of the games compared to most of the non-games is, like, way more complex.

Matt: Right. Yeah.

Amit: Wow. That's, … Actually, I'm now thinking. I love… Just you made me to think, so I love it. I know. Okay, I want to speak about, product marketing specifically. It's a very hot topic, and I know that you have a very interesting, point of view on that. First of all, can you tell us in Matt eyes what is product marketing?

Matt: So like it depends on who you ask. If you ask, someone in e-com or, like, B2C, they will say one thing. If you ask, someone working in gaming, they will probably say something different. If you combine both worlds, most likely you will get to a point where you see that product marketing is the missing link, kind of when, you know, taking the insights from the product and translating into the, into the marketing world. But here's the kind of the ca- the caveat about that. It's not about talking about what's the mechanic of the game or how this or that event works, so this is totally not that. It's about talking about something much deeper than that. So, like, in my eyes, a product marketing manager or, like, a product marketing director or anyone who works in product marketing and gaming is a, is a marketing manager. Like, he's the marketeer that takes those, really deep game mechanics and try and translates those into the marketing messaging. So, he talks about motivation, talks about why you should play the game, what kind of messaging are we talking about, what kind of structure you would wanna implement into the creative, into the strategy. So it's essentially a marketing lead, right? So, like, it's a, it's someone who's, who's, who's able to build a full, rollout plan, not just communicate the technical details of the game.

Amit: And this guy of product marketing manager, who do usually he works with? Like, the creative team, like, on what cadence, like, do you think is the best in with the product teams? Like, what is the type of communication in it? Because most of the companies today that w- that we work with that I know, they don't have this, let's call it persona or this position. Everyone that has it, I spoke it with also in this podcast with, Marilyn from my Scopely, they think it is the most important thing and, like you said, exactly the missing link. So considering you have this position or you want to hire this position, what is the important, like, characteristic of this position, how we should work, with who, and et cetera?

Matt: So I think in 2026, if you wanna hire, like, a product marketing person, like a, like a PMM or, like, product marketing director, you should probably, look for something much, much different from when, you know, what people actually looked for, like, years before. Now you should look for someone who knows creative, knows UA, knows product…

Amit: Mm

Matt: … and essentially a version of a VP marketing level person embedded into the product department or a gaming studio. So, like, that's someone who's, trusted with the game's vision but also knows how to take that forward, if that, if that's making sense to you. So, so it's, i- picture this as a separate business unit, right? Let's say we're taking, like, a studio that works on a specific casual games, specific casual game, and let's say this casual game needs to have a VP marketing, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: So that's, that's, that's the role you're looking for. You're, you're looking for someone senior enough…

Amit: Yeah

Matt: … to have the vision, have the knowledge, have the background, and also being able to work with everyone efficiently.

Amit: But do you think that considering, like, it seems like, you know, like you said, that VP marketing is the best, but you know, you know what it's like better than anyone. When you're managing a lot of people, at the end you're managing a lot of people, and it takes a lot of your time and creativity.

Matt: Right.

Amit: Do you think it should be, like, inter- like when you're saying VP marketing in terms of the quality of this person, but…

Matt: Right

Amit: … not, not as a VP marketing, just as a floating figure that knows how to work with everyone, or, like, literally a VP marketing should have this type of, thinking?

Matt: I'm, I'm, I'm more talking about experience…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … of the level of experience or kind of the depth of knowledge that that person has. The… 'Cause, you know, if you look at the, marketeers, like, around, around the globe that work in gaming, most of them have, have, have it all, right? So they have the knowledge in UA, creative, they know kind of the, they've done GTM. They, they're, like, heavily business oriented, but then again, they're also kind of, they do have that product knowledge…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … that is required to do the job, right? So that's, that's the person that I'm talking about. I'm not, I'm less, focusing on the fact that this person has to be a VP or…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … like, a director or, like, that's, that's, it's not about titles.

Amit: It's about experience, you're saying.

Matt: It's about experience.

Amit: And quality. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: And yeah. And then, the usual mistake that some of the companies are making, they are hiring people to manage the processes. They are hiring, like, project managers that have some sort of knowledge of how to connect the dots. This is not enough. That person needs to have teeth. Like, he, he also needs to have skin in the game. That person needs to be trusted by the studio. Like, the studio needs to actually see that that person knows the product. And that's, that's not a project manager. That's someone that has much more vast knowledge in the biz. So imagine you need to entrust your product, your game, to someone you don't know. How do you… how exactly are you gonna do that if that person doesn't have all the necessary bits and pieces in that, in his resume? Like, that's, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Amit: Oh, that's, very hard to find. It's like a very strong, very smart, very dynamic, like, individual contributor like I see that, as you said, and I think this is the main point, that the knowledge of the product is what feels like missing a lot these days, in creative marketing in general.

Matt: Right.

Amit: And it's like, you know what, you know what I mean? It's like it feels missing. Even in the past, when we started, I think when we did the discovery at Set and we spoke with people like you in the industry four years ago, there was a bit more understanding or they referred to the product a lot in terms of even the live ops that are going, what is happening in the product. They were involved…

Matt: Right

Amit: … a lot with the product development process. And this, what I'm going to say is an assumption, it's not like a reality, of course, but I think that because today is very competitive, even four years it was, but now it's even more.

Matt: Right.

Amit: So everyone is focused on, you know, this kind of spaghetti on the wall, this let's do a lot of high volume of creative, let's do high diversity, like, let's copy like crazy. And it's feels a bit like the thinking of why we are doing this on w- how it is really connected to the user motivation of the users that are, are playing the games.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: It feels disconnected these days with some of the studios.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: Of course, not all of them.

Matt: Yeah, it's like I'm really glad that you bring it up, like, you know, this kind of high volume narrative of creatives, it's kind of that's something that everyone have… they were talking about these days, right? How can we create more? How can we do… like, how can we scale from like 20 creatives to a thousand? 'Cause so many, channels are talking about this right now.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: They're talking about…

Amit: They're pushing for that.

Matt: They're pushing for that. They're talking about the fact that creatives are like the biggest lever of how you can achieve your business goals. And then every single company starts stressing out. "We need more of those." "We don't have enough." The, the thing is that you only need one. Like so… like look at the, like just open Sensor Tower, go look at the top, top performing creatives for the, for the big live titles. I'm not talking about the new ones…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … not the soft launches, not the kind of the title that was released like, three months ago or something like that. Talking about heavy hitters that have been, that have been here like in the biz for a while. You can see that some of them have been running on the same creative for quite a while, or the same variation of the creative. It's not about them creating volume, it's about them having a winner consistent that performs sometimes for three and four months, right? And that's something that you need to find that takes time and effort and, you know…

Amit: And thought.

Matt: And thought.

Amit: This is exactly what I…

Matt: Exactly

Amit: … I think is a bit missing, that even if you test and, you know, I'm all for testing a lot of, concepts of creative playables and et cetera, it's needs to be about what thesis is. I'm… like it should have this why, you know? I'm not only creating for the order or create. No one knows why the algorithm will pick it up, right?

Matt: Right.

Amit: We're not even trying to say that we do. But if you're testing 30 different concept a month or a week, so you need to understand why you chose this concept, what you're trying to test, then what you learn from the results.

Matt: Right. Yeah.

Amit: And it feels like, you know, a bit today it's just double down like crazy. Because they see the competition in China, they are doing it insanely, like in an insane scale. I think people are getting worried and the networks are pushing. They're giving these case studies, "Look what they did with-"

Matt: Right

Amit: … "thousand creative a week." So it feels like it's a…

Matt: Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a never ending loop. And plus like this whole why thing is really important because like the al… you know, the algorithm doesn't have a taste. Like Meta, there's, there's no human being over there saying like this creative is more like, I don't know, like funnier than the other. Doesn't work like that. Like the box that you send in creatives into decides where, like how to distribute the impressions for the…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … for the potential new players. So like it's not like someone says, "Ha ha" on this joke… and that, like that doesn't really land. Doesn't work like that. That's why, you know, trying different angles till you actually find the right direction is really important. But you gotta have methodology.

Amit: Exactly.

Matt: You gotta, you gotta have, you gotta have creative strategy, that taps into specific motivations for the potential new player. And you can have three of those, you have three, you can have 300 of those. In the end, you will find the one. There's a reason why, some of the games are locked on a specific type of creatives, like without, saying the names, right? Some of the casual games have those kind of, freezing babies… as a creative. There's a reason that this is something that works for that specific game and maybe doesn't for others, 'cause they have locked into a specific methodology that connects the creative with the product and works time over time, right? So if that wa… if, if this is that easy, I would've done the, like a copy of that creative for a different game that's also casual, right? The same casual vertical, and it would've worked, but it doesn't. It, it doesn't work like that. So you need to look at the product, you need to look at the strategy, and then connect the dots, and this is where product marketing comes into place.

Amit: Right. I think this is… we will speak about more, about it more in general, but I think this is one of the most important, takes here, that product marketing is becoming more and more and more crucial, this connection between product marketing, creative, UA, and et cetera.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: If we're speaking about how you need to structure this, … team of creative marketing, so… You manage over 50 or 60 people these days…

Matt: Right

Amit: … in cr- in your creative marketing department.

Matt: Right.

Amit: I know it's a big topic about in even today's world, how do you structure your creative marketing department? So can you tell us a bit about your personal thoughts about when you're entering this phase of, "I need to build my own team"?

Matt: Right.

Amit: How would you think about it?

Matt: That's a big topic. I think, like, I've changed my mind, multiple times over the years, and that's kind of the answer to your question… partially. It's, it's never, like, a one size fits all solution. So what the business needs this year might be different next year, so the structure might and should evolve, but it's always about the specific disciplines that the business needs. So I never build around the headcount, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: So like, give me 20 people, I'm not gonna build it around 20 people. I'm gonna build it about, around the specific disciplines, the functions that the business needs. And the business will always need creative strategy, production, and project management. Like, and the production can be divided into, like, design and video production…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … et cetera, et cetera, right? It depends on the kind of… the kind of game and, like, whether, like, you need more kind of high-end stuff or maybe something more agile, quick and dirty and all that stuff.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: But it always about, like, it spans across these worlds. There's, there's always a need for someone to set the creative strategy, to build the briefs, to know the data, to speak with the UA and get c- 'cause, 'cause usually, like, if you, like, skip that step, not every UA manager is able to communicate how you should build a creative. And so like…

Amit: And most of the time they don't.

Matt: Right.

Amit: They don't really know.

Matt: Right. And then you need that middleman to try and translate them into the artistic language, right? And that's the strategy. That's someone that takes the data, interprets, interprets the data, builds the briefs, and then takes those briefs to the, to the artists. And then the artist not necessarily has to, like, go deep into the data layers and look through the CTRs and the IPMs. Like, he just needs to work with a clear set of rules, right? Like, how… Like, what's the structure, what's the goal, what's the message? And then all this kind of beautiful thing needs to be coordinated, needs to be project managed, right? Needs… There's a lot of different dots that you need to connect across the org. So this is my take, at least, like, for, let's say, companies that work at scale, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: And, and this is my recent experience, at least. If we're talking about lean, kind of nimble teams, then it's a totally different story. 'Cause if you're nimble, you need to be, a jack of all trades.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: You need to build a totally different setup, and that's totally possible. There's so many examples, and that's also kind of really great example in B2C, B2B vertical. You have a lot of marketing designers that know how to read data. That's pretty insane. There's not a lot of those in gaming. Like, that's not something that you can encounter a lot, like, someone who's actually data-driven, right?

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: So that's something that, by the way, you know, that's a kind of a takeaway, for any gaming company that wants to kind of, you know, hire new artists into their roster. Like, look up the B2B and B2C sector. Don't be locked on just, like, gaming hires and, like, looking at the gaming artists. Like, look at the other verticals…

Amit: Mm.

Matt: 'cause some…

Amit: I see what you mean

Matt: … due to the fact that they're, these are working on high scale, they sometimes don't have creative managers. They don't have, like, creative strategists. They just work with dashboards, and they create. They, they envision, they create, and they know how to work with that. So kind of this role that's called, like, a creative marketing designer, that's something you can often see in B2B and B2C, verticals.

Amit: And wow. And, yeah, it seems like you said if you're a nimble team, so this type of stuff is missing. You know, we have one company that we work with, their marketing artist is, doing the creative tests, sending the reports back…

Matt: Right

Amit: … giving the briefs to external, companies that they work with, like us, or, I don't know, agencies. And also it's, doing a video or specifically playable, this example, but this is how they operate. I found it, you know, insanely intensive a bit…

Matt: Right

Amit: … you know, because it is a lot of context switching, but it seems like it's a very nice scalable approach for certain type of companies. Not for all of them…

Matt: Right

Amit: … like you said.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: Some, yeah.

Matt: Exactly. So if you're, like, if you're lean and nimble, you wanna stay this way for a while, kind of, and this makes sense, like, business-wise, that's totally, like, approach you can, you can handle. But again, it's o- it's o- kind of it's only good enough to a specific stage.

Amit: Okay, and this one is interesting for me because you have experience with, you know, the b- on the best games in the world, high scale, but you have a lot of experience of launching new games, and also successful, non-successful, but you know what is happening when you have the soft launch and big launch.

Matt: Right.

Amit: How do you think you should be prepared in terms of your thought and, let's call it resources, in creative marketing for launching a new game? Before soft launch, let's focus on that.

Amit: Of course, this changes and, you know, it doesn't fit all, but in your thought, like, of your creative marketing leader.

Matt: I think first of all, y- there's like few schools, like, on that particular subject. So, are you asking, like, from the stage perspective or, like, from the, from the perspective of, like, what kind of approach?

Amit: Approach. More approaches and then, you know, some resources. It's not like you need 10 creatives on meta in order to soft launch a game.

Matt: Right.

Amit: Because Here you can, you know, it's very hard to know what is the truth, but more in terms of your approach, what you want to test, how to test it…

Matt: Yeah, so…

Amit: How soon in the process

Matt: … so I'm a, I'm a big believer in creative strategies, kind of identifying, identifying the pillars that you wanna test. So I usually divide, each, like, set of creatives into, I call them, like, creative pillars. So these are essentially motivations, right? So we can talk about, … There's different approaches to that, but, like, in how I do usually, like, these is more about, think of this, you have four personas, right? So one says, "I love ice cream." another one says, "I love steak." And you have another one that says, "I love mac and cheese," et cetera, et cetera. And you build the set of assumptions…

Amit: Mm

Matt: … for each and every one of them as a persona, and that's a, that's a classical advertising approach. Like, that- there's nothing new about that. But if you, if you have, like, a marketing test or, like, a, or a tech launch where there's still, it's mostly about upper funnel, right? Like, it's still not, like, it's… You're not gonna be effectively able to test ROAS. Like, that's, it's still not there. But you will be able to determine, like, what's more scroll stopping for the specific type of audience, AKA specific pillar, and then you're gonna double down on those pillars from, from burst to burst. And gradually, towards the soft launch, you will have a set of learnings that you're mostly comfortable about, and obviously this is not exact math. And then your confidence level will, will rise from zero to, like, 50%, and then you can be more effective when you, let's say you need to invest more budget into creative production, when you wanna take bigger risks. I'm, I'm, I'm always puzzled about how, you know, how you can even make a decision about a big cinematic trailer for global launch if you haven't done the prep stages before that, if you haven't tested all those different pillars knowing that this is most likely will resonate. So if you've done that, then, you know, like, you can, you can rest sure that something most likely will work.

Amit: Amazing. Well, no, that's, you know, it's a very, very big que… It's a lot of questions that we get asked all of the time is about new games, and I think most of the people are more interested in understanding the approach needed and exactly what you just said. And I think you are one of the most, I don't know, a lot, I think one of the most few creative marketing leaders at high scales in the world, so this is, priceless, really.

Matt: Oh, appreciate that.

Amit: It's very impressive. No, no, it's… You don't have a lot of them, and you're, and I know personally you're great, so. No, really, it's really great. So now we're doing something pretty cool that…

Matt: Okay

Amit: … the great team here of, …

Matt: Go ahead

Amit: … Seth prepared questions. I don't know what you have there. So you take one card, you read the question, and then you need to answer it.

Matt: Okay. That's…

Amit: And I watch you. You read that.

Matt: You watch me. Okay.

Amit: I watch you.

Matt: Watch me. All right. Is there something you haven't done yet that scares you a little to admit you want to? Ooh. … are we talking, like, is it, like, work-related or, like, is it personal?

Amit: I think it can be, I think it can be both. Like, whatever you feel more comfortable with. You can take it personally or, like, career-wise or specifically work now related.

Matt: Well, you know what? Like, this is actually funny 'cause, something that I've never done yet, this is work-related, I've never approached someone at a conference to mingle. Like, I've never…

Amit: Really?

Matt: … approached anyone saying, "Hey, I'm Matt. I'm from Plarium." I've never done that, and it's kind of a, it's kind of a requirement, like, when you're in the biz like this, right? You need to meet new people.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: So, and it's, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm probably gonna start doing that more.

Amit: But you're getting approached a lot now.

Matt: I'm getting approached.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: Like crazy, I assume. Like…

Matt: But I've never done, like, the vice versa.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: Like, and that's, you know, that's probably 'cause of me. But…

Amit: Let's do another one.

Matt: Okay. Let's do another one.

Amit: Let's do another one.

Matt: Let's do another one.

Amit: I think we have good questions today.

Amit: And for those who can't see it from the camera, you did something physically almost impossible. You see what happened here?

Matt: Well, yeah.

Amit: It's, it's amazing.

Matt: Yeah, it is. Yeah. If your, if your 60-year-old self could whisper one thing to you right now, what would it be? Oh, I know that. So, like… I know the answer to that. He would, he would whisper, "Patience."

Amit: To be more patient?

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: Really? Why?

Matt: Yeah. I'm a, like a, I'm a… It, it's kind of a… let, let me, let, let me, go back. So, I sometimes, act like I have been into the future. I've seen the outcome. And I've already done that. But then sometimes I need to look back and say, "Are, are you guys with me?" Like, "Do you know what we're doing right now?" So it's, so I need… That's, that's the, what I'm talking about. So being patient about some people that I'm working with not always know all the answers, so we need to take this slow, and not every initiative and not every project that we're working on, - Kind of, needs to happen right now, so like this time

Amit: Oh, it's, that I can, you know, for me, I can also feel that. It's one of the hardest thing to do, to be patient about a initiative or a project or something…

Matt: Right. Yeah

Amit: … to kick off that you're like, "Okay, I'm 10 steps ahead. You're two steps ahead, so guys, come to me." But the reality is you need to align and actually go back.

Matt: Exactly, yeah. You need to kind of…

Amit: It's a big topic

Matt: … you need to, like, take, take everyone's, like, hands. Take, take a hand and say, "Hey, you guys," like, "let's, let's go." Like, "I'll, I'll show you the way." Sometimes, like, when you work in a high-paced environments, gaming is a super high-paced environment. Like, sometimes you feel like there's no time to kind of get everyone on the same page, but this is an absolute necessity. Like, you gotta, you gotta do that, especially if you're managing, like a, like a big op with many teams and many people, 'cause if you wanna have them with you, and then if you haven't done that, then eventually you're gonna lose. Like, you're gonna run by yourself.

Amit: Exactly. Well, this is the…

Matt: Yeah

Amit: … right, so one of the, you know, it's a very big, think management topic that is very hard for most of…

Matt: Right

Amit: … leaders to do. But, yeah, super interesting. I want to ask you a pretty vague questions because I want your approach on that, but you said it very high-paced environment, gaming, very competitive. You see the competition rising and rising and rising, getting harder to launch new games. You also see VC money a bit less poured, like, poured into games.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Amit: But you still have a lot of new games. Some of them are great and scaling. Let's take two years from now when it will be even harder to scale new games or to maintain scale of existing games. What do you think will be the differentiation in your UA approach of a game, considering a lot of it is li- you know, performance marketing?

Matt: Oh, that's a pretty vague question.

Amit: Very vague.

Matt: So essentially you're asking what's gonna be different than two years from now, right?

Amit: Yeah, but how can you differentiate yourself and your user acquisition from others?

Amit: It's all around, you know, creative marketing, so…

Matt: I'd say that, … Let's talk about AI for a second. So a few years from now, a schoolgirl will most likely gonna be able to produce a high-end cinematic trailer, right? Most likely.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: And I'm not saying that this is gonna be that easy, but maybe not in six months from now, maybe in a year from now, but this is becoming highly accessible to everyone. The difference would be is experience and taste, right? And I'm seeing so many beautiful creatives out there, beautiful campaigns out there, but some of them lack the message or the structure or the motivation, or there's so many missed out opportunities there, like when, when you dissect that, and then you also see that those are actually not working for the…

Amit: Mm-hmm

Matt: … for the, for the game itself. So I think, there's always gonna be that human factor of taste and experience and kind of direction of kind of where to take this, so that's probably gonna be one of the things always different.

Amit: Like the taste of, what to do will be probably the, like the big differentiator, you're saying?

Matt: Probably, yeah. That, I would say that's, that's for one. And then, think it's also kind of the, if we're speaking of AI right now, you're gonna be able to do more with more, right? So, like, imagine you know, imagine a company that has 30 people but has the power of, like, 300, right? How good would that be for the, for the gaming company that has multiple titles, right? So, like, this is gonna be really, really different. Like, it's gonna be a totally different world out there. So yeah, think I'm, don't have a clear answer about that.

Amit: No, I think there is no, you know, clear answer because no one knows, but I think, look, AI current limitation, you have a lot of limitation, but let's say that the most obvious things are innovation, novelty, and taste.

Matt: Right.

Amit: Like, taste is a big subject in research in AI, no matter…

Matt: Right

Amit: … like putting aside games and creatives.

Matt: Right.

Amit: And they are saying that it's going to be even… it's not going to be progressed as well, for example, as code generation with the model, so…

Matt: Right

Amit: … it's getting more and more scarce, so you really need it, and considering code generation and product development will be easier, so I think the people with good taste will be even missing more. So it's really to do, like I'm trying to complete you or also to think about it myself, what will be the real v- like unique value proposition of a studio or a game in the upco- like in the future, it probably will be this, like you're saying, this taste or what, why we're doing what we're doing, or how to guide, like you're saying, the direction of the systems that you are using.

Matt: That's for one, plus making great games. Like, it's always about the product.

Amit: Do you think AI at the end will craft fun?

Matt: I think it's fun to craft with AI. So I'll, I'll say that. Whether this is gonna be a fun product that is made by AI, …

Amit: Speaking about end-to-end…

Amit: … like you don't have this person in the loop

Matt: … I think, like, yeah, the pace of how things are changing right now is crazy.

Amit: It's insane.

Matt: It's, it's purely insane. I don't know.

Amit: Yeah.

Matt: I really don't know, and I'm, I'm actually curious to discover that and, you know, to, I'm curious about…

Amit: Yeah, I'm curious as well

Matt: … what's, what's gonna come in a few years. You know, Unity just rolled out kind of Unity AI.

Amit: Mm-hmm.

Matt: And there was a, there was a heavy clash between people, that have started using that Some of them are saying like, "This is kind of, this is the end," right? 'Cause now you can prompt your way into making a game. And some are saying, "Well, this is not there yet." Well, it probably is gonna be there you know, there somewhere, like at some point. But it's like every time there's a new platform, new tool, new model coming out, this is pretty much the conversation we're in. People are like genuinely scared about, scared about what's, what's to come. And I think we need to stop being scared and we need to embrace that and see how can we leverage that, how you can amplify yourself, your work, your people that you're managing with the help of those tools. And that's, that's the narrative I'm pushing for. Like, we should embrace that, we should adopt that.

Amit: How do you recommend other leaders like you when you have already your team running for a pretty long time, how do you recommend to kind of enforce or to teach them how to use AI in their day-to-day?

Matt: There's a lot of different ways. I think first of all, you need to kind of identify what are the pressure points, like where, what exactly is lacking right now? Like, what's the kind of the level of mental adoption that people have, whether they're open to it or not. If not, what's kind of, what's the reason behind it? Some people don't want it 'cause they fear that they're gonna be losing control.

Amit: Mm.

Matt: And there's an answer to that. There are a lot of AI tools and like platforms in the biz that allow you the granularity of control, right? So that's, that's something that actually is out there, without going, going like into deep, like into the actual names. But you can, you can do that. Some just think of it, of a, of a, you know, this whole subject of AI like a waste of time. And then…

Amit: Mm

Matt: … usually my way of dealing with that is like it's kind of the opposite. So like I'm teaching people how to take the time back. So what if you had four hours throughout the day that you have your time back, right? So you can, you can spend it as how you, how you wish. I'll, I'll tell you like a really small story, like, I had a two-hour heavy gym workout. And in that time, Claude, summarized all my notes, all my meetings, went through some of the decks that I've been working on, built a, like a really descriptive plan for me for this week, with action points, set some meetings, summarized what I need to know before each and every meeting, and also kind of as a bonus, generated kind of some insights on some of the creative strategies I'm working on right now.

Amit: Wow.

Matt: And that's probably like six, seven hours of my work, right? Was it perfect? No. Did I have to review it? Yes, I had to review that. But, but still, it took me like 30 minutes to review the work, to give feedback, to give comments. So I have a personal assistant, right? I have a personal assistant.

Amit: Yeah, me too. I have AmitOS, Amit Operating System.

Matt: Right. Like that. I have a Matt OS, right? Doing the work and allowing me to spend quality time with my family, myself, whatever the heck I want, right? So that's, that's, I think that's, that's a really great accomplishment.

Amit: And so much fun, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: It's so much fun, but what you said, you know, about saving time, one of the thing that I've been experiencing, mostly at the beginning using, for example, Claude Code, is that I think I spent more than two weeks of my work life on building products that I never used. I don't know if you experienced that. You're building stuff you're highly excited about. You're like, "Yeah, I'm doing this automated report," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Forgot about it, never used it again. And, but it was mostly at the beginning, but it taught me a lot about, … Okay, so what is… I think with AI, you know, everyone is using AI and…

Matt: Right

Amit: … everyone should use AI. Not everyone is using, but I think you see people that are very, very good with AI, meaning utilizing well AI, have this product thinking and this thing that in my opinion, like if we're coming to a group that are not using AI and we want to try to, okay, to explain how to use it, what is LLM, how do you use, really how do you do prompt and et cetera, and et cetera, one thing that you need to teach them is about kind of PRDs, product understanding about how to craft and plan what you want to do.

Matt: Right.

Amit: To understand that you have a real value of it. I personally spent, I can promise you, a lot of time, a lot of time, mostly at the beginning. It was a great time. Okay. But let's speak about, another topic that, I think again, you're one of the best of it in the market. Let's speak a bit about IP, and I will divide it to two. First of all, you have, you know, Plarium, you have Raid, one of, in my opinion, the coolest IPs ever.

Matt: Right.

Amit: So the first question is about how do you build your own IP? Which is a tough question, and then I will ask how do you collaborate with external IP that you're also doing now amazingly. But let's start first, you're a new company, a new game, you're scaling. How the hell are you building a real strong IP like you have from in Disney and et cetera? Like this is how I feel about Raid.

Matt: Well that's, that's, I think that's the common question, you know, probably, like a VP marketing, a CMO of a company like that asks himself like how do, how do we actually, how we sh- how should we build an IP? I think it's more about like what kind of business goals do you have? Like if your goal is to build a Disney-like IP in 2026 when you're a, in kind of a nimble mobile gaming studio… That's probably gonna take years. If you are ready for that, if you have the budgets, if you have the people, and if you have the necessary mental capacity of, you know, in this tough and meticulous work, so then it's all about brand. It's brand awareness campaigns. It's, it's getting the name of your game, of your product to every household in the target market that you have. And this is… I think this is not the name of the game anymore. Like, this is not where we are. I think, you know, from my personal experience, kind of the games that I'm, I'm working on, they have built themselves over the years. Some of the games are, like, seven years old. So, like, and we're still building that brand. We're still, like, sustaining. We're still, in a lot of different activities that kind of help manage that. But this is, this is tough. This, this is…

Amit: No, it should be hard. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. And, and again, if your goal is to succeed in marketing, like if you wanna reach your, hit your targets this year, brand is extremely important, like something you need to start doing now. But then the payout for that will not come in the same year. Like, you will not see the results unless you're willing to invest, and the investment level is really, really high. So, so, like, you will probably see the, this paying out in two to three years. Like, if you're ready to sustain your operation for that long and not seeing the return on that investment, well, that's one thing. But if your, if your investors, like if your founders, like pressing you to get the, to get the value on each and every dollar this year, that's probably not the smartest move, man.

Amit: So yeah, I'm always thinking, you know, about hybrid casual, you know, more classic puzzle, you know, even IAA, not necessarily IAP, and whether they should have, like more brand awareness stuff. I'm a big fan of brand, so I think always. But like you said, it's the barrier is pretty high because you need to invest a lot. You need…

Matt: Right

Amit: … you need big believers, and the ROI, as you said, is not, immediate. I think it's extremely important, especially for IAP games, and I'm seeing, seeing it more and more companies that are trying to build, in my opinion, something that is close to Raid in terms of just how when… Again, when you think about Raid, I always think, since I was young, like I'm still young, but let's take five, even six years before I knew games, I knew Plarium, I knew the brand of it. Like, you know what I mean? It's a very strong brand of the games. So but yeah. It's a very…

Matt: Yeah, but ask, ask yourself like why you got acquainted with the, with the brand. It's probably due to the high-end cinematic trailers you have seen online, right?

Amit: Amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt: So, and that's…

Amit: It's create the feeling that you want to feel…

Matt: Right. And…

Amit: … the cinematics

Matt: … and that's probably kind of one of the reasons that, you know, the brand was built like it looks like now. Kind of it was less about the actual game. It was more about the experience you have around it. It's more about what does it make you feel, and it made you feel like it's a premium game, right? You saw the triple A trailers and so, and you said to yourself, "Wow, this is high quality. This is top-notch." And that's what good brand awareness campaign does. It makes you feel something. Like, if you're just bringing a celebrity to present your game, that's not brand. That's a high, like a high, like a really costly investment that you wanna see the re-the return on. Like, that doesn't really make you…

Amit: Actually, it's a very important quote. I will quote you a lot. No, really, because this is what most of the games are doing, you know? Have the celebrity want to see the ROI immediately. Speaks, speaks about it like a classic creative on UA.

Matt: Right. So, like, this is not performance marketing. Like, if you, if you pay for a celebrity and you expect that celebrity to bring the CPIs down, well, maybe that will work if you choose the right celebrity, if you have the right seasonality for the launch of the UA campaign, if, the creative is good. So, like, there's a lot of, like, parameters, like, in this whole campaign that might work, might not, right? But then if it doesn't f-make you feel anything, well, then this is not re- you know, this is not brand, man. Like, think of, like, the oldest, like one of the oldest, brand-focused campaigns out there. So, the Coca-Cola Christmas jingle.

Amit: Mm.

Matt: Santa. So, like, this is something that actually makes you feel like it's Christmas, and this has been done for years and years and years repetitively. And this is exactly that. Like, creates like a special sort of feeling that hey, well, makes you smile, right? So, like, you know, seeing, seeing something like that is probably the smartest choice.

Amit: Wow. And let's speak about the big trend that we're… It is… I don't want to call it a trend, but I'm seeing it more and more about IP collaboration. It's also something that you're doing a lot. First, in my opinion, the "Alice in Wonderland," it's, again, I'm a big sucker and fan of Plarium and Raid, so it's really amazing. No, really, just beautiful. So, when you want, because again, like you say, you have your business goals.

Matt: Right.

Amit: You want to reach your goals, and you're saying, "Okay, one of the strategies to see if I can reach my goals is to do IP collaboration." How do you choose the right IP?

Matt: You want the honest answer?

Amit: The honest answer.

Matt: We don't always know, like, what's the right IP, but, we do research. We, we invest a lot of thinking and asking our players what do they want. Like, if you go to…

Amit: Ah, you literally ask them?

Matt: Sometimes.

Amit: Like surveys and stuff like…

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: Oh, really?

Matt: Sometimes.

Amit: Oh, okay.

Matt: We can ask our players, yeah. That, that's… I think it's also kind of…

Amit: You have a strong community also.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it's al- it's also, like, it's not that, like, strange 'cause a lot of the, gaming companies actually ask their players questions about… how the game is, what do you want us to change? If you go to the Reddit and you search through the threads and you see, you'd see, like, a lot of, you know, players of the game are actually asking for something. They're asking for this feature and that feature, maybe this particular IP that they want to see in the game. And if you aggregate all the results, you might get to a specific answer to your question. In the, in the example of Alice, no one actually asked for that. That was, that was kind of the internal decision. We went for something fairly different from what we've done before, kind of the dark take on the, on the classic book by Lewis Carroll. Like, that's something that we've done deliberately, and it worked like a charm. One of the biggest campaigns we've done, last year. And yeah, I think kind of the most interesting part about the choice of the IP is firstly, it doesn't need… it should not feel like a, like a brand slap. So I don't know, like imagine, something that, you know… There's a lot of jokes about, when will you take Mickey Mouse as a, as a, as a, as a, as a IP collaboration and integrate that into Raid. So, like, so, like, we're talking about the fact that it should not be a brand slap. It needs to be a natural fit. It needs to integrate well into the game itself, and also it needs to feel like it belongs there. So with Alice, if you look through the campaign, the trailer, like the whole narrative, it was all about, the progression. So you start out, you… like in the creative trailer itself, in the campaign, you'll see that, you see first, you see the Alice being defenseless, and then kind of gradually through, like, this time loop, realizing that she's, like, this all-powerful champion in the game. That's gaming 101, right? Like, that's something that makes total sense for someone seeing that for the first time. It doesn't really feel, like, absurd or, like, not, you know, out of place.

Amit: Wow. No, it's, … No, how you think about this stuff, it's, like, super, super interesting, really. Just super interesting, and again, I believe it's… The, the industry is missing, in my opinion, this kind of thinking, so it's really, gold, your…

Matt: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it

Amit: … it's really gold.

Matt: But we've also done some stuff that people might say, "Hey, well, this doesn't belong into the game," right?

Amit: Yeah, you know, some of them might, but I do think that in everything in life, in work, let's say, put it this way, I believe in life, but also mostly in work, you need to check all of the possibilities. And I believe because people have a lot of biases about stuff, they're not rethinking about maybe now, because the world is consistently changing. One of the stuff you said about your marketing department, the department that you started like that, then you evolved, then you change it all the time. You said, "What, do I stop?" Because the main world is, the world is, to be dynamic. And I think the world… because the world is dynamic, you need to adapt to it. So, I do think that every marketer should think what are the, potential moves I can make and not, "Okay, I'm this type of game. I need to do a high production cinematic. I'm this type of game, only classic gameplay user acquisition. This type of game, only save the king concept." You know what I mean? So keep your mind fresh.

Matt: I think every marketeer should ask, themselves this question: Why now? So that's also, like, that's also kind of the question I'm asking myself when we choose an IP. So we have a game, it's a, like a seven-year-old game. A lot of the people that we were able to convert into the players into the game, in the game, we've done that. And then there's, you know… It's like, it's like we're on a date, right? So we're sitting on a date. We, that's the first time, you're seeing, you know, the girl sees you, right? And she sees you, like, sitting in, you know, this black T-shirt, and she says, "You know what? Mm, I'm not sure about that." But then you show up in a different T-shirt, and it's yellow, and the girl says, "You know what? Maybe, maybe that's the, maybe that's the T-shirt I like on him. Maybe let's, let's do another date." That, that's the, that's the role of the IP. It's like you're constantly showing people another opportunity to dive into the game with new content, and if you didn't like Alice, we'll show you Predator. If you didn't like Predator, we'll show you He-Man. If you didn't like He-Man, we'll show you Assassin's Creed. So it's, that's, that's the beauty. Like, it's even not always the same, the same audience. Like some, like people might, like different types of audiences… resonate with different types of IPs. Of course, like, the high-level target audience is the same, but within target, the same target audience, you have different groups. So then it's exactly like dating. It's like speed dating even. Like, it's like the people are…

Amit: Yeah, speed dating.

Matt: Yeah, it's speed dating. It's like you constantly create a new opportunity for people to dive into the game now, and IP is kind of the amplifier for that, right? 'Cause there's the content within the game, like, kind of the, like, the lore and the characters you have in the game are, are, you know, somehow limited, right? So, like, no one knows character X, but everyone knows Alice, or everyone knows Ezio from Assassin's Creed.

Amit: Yeah, Ezio.

Matt: Right?

Amit: Yeah, one of the best of all time.

Matt: So, so this is how you bring those people in. This is how you make them stop, right? The… And, and also, like, you're… If we're talking about speed dating, there's, like, a dozen of other guys competing for attention of that girl, right? So you need to stand out, and, like, what makes you different? So that yellow T-shirt, 'cause everyone are wearing black. So that's, that's the reason for people to dive into the game right now.

Amit: Wow. Okay. Wow, I love it. It's a great, great examples. As last question, you have, again, experience in RPG, but also casual. I don't know if, if a lot of people knows that about you. What do you think today casual games in their creative marketing approach must learn from RPG, creative marketing approach?

Matt: Oh, that's a, that's a big question. I think not every casual game is, open to, let's say, off-brand experimentation. So there's a lot of games out there that are heavily, sticking heavily to their brand guidelines and the narrative and the lore that was built for the game. But then if you look at the RPG, you'd see there's so many, so much diversity happening, right? So I'd say that's one takeaway that is definitely should be, should be interesting for the casual sector. Other than that, I'd say the diversity of storytelling, right? So, like, RPG by, by design is a, like, you know, there's a lot of, like, fantasy, narratives involved. Taking that in, into your, into your casual game, would most likely do wonders. So that's probably what I have on that note.

Amit: I mean, it's, … No, because again, I, you know, as a personal, as a personal user, I really love, RPG and fantasy and any type of games, and we spoke about it before the podcast. And I do think that a lot of your approaches are coming from, you know, this type of… I- like you said, maybe the beginning product marketing thinking.

Matt: Yeah.

Amit: And, it must be somehow relevant to casual games, you know what I mean? It's mu- you must have this connection. So I just want to emphasize to everyone that is listening here that is from casual, not really because that your takes are m- somehow must be implemented in terms of approach or experimentation in casual games because it's, in my opinion, it must work. I don't know what, but something will work, which is a…

Matt: You know what? Like, I'll contradict myself for a second, but is it really, does it really matter, like, what kind of game are you selling to some…

Amit: So this is why I don't think so, but I think that RP- like, your thinking comes from more, from more hardcore gaming. Like, you think about the experience and the funnel of the user. You play games, so you know it.

Matt: Right.

Amit: Like, you know what it feels like to play a fun game, so this is what you're trying to deliver in your creative as well. Again…

Matt: Right

Amit: … there is a reason why I so much I love the cinematics of Raid and what you're doing there, and everything in their creative marketing approach, the thinking there is, like, speaking to me as someone that really love playing games for fun.

Matt: Right.

Amit: Maybe, you know, it's different for casual, so putting that aside. So I do think it's relevant for all games, but I think most of the games leader are not thinking like that, if you understand what I mean.

Matt: Yeah, I do. I do. I guess, like, you can take a lot from, from RPGs, but again, my point is essentially when you're selling a product, you need to know your audience. So you cannot just copy a top-performing hook from an RPG game when you, when your, like, your product and its target audience is, like, a housewife from Orlando. Like, that's not gonna work. Like, it doesn't really matter if you've seen that as a top-performing creative in, like, in one of your dashboards, like, for your competitor, but if you just slap in exactly the same hook, and exactly the same approach from a different game, it's not gonna work. Like, that's pretty much…

Amit: Yeah, yeah. It's perfect. Matt, my friend, I wanna say thank you on behalf of all of, the Sett team.

Matt: Thank you.

Amit: It was amazing, and I think that everyone, everyone should listen to that, saying it at the end. But, again, the product marketing approach, the brand, the IP, how you think about AI, how you construct and build creative marketing in this new world, fucking amazing. So thank you very much, my friend.

Matt: Thank you. Thank you.

---