Rebekah Saltsman

Rebekah is the CEO and co-founder of Finji, an independent development studio and publisher. Rebekah is a co-designer on Finji's original game development projects, and she manages all of the console and storefront relationships and initiatives for Finji's internal and partner publishing projects. On any given day, she is working on marketing and pr strategy, studio operations, usual June design, negotiating contracts, pitch materials and writing endless emails. Rebekah spends her limited spare time volunteering with the GDC Advisory Board, as a Summer Incubator advisor for NYU, and as a mentor to game developers from around the world.

PR and Marketing Adaptability: Product Marketing versus Culture Marketing

There seems to be a gap between how teams market and talk about their titles which often firmly stays in "product" and rarely strays to how other media verticals operate (movies, television, music, books, etc.). Basically, we spend a lot of time talking about what the game is through our talking points, specs, and store text, but we do not spend a lot of time talking about the things about the game that will live on as part of culture long after the game launches. You will see this across small and large studios as well as how some platforms manage their existing storefronts via their lack of audience engagement post launch. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding that marketing a game is only worthy before a player can actually buy the game and any work or engagement post launch should be relegated to community and fandom rather than structured marketing support from experts. At Finji, a foundational principle of their PR, marketing and community strategy is long term title management to engage not just the first set of fans who find our games, but the fans who find our games 2 or 4 or 6 years in. 

This roundtable, led by Rebekah Saltsman (Finji), will discuss ways to engage cultural marketing and PR and hopefully allow participants to take home new ways to think about the full lifecycle of their games and also how the story, background, ideas, connections, fandoms, etc., that grow out of an existing title can be invaluable to the growth of their current game. This roundtable should also challenge leaders and experts to watch, bend, and manipulate culture and cultural moments and consider and implement what they are seeing into both the development and then the marketing of the project to create a softer landing place for their future studio work.