Harry Lang Talks About How He Went From NOTHING To VP Of Marketing

Season 2 Episode 1

Welcome to the Kwalee Podcast, where we bring you insightful conversations with industry experts. In this episode, we sit down with Harry Lang, the VP of Marketing at Kwalee, to delve into his incredible career journey and his role within our organisation.

Join us as we explore Harry's path to success, from his humble beginnings to his current position as a marketing leader in the gaming industry. Discover the strategies, tactics, and experiences that have shaped his expertise, allowing him to thrive in this dynamic field.

Throughout the episode, we uncover the latest marketing trends and techniques, ranging from traditional approaches to cutting-edge digital strategies. Harry shares his insights on effective branding, customer engagement, and market positioning, offering invaluable advice for marketers of all levels.

Whether you're a marketing enthusiast, aspiring professional, or simply curious about the gaming industry, this episode provides a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. Harry's practical tips and captivating stories are sure to ignite your passion for marketing and empower you to excel in this ever-evolving landscape.

Don't miss out on this engaging conversation with Harry Lang, as we uncover the secrets behind his remarkable career trajectory. Tune in now and gain a deeper understanding of the marketing world within the gaming industry. Subscribe to the Kwalee Podcast for more exclusive interviews and valuable content to fuel your marketing journey.

Transcript

You said, "Like Covid, negative things come out of the blue to turn your life on its head, and there is nothing, nothing you can do about it. Apart from grit your teeth, shore up your own personal resolve and march on and make the creative and media industries a force for good, not evil." Is that, that's Harry line? I remember that one. Yeah.



 With 20 years experience, Harry has worked in agencies, been a consultant, CMO marketing director at leading online gaming and esports organizations and an author, now VP of marketing here at QALY. You mentioned Newcastle University. Yeah.



 And you did human geography there as well. I didn't actually. Oh, you didn't? I, well, basically in my freshers week, I think I ticked the wrong box. And so I ended up graduating with a Bachelor of Science,



 which sounds very flashy and makes me feel all scientific. But basically I did, I did, I did human geography throughout in terms of the coursework. And I always wanted to study, basically that's when I was sort of enjoying writing for the first time properly. And so I chose subjects I was interested in. I did a lot of studies of island cultures, anthropology side of small expanses and how they behaved and how people got on and the sort of socio-cultural elements. So I wrote a lot about those, but popped out with a Bachelor of Science degree through a typo, realistically. And you've continued studying. I was looking at you doing something. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, there's an ongoing one. I mean, I started,



 but I was late to the party recognizing the ongoing study in any career really, but, you know, my world as a marketer, ongoing study is absolutely critical. I think through my 20s, there's a sort of arrogance of youth and thinking, well, I'm learning on the job. I'm pretty good at some of this and I'm going to crack on and just work really hard. And the hours are brutal. There wasn't much time for study. Probably in my late 20s, I realized that to get ahead and to be really good, you need to learn from people who are better than you. So I started studying, but loosely it was sort of reading the books, the odd conference and things like that and sort of study off my own back. And then a few formal courses later, basically when employers were happy to pay for something interesting because it would benefit them as well as me, I'd always jump at those opportunities and some of them were good, some of them less good. And then I decided to apply for an MBA probably about 10 years ago now, knowing that it wasn't going to be a sort of quick thing. I wasn't going to take time off work. At the time I had some gardening leaves, had a few months and I thought I could invest time in that. I actually got some work very quickly. So I think I'm well behind. It's kind of, it's probably sort of thing that by the end of my career, I might finish my MBA. And I'm fine with that because the process of learning, I basically pay as I go for the course I'm on with Harry at Watt University. So I'll do stints here and there and by the end of my career, I might pop out with an MBA, but arguably it doesn't really matter by then. If there's learning to be done through the coursework access and the teaching, that's pretty healthy. But really now the bulk of my real learning is done. Ad hoc, I sort of follow interesting people on social media. I read a fair bit. I don't tend to read sort of marketing self-help style books as much, but I read about interesting topics or products or movements. And those, it's kind of more about understanding people. I mean, in the strategic side of marketing, understanding people and motivations and drivers is way more important than understanding the channels. By now, if I didn't understand how the channels worked, I'd be in the wrong job. So it's less on the tactical side, much more on strategic, which means understanding human behaviours, drivers, need states. Those are things if I can pick up tidbits about that's interesting or the trends or the new thing in social or content or media.



 Those are the learnings that I mean at the age I am now, at least I'm vaguely capable of staying abreast of what various audiences are interested in and what these channels or media are capable of. And can you buy into them? Can you advertise on them? Can you use them organically? So that's the kind of learning that I do most of the time these days. So it sounds like the process of learning is more important than the MBA having that sort of finish. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think when you're starting out, a lot of jobs where they're highly competitive as a graduate,



 you need to have a degree because otherwise you won't make it in that first tranche of CVs they look at. It's just the tick box exercise, unless you're going to go in something vocational where you need the law degree or the medical degree, obviously, for everything else. In advertising, when I got into it, there were two and a half thousand applicants for every three jobs. So you had to stand out somehow. I remember doing the sort of two day interview sessions with MNC Sachi. And it was all post grad Oxbridge types who had brains to burn. I was I can please imposter syndrome, but they didn't get it. They didn't get the fact that this was a game in which they had to stand out. And I worked that out fairly quickly. And I had a very good presentation that was quite out there, but I knew it would stand out. And I worked out the best way to win that game was to be the facilitator. Basically, I enabled everyone and help them look good. And basically, I knew that that would be witnessed. And it would position me in a box of they get on with people, they motivate people, they drive people, they aren't going to be they aren't trying to be the star of the show. And I sort of picked that as the positioning. And I think that was an early lesson in workout what your audience is looking for. And that's the way in. That's the way to beat people who are arguably much more credible than you on paper. So once you get into your first job, arguably your degree matters, not much of a job, you'll be measured on your skills, expertise, capabilities, what you've delivered in that last job, and then you interview for the next one. Yeah, so it's a bit of a it's a stepping stone route. Really. Talk to me about gambling, then how did you sort of get into the the industry? And what are your thoughts on it?



 It was a it was a mistake. It's how I got into gambling. And it was a mistake how I stayed in it. No, I mean, it was accidental. I was at the time, this is a number of years back, probably in my sort of mid to late 20s, I was running Budweiser as an account for an agency, working a lot of hours not getting paid particularly well, my team was getting fractured and bruised, I was the same. I didn't really like the client, I didn't like the work. It was all it was football, music and Formula One. So on paper, it was the best job in the world. And it was awful. It was just pumping out campaigns, like 60 live campaigns any one time of day. So just we were a factory effectively. And I got really annoyed with it and bored with it. And I had the chance to basically exit. So I did, I was planning to go to Australia and had a job lined up over there. And I thought, you know, a couple of years, a few years surfing and living in the city in Sydney. Sounds pretty good. I didn't have any ties at all at the time. But I had a summer to prep for this move. And during that summer, I did some consultancy work and my consultancy client was a poker startup, it was the burgeoning online poker days. Then I did that for a couple of months, the client was pretty bonkers. But it seemed fun. And then he turned around, he took me to watch the cricket one day and turned around after a number of beers at the cricket and offered me the marketing director job at the age of 27, which is a score for me at the time, you know, I think I was still impressed by dazzling lights of job titles and things at the time. And it was a lot of money as well. It was sort of double my salary, which you don't sniff at, at that age, and it can blind you easily. So I went to Australia for a week and thought about it and then came back and took the job. That was me and gambling and that that job was some interesting stories from that. You know, the chief exec was an absolute nightmare car crash. He was booking things like we did a pop video,



 flew 180 people to Ibiza for the World Cup final. So it was kind of fun. But you know, gradually, it was leaking the small amount of money the investors were putting in.



 And it was always going to fail. This guy, this guy was a loose cannon. So when it failed, and it owed me a fair chunk of money, so a lot of expenses, money that hadn't been paid back, and it was a bit of a disaster for me personally. You know, and then happened so that our office down in Red Hill was over the corridor from one of the first recruitment companies in online gaming, and I'd become friends with the founders. And they're there now hugely successful run this network of recruitment businesses, really nice guys and good friends of mine. I walked over the corridor and said, right, that's that's going under, I've quit, I'm suing the company. But I do need a job. I got a feeling that I might need the cash. And they got me a job in another gaming group, which is based in Costa Rica. And I was working out of the UK and Asia. And that was it really, I sort of rebuilt into that role. And I set up my own agency business, did that for a couple of years, which was amazing. It was the sort of first marketing agency in gambling called the fridge, which I loved every moment. But I made a lot of mistakes in that like loads of really big mistakes and bad choices. And I was then let down by my major back. It was a former boss of mine, he was able to pay me quarter of a million quid for a big slice of the agency. And on payment day, he rang me and I was at a wedding in Kefalonia in a taxi and he ran me said, I've got cold feet. And I was like, well, I've got the office space. I've got the employee salaries coming out from that money that's coming in. And that was a disaster that that took me a year and a half, two years to sort of pay off. I paid off all the credit says I was left pretty broke. So late 20s, I got had stuff and scratch really. Wow. You mentioned making mistakes, a lot of mistakes. How important is that on the way on the road? Absolutely crucial. I mean, you know, show me someone who makes no mistakes. And I'll show you a liar, recognizing them and recognizing the value in them and the value of taking the hard lessons. And very quickly, if you get that understanding, you realize that it's not something to beat yourself up about or hide the worst thing you can do is, and I definitely did this when I was younger, you hide away from mistakes and try and pretend they haven't happened or hope no one realizes you'll get away with it. Whereas now if I if I make a mess, if I mess up, I'll put my hand in the air, celebrate it, own it, and make damn sure it doesn't happen again. And I kind of encourage that sort of thinking anyone in my team, everyone makes mistakes, as long as the mistakes are made with the right intent. And as long as they never happen again, if they're serious ones, you know, absolutely never because there are recommendations,



 yeah, sometimes legal, sometimes just financial. Yeah, making a mistake once if it's the decisions were made with good reason and right intent. No one's ever to get chastised by me for that. Do the same thing twice. And you'll absolutely get chastised by me and possibly worse because that's inexcusable bit. But yeah, it's a vital part of any career, I think is owning mistakes and learning from them. Even though now you mentioned that you've sort of learned from those you've got to a place where you don't hide away and shy away from it. Do you still other still moments now, where maybe there's a big project or task or you start a new job, where you have that moment of you just take a step back and think, I know you mentioned imposter syndrome, when you started here. Yeah. How often does that just happen less and less now? Or that moment still? No, no, certainly moments still. I mean, I've joined from an entirely different industry. And although there are a lot of similarities, and a lot of areas like enough to warrant David and Jason to offer me the job here. I was very aware that there were an awful lot of areas where it was kind of be clean slate for me. And I was gonna have to lean on the team and lean on department heads, learn as I went. But again, in that respect, the self awareness of knowing what you don't know, you don't charge in pretending you're Billy Big Nuts, you know, I'm the new marketing guy. And this is what I say and what I say rules and do this. The opposite is the case, there's certain areas where I'm fairly confident that I have a good angle on a good approach. But even those areas are still collaborate, I'll still discuss. It's important that everyone feels ownership in some of the bigger decisions as well. In the other areas, it's a sort of listening brief, it's it's finding out how exactly things work, not just as a channel or as a medium, but also within this as an organization, there's going to be a quality way, there's going to be things that are done and have been done well, there's things that an outside perspective from someone like me is going to add, both of which require conversation and discussion, neither of which benefit from someone just coming in and pretending that their way is the best way. Yeah. So I think it's another one about self awareness, really. We're going to talk about your books in a moment. But first, hello, everyone. And I hope you're enjoying the podcast. We're very happy to have Harry on. And we've got many, many more guests coming up. If the video is providing you any value entertainment



 enjoyment, please consider subscribing and liking the video. It helps us reach more people. And we can continue doing this more and more. Thank you very much. And now let's get back to the video. So as I say, I was looking online, I was trying to understand Harry the person behind the marketer. There was a couple of things that I read. So I came across an article on campaign live.co.uk. You're talking about ads, and you said, like COVID, negative things come out of the blue to turn your life on its head. And there is nothing nothing you can do about it, apart from grit your teeth, sure up your own personal resolve and march on. Then you continue to say, educate yourself whenever possible, aim high, work hard, listen, ask questions, have fun, be nice to people, and make the creative and media industries a force for good, not evil.



 I remember that one. Yeah. Is that that's Harry Lang? Yeah, that's the articles I write. There's an important note on it that I don't get paid for any of that stuff. There's probably a PR benefit, but I don't get paid for it. There's no agenda. I'm not trying to sell a product or anything like that. I do the writing side for the most part, in that in the marketing press, at least for fun, it's my own enjoyment. There's a profile building element maybe. But that's not not a significant part, really. So yeah, it's, it's entirely truthful. And from the heart, that's, I remember the article, it was about basically sort of facing up to redundancy, I think it might have been that article. And it was sort of using some of my experiences, and it's something quite close to my heart of it is desperately trying not to sound like a sort of seer wizard of everything and source of wisdom. But I've been through three rounds of redundancies.



 First one stung personally and professionally. Second one stung a lot less, and I actually quite enjoy the gardening leave and the payoff. The third one was quite a relief, because I wanted to exit anyway, and I was going to get paid richly to do so. So your perspective changes in time, things become less scary. There originally might have been more scary. And I think, you know, that impression about how one should act and for the industry as a whole, marketing gets quite a bad rap, you know, effectively, a lot of it's perceived as lying for a living, which, you know, it's quite hard to argue against. I mean, it's very similar in the sort of the acting world, it said that actors are good liars, but no, they're good at telling the truth. Yes, very much so. It's very Shakespearean, that. Yeah, that's, that's the definitely sort of things I sort of feel, personally, are true. You mentioned sort of marketing getting a bad rep around 2019 2020. Do you think it's still a stable and that there's growth there? Everything's relative in these worlds. I mean, we're in a in a period now where it's a cost cutting, it's it's cost of living crises that we're sort of in risk of recession coming up. Marketing often gets cut by CFOs and CEOs who don't understand that, you know, there's several recessions worth of data pointing out that investing in a recession is actually double bubble, you can get significant value and grow your business and mitigate risk. But no, I mean, any industries that trouble when things go down,



 redundancies happen, companies have struggles, customers tighten their belts, etc, etc. So there's no way it's it's future proof. I think people in the industry can future proof themselves more. And it's, that's, again, it's to an extent back to the skills training part. And it's also part how you position yourself. If you're an invaluable individual, and you're delivering value and revenue to the organization you work for, you'll never be at risk. So, you know, you can take ownership of yourself, it's not always easy. And sometimes companies as a whole just struggle. I mean, look at the big tech firms at the moment. Yeah, was just doing writing a piece this morning, we're ridiculous early start and talking about food delivery apps and sort of like the death, having had this massive bubble. Amazon like over 18,000 people, I think, get here just did 400 or 500. You can't do anything if companies run out of cash, and the investors give up and the market dies and the post COVID bubble bursts, people are going to lose jobs, back to life. And if you're in marketing, you'll be as risk at risk as someone in ops or someone in HR or someone in sales.



 You can sort of develop your career and develop your, your usefulness and your ability to generate revenue and your ability to pivot perhaps. And if things go south, you know, do you have the capacity to set up on your own for six months to a year, you know, get some consultancy clients focus on this niche in which you're particularly good, you know, you are the subject matter expert.



 Back to the point about the sort of personal PR side, have you got a profile in that niche in the industry whereby you could probably turn on the taps and make a couple of phone calls and actually some consultancy work be fairly easy to come by. Yeah, that that's the kind of sort of structure you can look at in terms of career planning or sort of like lifestyle planning effectively is that you might be very happy your job and have your job forever. Very few people in any industry have their job for a career now. Marketing is way worse than the average shift time is just under two years now. At most role levels, I know that's the case for senior roles as well. It's terrifyingly short as the mean average. So I think the ability to have the skills and have the ability to express those skills, your ability to communicate a network which you can perhaps lean on all of these plugged together to give you that foundation of support. And I think that's quite important to have just as a safety net. If you don't need it, great, but you might easily need it. So build it anyway. Let's talk about your books. We're going to start all the way back 2011 with Parabolic. Oh, you have to go further back than that. Oh, you wrote before that. Yeah, yeah, no, Parabolic was written. That was the summer when I left agency before starting in gambling industry. I had three months off. And that was when I did the consultancy, but I was also traveling a bit and I went to Ibiza a couple of times, basically just having some fun. But part of that time off was I committed, I think back then I used to have a rule that every year I'd have a new mission or a new skill I wanted to learn or a new sport. And I've done quite a few things like skydive training and things like that. Fun ones. And then that year's one was I wanted to write a book. I didn't really care what book it was. And I didn't really care if it ever got published, but I wanted to plan and write and finish a credible book about something. And I'd worked for Penguin Books. They were a client of mine previously and their creative director, a book called Rob. He was a really good, encouraging force. He gave me a lot of guidance about how to write a book and background. So I planned all this thing out and had that summer off. I had three months and I'd written this book called Parabolic, which was fun. It was just sort of like lighthearted romp about a guy dying of cancer. He goes around the world with his mate and he blows the charity money his friends have raised on illicit doings and dealings.



 And it wasn't particularly good, but it was quite fun. People read it. Not very many. It's interesting you're saying sort of, you know, this book, I picked up a line and I've obviously read way too much into it, but Parabolic reminds us all how important even the tiniest things can be. Yeah. That must've been, it's like the strap line or the crazy ones. It was, I was hugely fond of it because, you know, eventually I've got it written and I think I self-published two copies and I kept one and gave one to my mum, told her not to read it because it had a bunch of filth in it. But no, it was good. It was sort of like, it was a mission accomplished and it was part of a process because I'd always wanted to, I'd always wanted to do more writing. And I think arguably I probably should have started my career in the copy side of advertising. I think that inherently natural skills are there. I don't know how good I would have been in it, but it would have been interesting to have a go. So anyway, it was a process outside of work of something I wanted to get better at. It's then grown and vergined over the years. Well, 2014, Trimortality. Yeah. It was a bunch of shorter stories. Yeah.



 From your first book, three years later, Trying Another, why again? Did you enjoy it that much? Yeah. I knew, so Trimorality as it was. So I'd been writing some of these shortish stories whilst working. I was working in Gibraltar for a big gaming group living in Spain and on flights, I did a lot of flying and I was writing. I was writing these stories that I found fun. And then I left that job and I was starting another one fairly soon after, but I had a couple of months free. And I thought, I'll tell you what I can do is I can basically fill in the gaps of this and craft another book out of all these stories. And I knew from day one, that was the first one had a sniff of getting published. I think HarperCollins had it for a long time to look at and didn't make it. But the second one I knew was never gonna get published.



 You need to write. Writing to get published is very hard. You need to be very lucky or you need to have a huge social following, albeit a celebrity, albeit exceptionally good. And even the good ones struggle. So Trimorality was just fun. I wanted to take those stories, I packaged them together, then I wrote another bunch of stories. I used them to connect the dots around themes of morality, and ethics and sort of moral codes. And I really enjoyed the stories. I love that freedom because I just come out with a story and spending sort of three, four, five days writing it, editing it, connecting it to the other stories in loose ways. And it came together, then it was a book. And I don't even think I even tried to publish that one, because I had an agent for the first one. That one I didn't even bother. I knew it wasn't the purpose. The purpose was because I wanted to scratch the itch. And I enjoyed the process so much the first time around.



 And yeah, it was great. I've got a copy of that at home. I think probably the only copy of In Existence. A cool cover as well. It has got a good cover. We'll have to show that.



 So then it was a good number of years before brands, bandwagons, and I think we're further enough in the video now that I could say, yeah, you two won't mind. So this is more on and this is interesting, sort of a book that you mentioned that you don't really read yourself. You mentioned you like to watch about marketing and sort of look at different campaigns and things like this. But you wrote a book about marketing advertising PR. Yeah, but specifically for two audiences there. I mean, what if you it'll make more sense once I explain. Predominant audience was for young people leaving school or leaving university who had an inkling like I did that marketing advertising media PR might be their cup of tea. Where do you go for resources in that? There's lots of stuff online, but it's dragging down some rabbit holes. There's no common resource where you can actually get the nuts and bolts of what it is, what the channels are, how to get a job in the industry, what the options are between agency and client side, how to interview for roles, how to decide what things are, how to craft a strategy, how to craft a tactical plan, how to connect integrated campaigns together. There was nothing like that. And I thought there should be. And I thought in this one, I thought, well, there probably is a market for that because lots of people want to work in marketing and PR and whatever and SEO and related industries. Yeah, especially today, especially today. So there must be a market in which case I can do it and have a chance of getting that one published. And the second half of the book effectively, I used a lot of the articles I'd written for the marketing press as the case studies to bring all the channels and strategy stuff to life. Right. Okay. That worked really well. So I was able to pull that together over a sort of year and a bit of lockdowns. And then the editing, you know, take the editing, what was it? I used the line this morning about right for right for show edit for dough. I mean, editing is the critical part to these things. Yeah. So I spent a good year editing. I had a couple of people, one of whom I worked with in my current job, and she'd done an MA in English and she was keen to be sort of proof checker on the book. And so very, very useful to have someone who's actually very good and very vested in the process. So he honed it down to his book. I had an agent try to get it published, same issues applied. I think both publishers said I needed at least 50,000 social followers for them to have a go at it. Because effectively, that's the way publishing works. Now you kind of need to sell up to the profitable sort of tipping point. Yeah. And then they they see promising, they might put money behind it. It's the whole thing is a horror show. You aren't exactly encouraging the quality. No, you're encouraging people are good at something else. Yeah. The publishing side, I get it. Publishing is a terrible place to make money at the best of times. So you need guarantees and somebody who's well followed. I mean, there's a reason that Jordan sort of page three girl has got five books to her name. Yeah, she's not necessarily a talented author or talented anything. But she has a massive social following and a fan base that will sell to some type of audience. So I kind of get that. But the other purpose there was was really for that audience. And also for those sort of more established professionals in other departments, because marketing often gets this bad rap, because it's misunderstood. And you still get it, you get chief execs. Now, I had one chief exec asking me what SEO stood for. Now, I don't want to make light of that too much. But it's a very significant marketing channel for a digital business. Yeah, hugely influential to not know what it stands for, what it does, what it is.



 You wonder, it's like, Christ, how did you get where you are? You know, this is this is your entire website should hinge on this stuff. And that's your product. Yeah. So I've come across a lot of examples of that. So really, so a book like this, if you're like, in operations, or you're in finance, or in HR for a big business, and you work with marketing departments, and you liaise with them, and you have board meetings with them, but you're kind of there going, I think we understand what this is, or why they spend all this money. And a lot of it seems to be wastage and brand marketing, why throw away all that money when the other direct response stuff gets all the customers? Yeah, that's, that's the biggest question of all that always comes up in, in every company out there. Yeah, the book explains all that. So you can sort of pick it up and go, okay, right, it's kind of like the marketing for dummies without being patronizing. Yeah. And so for those two audiences, you know, that was designed for them to be useful. Yeah. And five star review seems to go well, by a small collection of people, most of whom are friends and family. I just don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to dismiss it. So something that we do every podcast, I don't know if you've watched before, but a quiz, excellent. Now I was trying to decide what to do this quiz on. And you saying you haven't, you didn't do human geography is now going to be interesting. I did see you did geography a level. So maybe this will help. We're going to do in the last century, back in the last century. And also I read, you said you French too. Oh, Jesus. So we're going to go to France and we're going to go some other places around the world, but also in the UK, we'll see what happens. Okay.



 Now let's start with, let's go to France first. Very simple. Question one, who wrote Les Miserables?



 Victor Hugo. Yes. Well, we started well. Yeah. I think some others, um, another podcast, I don't think got one right. Okay. Someone, yeah. So you already, uh, far beyond. Um,



 okay. What is France's motto? Um, I could pick any number of chat catch phrases from France. Um, joy to Viva. Um, potentially the one I have here is a list of three. Okay. A list of three. Yes. We've got liberty, liberty, uh, verity, verity, fraternity. Perfect. Yep. Yep. Awesome. Um, let's head over to the UK now. What is the longest river in the UK?



 10th, uh, seven. Yes. Uh, no, no point. What is the oldest recorded town in the UK?



 Townbridge sound sound kind of, uh, on the right road. Yeah. On the right roads. Um, it, it is an Esther. It's an Esther Winchester. Cold. Just cold. Just, uh, I see you. The thought was around the, I was in the, I was in the Estes, the largest desert in the world. Oh, it's not the Sahara, uh, Gobi Antarctica. Oh, come on. No, he expands. Look, it's not me. It's the world wide web. I'll accept you. I guess Google's never wrong. Apparently. Um, who was the last king of France?



 Oh, I'm not, I'm gonna have a guess that it's a Louis and it's going to be



 Louis Treas is the, uh, that's the cognac, uh, Louis, Louis the 14th, Louis the 15th. Louis. I don't think there was a Louis the 17th. Louis the 16th. Yes. There we go. Yeah. Wonderfully, uh, worked out. Um, this one is,



 I had no idea who founded the kingdom of France. He founded the kingdom of France. Yes. Oh my God. Oh, well, so to make it a kingdom, as opposed to the land mass, it would have been a king. So, um, oh, it's gonna be one of these fun trick questions where it's going to be like a British king that just decided to take it over.



 It was a political and religious founder Clovis Clovis. Never heard of him. Well, thank you for doing that. That was fun. You got some of those, uh, that, yeah. I mean, I get to learn a lot as well going through all these. So that's fantastic. 20 plus years experience in the industry coming to quality as VP. What do the next several years look like at quality? How do you want to position quality from a marketing standpoint? And there's, there's the easy short answer, um, which is just nicking wholesale from David, our CEO and founder's mission, um, which is about making fun games for the world's players. Um, which I find very easy, sort of encapsulates everything that we want to do product wise, marketing wise, all the verticals. If we make fun games, then everyone will play them, you know, and then we encourage more with marketing, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I think the, the ambition's kind of limitless the way we're structured, you know, as an independent producer, as an independent publisher of both mobile and PC console. We have this ability to pivot and move with the time. So we aren't stuck in the mud. We aren't tight shareholders or institutions. We can be nimble in that respect. Um, and we have, you know, very sort of well structured org, both organizationally in terms of talent and also in terms of our finance standing, you know, we're very robust. Um, so in these new verticals like PC console, uh, the pivot into what's hybrid, uh, relatively new casual vertical. Um, we have all the tools at our disposal to make significant volumes or publishing the volumes as well of fun games and then market them and have the budgets and the skills and the talent pool, to market across all the channels required, um, between our, our offices. So really it's ambitious growth. And I think there's, there's no, there's no hiding away from the fact that from, from David and Jason down through the org and through the board as well. And our new CFO, Matthew to their significant desire to see us taking on the big guns, you know, we're very well positioned to do that. Um, and there's the sort of unicorn type, um, companies who do mobile, there's the unicorn types and the triple A's that do the PC console world. Um, we're one of the very few that is now covering pretty much the vertical spectrum up to PC and console. Um, and we've got a very good chance of, of owning a lot of that space. I'm not talking about sort of dominating and killing everyone off and a being Activision Blizzard and quite frankly, Activision and Blizzard size companies tend not to be great places to work. I worked with a couple of them in the gaming gambling world. Um, you lose a lot of personality when you get beyond 2000 people and the multi billions of, um, no market cap. Um, and quality is a very friendly place to work, even though it's not quite significant in size and it would well be on 300 people globally. Um, I, and I hope that remains. So I think, you know, there's a lot of focus and work on making sure that personality and character and friendliness remains, but twinned with quite a sort of fervent commercial ambition. You know, we want to be fighting in the big leagues. We want to be past the billion in various guys is passed a billion. We already passed a billion on, on installs, uh, but possibly in a few other areas. So yeah, I just think that that sort of aggressive growth trajectory, um, keeping the fun at the core of it. That's probably the summary. You, it's a time with this. You said something that I agree with, uh, on one of your, um, written blogs. Most brands suck at organic social. They're boring and they are unsurprisingly ignored. Yeah. Do you think it's important? And I use a company, let's say Wendy's as an example of, uh, I think it's brilliant. Yeah. How important is that point of view, um, from the company and that sort of, um, maybe not extreme, but having, having, uh, you're not in the middle. You, you, you pick a side and you go full force at it to try and get organic growth. How important is that equality? Um, it's, it's vitally important to an extent. It's more so in some channels than others, you know, in our, in our hyper casual and hybrid casual, you know, the, the organic social side of that really is, is nothing in no way. You know, there's very different UA and growth strategies entailed PC console, vitally important, organic social and community is a huge deal and to get it right. But it's not the quality brand that's doing a lot of the talking. We have quality gaming channels, obviously, um, which does the work for us as an organization for the games. They have their own channels and they've got their own personalities and audience types that we need to focus on very, uh, very hard and, and get right in a relatively short space of time. Yeah. For those corporate accounts, you you've got to yes, pick your side, but you got to also like understand and sell it to someone senior, you know, whether it's a CMO marketing director or hopefully the CEO goes, there's no point doing organic social unless we do it well, the world grow a significant audience. Cause otherwise you've got, you've imagined quite expensive head counts. Yeah. These are salaries. And if you're turning around and speaking to, you know, 2000 Twitter followers and then 400 Facebook and a couple of hundred thousand or a couple of hundred Instagram, and that's it and you're never growing, well, what's the point? You know, the head count is a net loss. The only way that's going to change around is if you, you act social first and audience first and you know, you have entertainment or humor or these points of difference or the ability to engage in conversations, you know, you look at the Aldi accounts, the Duolingo ones, the thing they all do is patiently have the support from on high to act freely with the channel and the channel requirements and the audience requirements first and foremost and entertaining and engaging that audience first. And the brand's positioning is molded to allow it to fit that channel correctly. If you don't have that decision right at the start and you sit there and you publish a picture of your company Christmas party and then it's here's a PowerPoint presentation about our strategy and oh look, it's our financial results. And you think you imagine there's any world in which anyone's of note is going to follow you. You're absolutely bonkers. And you should just close off your social channels and just pretend it doesn't exist because it's not for you. What you should do, and this is like, I think this is in the books of speaking to CEOs, is if you have a B2C product or brand, so members of the public are your potential audience, it means a social could be a very good channel for you, it could be a very rich team. Understand how it weds in to the other channels like content, like SEO, like PR, see them all working collaboratively. So when you do something once, and we do this very well in this org, I think, you create something once with its video, written word, imagery, games, you chop it up, syndicate to other channels, you use it on your website, you get the SEO benefit. All the way through that though is this brand theme of entertaining, is it fun, is it educational? So people go, oh, I've learned something from that, I'd like to follow these more. Or this is just fun stuff and I like having them as my lighthearted content. Pick your lanes, follow your lanes and do it for the benefit of your audience. And so there is an ongoing engagement. It's all about the value exchange. If people get entertained and engaged, they will follow you, they'll share your stuff, they'll talk to their friends about it, perhaps. There's very few of these corporate accounts that get that. And everyone else is floating, all the way through to the BAs of this world and most of the car manufacturers, they have huge social teams and they probably buy an awful lot of traffic and probably once a year around budget time, someone's speaking to a click farm in the Middle East and buying 400,000 followers and likes just to get the budget for next year. And the vanity metrics kick in. All that stuff happens, but it's pointless. But there is another way. The other way is just to do it well. But you need to have the mandate from senior figure or the CEO who says, I get that you need to play outside



 the corporate strictures and then even have a brand positioning that is the extension of our current brand positioning and potentially is a bit edgier or a bit more fun loving or a bit more reactive and responsive to what's going on in the world. And occasionally you'll get it wrong. And when you get it wrong, no one's going to get fired. And again, back to the mistakes points I made earlier. You can't get it wrong in these areas because these are mission critical. If we're a bank and you stop tipping cryptocurrencies, you'll get fired. So these are the areas that the rules here are the boundaries just playing and you might get it wrong sometimes, but you'll never get in trouble if you play in the right intent. And that's the way to do it, in my opinion.



 Wow. Thank you, Harry. Thank you. Appreciate you coming in. Yeah, it's great fun. Thank you very much. Yeah, no problem. And as you talk about the value exchange, I hope people have got value from this video today and syndication too. I'm sure we'll see this all clipped up everywhere. If you enjoy content like this, we've cut a video just up here and that's going to lead you to some more value, which I hope you get. Be entertained, enjoy. We've got a lot here and we're going to be posting a lot more. We've got a lot more podcasts coming out with some really, really great people such as Harry. So Harry, thank you again. Any last words for the quality gaming community out there? No, no. Well, I appreciate all the follows. Hopefully you guys enjoy the content that we put out. Keep liking and following and get in touch. If you have any ideas about what more we could do in games or in marketing or anything else, just let us know. Perfect. Well, thank you and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.