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Imagine: Marketing

Mark Slaughter and Rachel Grant explain how Ubisoft brings its girl-game brand to the masses

GamesIndustry.biz Do you still see Christmas as a crucial sales period?
Mark Slaughter

The whole DS market is seasonality-driven. We see definite peaks at Easter, over the summer and then at Christmas.

Rachel Grant

It's when kids are spending their money, or off school - when the parents are trying to keep them entertained.

Mark Slaughter

We look at the data, and Christmas is less important year after year in terms of the spend splitting over the year... but it's still a phenomenally important time to get right.

GamesIndustry.biz Do you look to weight releases towards Christmas then?
Mark Slaughter

Last year we released from August to November, and this year it's pretty much the same.

Rachel Grant

I don't think you'd necessarily put them all out at Christmas, but because it's a range and a gifting item, whenever they come out there's still going to be a massive peak around Christmas. As long as we get the marketing right, they'll be in the forefront of people's minds at Christmas for presents.

The new Imagine releases for this year are coming from September to December, so it is weighted towards the end of the year.

GamesIndustry.biz How does Ubisoft go about looking at which areas to cover for Imagine titles?
Rachel Grant

There's been a lot of research done in terms of the target audience, which has really homed-in on what the interests and passions are, so we can identify how we execute "Live Your Dreams" in a marketing strategy, plus which titles fit into that.

It's the really unique titles that stand out - and you can see in our line-up this year that there are titles that girls haven't really seen before. We think that will appeal to them, because they'll want to engage with that.

GamesIndustry.biz And what has been announced for this year?
Rachel Grant

The flagships coming out between September and December include: Teacher: School Trip - we had a lot of success with Teacher last year, but this is more of an outdoor activities version; Detective Adventures, which is something completely new, with an engaging storyline and some depth to it.

There's also Party Planner, which is very appealing for girls; We've also got Wildlife Keeper coming out towards the end of the year, and there are a few titles up for Q1 as well - Journalist, Rescue Vet and Artist.

You can see the range of different titles there.

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