Notas del episodio
Lisa Welch, founder of Brand Therapy and former Global VP of Consumer Strategy & Insights at Activision, joins Greg Off to talk about a career spent bringing the player's voice into the room where decisions are made.
Her path runs from the automotive business at TBWA\Chiat\Day to the PlayStation account, through her own consultancy, Mind of the Gamer, and into the publisher side at Activision. Along the way she learned to build an audience picture with very little data, to translate a client's thinking for creative teams, and to give a research team a real seat at the table.
In this episode:
- Moving from data-rich car accounts to the PlayStation account, and the imposter syndrome that came with it.
- Research before the internet: core versus mass, qualitative work, and media databases.
- Inside Chiat/Day: planners, creatives, and why a brief shouldn't be a "lengthy."
- The PS2 launch, and the work she's still proud of.
- Mind of the Gamer, Deutsch's PlayStation pitch, and meeting Eric Hirshberg.
- Rebuilding Activision's consumer insights team around franchises.
- The engagement dip that wasn't in the data.
- Call of Duty, microtransactions, and the meritocracy players expect.
- Hypotheses, curiosity, and when research still needs creative judgment.
- Research with girls, and a game concept built around kindness and collecting.
- Roblox and the social side of play.
- Bat Around, and LifePack 2.0.
Recorded remotely, the conversation keeps coming back to who gets heard. As Lisa puts it: "It was literally like creating a seat at the table for the consumer's voice."
Links & References