Viral Nation’s Joe Gagliese Talks Selling Mobile Games To The Masses

For those who are unaware of Viral Nation, they are a marketing agency. They work with PUBG mobile, Angry Birds 2, Twitch, Ubiosft and many more. I was able to speak with Joe Gagliese. The CEO and Co-Founder of Viral Nation, and get a little bit more of an insight on what goes into marketing certain companies. 

They’ve worked with a number of different brands and just about anything you can think of, and pride themselves in being so diverse. Gagliese explained “We with with everyone from  tencent to Match.com to Crayola to start ups.” They use a certain formula that allows them to be so flexible and work in so many different avenues.  

As of right now, PUBG mobile is going through a bit of a hardship overseas, with certain places outright banning the game; due to its violence and being deemed dangerous. Viral Nation does take things like this very seriously, they even have their very own in-house team to help deal with things in that matter. Gagliese went on to say “Every country that we operate in for a specific client we follow the handbook of rules that are required.” He went on to explain how they’ve invested 30 million dollars in influencers throughout this year and haven’t ran into any legal troubles. Needless to say it’s very important to the company that no laws are broken before they go into any kind of business at all. 

With a lot of gaming companies, Viral Nation is one of the more well known marketing teams. “Viral Nation is really well known with gaming companies as being the guys who can think outside the box.” explained Gagliese. They’ve done “Let’s Plays” where they get certain influencers to come and play said game. Even doing pop ups in Times Square were they invite people to come and play the game, even Esport tournaments in Dubai, escape rooms, as well as hiring influencers to react certain parts of said game.

A big bonus when it comes to their gaming marketing, is that they are all pretty much gamers themselves. “We have someone on that team who plays that game and can offer. That deep insight into what it’s like to be a player of that specific game.” said Gagliese. As well as having great strategist who can use that insight and help bring whatever it is to life. They’ve came with so many different ways to market games. And within these past few years haven’t used the same idea more than once! But they don’t just stop from within their company. They’ll go out and talk to influencers to get direct feedback so they can get even more of an insight that they wouldn’t of gotten elsewhere. 

As previously stated they’ve worked with Angry Birds and that’s a company they’re extremely proud to have worked with. Gagliese went on to say how they also worked with apple on the marketing of the Angry Birds app. And was flown to Switzerland and met with there marketing team and was just blown away with what they’ve done. He goes on to explain how they made this app with a purpose and it’s grown into so much more than that now; with merch, movies, and everything else. “I just think they’re a really beautiful example of how app companies can evolve outside the app.” said Gagliese.

One of Gagliese all time favorite companies to have work with is by far PUBG mobile. When they were hired by Tencent they weren’t as big as they are now. But as stated before they’re known to think outside the box and that’s what they loved about viral nation. Was the fact that they could do what other companies couldn’t.

Gagliese went to explain how different it is to market a triple A game as opposed to a mobile game. He used PUBG mobile again as an example, when the app launched no one really expected much from it. But it blew up and became this huge sensation. But when a game like Ubisoft announces a game, many people expect something good. “What you’re trying to do in this scenario like ubisoft. Is how do you make sure that you’re capturing all of the hype that you can. Instead with PUBG it is how do you create the hype.” said Gagliese.

That’s just one aspect of what Viral Nation has done. They’ve worked with many different companies that do all sorts of amazing things. Odds are you’ve probably seen some of the amazing work Viral Nation has done. If you have a start up company or are looking for some breathtaking marketing, be sure to contact Viral Nation, I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Also keep up with them on their website: https://www.viralnation.com/

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