GAME’s Fred Prego Lets Consumers ‘Play, Experience, and Compete’

The gaming retailer’s group insight director says “they knew they had to go the extra mile” and offer customers “an experience they couldn’t get anywhere else.”

To combat online-only “box shifters,” high street gaming retailer GAME realised it had to transform customer experience to stand out from the crowd and prosper. Group insight director Fred Prego joined the business four years ago, just as it was setting out on the strategy that has seen it blur the lines between the physical and the digital. He recently spoke to CMO.com and we began by asking him what prompted GAME’s moves to change the customer experience.

Prego: Four years ago, we realised we had to become a leader in digital. Gaming was behind music and the movies going digital because you can buy a song for £1 or a movie for £10, but a game can cost as much as £50. So people were originally a little more cautious about buying digitally without first trying out a game.

We were aware that we couldn’t simply compete on price alone with online “box shifters,” so we knew we had to go the extra mile and offer our customers an experience they couldn’t get anywhere else.

In-store, we started out cautiously offering digital codes for games so people could buy a title by just buying a code from us. It was really useful for younger people, who don’t always have a credit card to buy games from home.

CMO.com: How did you build on this in-store experience to bring digital to a wider demographic?

Prego: We launched our mobile app three years ago, which was when I’d say we fully embraced digital and started moving our customer experience in the tech age. We realised that consumers wanted more than the option of just going to a physical store or buying online, they needed a mobile experience too.

We’ve worked on features one at a time, but the first priority for us was to integrate our loyalty scheme into the app, which offers 2% back on any purchases. Hence, our customers now have a mobile GAME wallet, which they can top up with cash or a gift card.

CMO.com: What did you do to change customer behaviour and offer a new experience?

Prego: The main thing we wanted to do all along was develop the app so it isn’t just useful in-store. So we upgraded our app to add augmented reality technology two years ago. It means wherever a customer is, in whoever’s store, they can scan the front cover of a game, and we will then offer a trailer so they can check out what it looks like. We still link this up to their mobile wallet, so if they want to buy it, we will tell them the price to have it delivered or to pick it up from a GAME store, either as a cash-only purchase or the sub-total once their mobile wallet balance is deducted.

We’ve also realised that people want new experiences with mobile that go beyond previewing or purchasing games. We teamed up with Xbox in 2015 for the Halo 5: Guardians launch to let people use augmented reality to pose with characters from the famous game. All they had to do was take a picture of the promotional poster or the cover of the game, and they could then pose for a picture with them and share it on social. Of course, we also offered a chance to buy the title from GAME.

Posing with your favourite Halo character is a lot of fun, but we also wanted to offer people in the street a new experience that would, hopefully, bring them in to our stores, even if they don’t have our app. We have four locations where the shop screen offers augmented reality and people can play a game on the shop window. We have one great sci-fi game where people in the street can escape reality and play along using their mobile phone to defend themselves.

CMO.com: Multi-player gaming experiences, both in-store and at events, are a large part of your strategy, what lies behind that decision?

Prego: Gaming is hugely social, you only have to look at the phenomenal rise of eSports to see that, so we realised that we needed to be a part of people coming together to play games, not just a place where they buy them.

In 2015 we bought Multiplay, which runs Insomnia—they’re massive gaming events at the NEC three times per year. That’s put us at the heart of the gaming lifestyle, but we also wanted to bring this social aspect into our stores. We don’t want GAME to be just where you buy a title, we want to be the place to play, experience, and compete to enrich people’s gaming enjoyment.

We started off what we call our Gaming Arena project in our Manchester Trafford Centre store last summer. We have branded it “Belong.” It’s basically a floor packed with consoles and games where people can play, compete, or just watch.

We’ve now got seven “Belong” arenas. We’ve rolled out the experience to Portsmouth, Hull, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Newcastle, and Wardour Street in London.

CMO.com: What have the new social experiences offered by GAME achieved?

Prego: Our new “Belong” gaming service is tapping into the social side of gaming, and it’s proving popular—we’re reaching out beyond our regular shoppers and have active plans to roll this out to 20 new locations this year.

In terms of economics, we’ve seen an uplift in PC and peripherals sales in the stores with arenas, and our pay-to-play experiences are proving successful. It’s significant because PC gamers tend to spend a lot more money on their kit as they keep it upgraded to make sure they’ve got the best rig.

CMO.com: Despite every customer experience you digitise, all brands are limited by the dynamics of the market they operate in. How was Christmas 2016 for you and the general gaming industry?

Prego: It’s pretty common knowledge that, in general, the games retail market is down because we haven’t had a big console launch for a couple of years now, the Xbox One and PS4 are very established. The market will get a boost from the upcoming launch of the Nintendo Switch and other new consoles such as Project Scorpio coming later in the year. VR is also an exciting new category that will continue to grow this year. The market needs encouragement to grow, but the good news for us is that we’re ready to tap into the new excitement that will, undoubtedly, come. We’re not stuck in a rut of competing on price with online only operators, we’re offering an experience gamers simply can’t get anywhere else.