#5 Power Lunch: How Brands Can Win on Roblox

[on-hold music] We're live.

Welcome everyone to another 51 Insights Power Lunch. Today with Olivier Mogron, co-founder- Yes... and CEO of, of Exclusible. Olivier, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Marc.

It's a pleasure to be with you today. Yeah, for me as well, Olivier.

We've known each other for a while, and I'm super excited to dive deeper today into everything brands on Roblox, uh, what you do with Exclusible, and most of all, being really, really hands-on of, of how you do that, uh, diving deeper into the gaming mechanics, what you've built, and really demo, uh, how this works.

So everyone on the show, you can expect, uh, the full load, um, of very specific insights today, uh, with Olivier. Uh, you can ask questions in the comments. Just comment, and, uh, we see that in the chat.

We'll have a short Q&A in the end where we can talk about your questions and, um, you can also comment on others' comments, so keep the discussion flowing.

And we're streaming on various platforms, uh, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, uh, so wherever you are, uh, you can do that. All right, let's jump right in. Uh, Olivier, I'm excited to have you here.

With Exclusible, you help global brands break into popular gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, uh, and other platforms. Can you quickly break it down? What was your journey?

How did you get started with Exclusible, and what are you doing now? Yeah, sure. So I think journey is the right word, uh, because we launched the company three years ago.

Before that, I actually spent my entire career here in New York, that's where I live, and I always worked for French luxury brands. So I really come from that background of brands and, and luxury positioning.

And then three years ago, with my associates, we launched Exclusible as a startup in Web3.

So that's why I said it's a journey because we started in Web3, then to the whole world of NFTs, always trying to bring brands into NFTs and using the technology.

Then we quickly added also the metaverse as a new dimension within our services. And it's in 2023 that we s- we added gaming as well with our first experience in Roblox for a beauty week in Roblox and also in Spatial.

And we always had our eyes on the platform, on Roblox. We knew that there was a big potential.

And then a few months ago, we actually decided to spend a lot more time and efforts on gaming, mainly Roblox, and we also do Fortnite.

Uh, it's two very different platforms, and we can go into s- into the specifics later.

But basically, what we do is that, um, we have different models where, um, traditionally as an agency, as a studio, we build, um, gaming experiences for brands or corporations.

So from, you know, strategy all the way down to development and go-to-market and marketing on Roblox, we can do the same on Fortnite. But we also build our own games, and we've also done a few licensing deals.

Um, and we also have an entire strategy around building our own UGC catalog on Roblox, where we have more than 300 items at the moment, uh, that people, users can purchase on the Roblox marketplace.

So we really have now, um, a really, like 360, uh, approach to gaming. Yeah.

And, um, I'm super excited to talk with you today because you're probably one of the, uh, only ones in our industry that was extremely focused on NFTs at the beginning with a classical agency model.

You've worked with brands on, on NFT activations and then almost pivoted towards gaming now.

And I wanna ask you that question because a lot of people are thinking about this, and, um, how did you experience that shift within that space? Yeah.

How do you think-- Where do we stand today and, and, and how do you, uh, see that journey of the last two to three years? Yes, absolutely. So we started in exactly June 2021.

It was really the peak, um, peak of the bull market, I wanna say. Like, that's when the NFT frenzy really started.

And our first product, our-- the first version of our company was to be a marketplace where luxury brands could sell NFTs. So we did about 20 NFT drops in a year, year and a half.

Some of them, a few of them were our own collections under Exclusible, and most of them were on behalf of brands.

So we helped at the time doing the strategy, you know, regulation, compliance, the tech, obviously community building, develop- delivering all the utilities post-drop.

So that market was very good, very successful back then.

Uh, but then in 2022, the bear market came in crypto, financial markets, crypto, and so the, um, the NFT market also changed completely compared to 2021 and the first half of 2022.

And what happened is that the idea of selling NFTs has, um, changed when it comes to how brands approach the market, approach the subject.

And so it's more about the technology, and so the-- and what use cases are sticking from a consumer point of view.

So brands right now are really using NFTs in terms of digital passports, especially in Europe with the regulation coming up.

So the idea that an NFT is like a, a stamp, uh, you know, a digital stamp linked to a product that provides all sorts of benefits from sourcing, transparency, circularity, and, and all of those things.

So it's a little bit different now. The reality of the NFT market is a bit different from when we started three years ago, where we- The idea was to make it a product.

A product meant to build a community and to drive revenue and all sorts of benefits and engagement.

So that, that, that part of the market has changed, and it's not necessarily interesting, or it's not necessarily the way brands are approaching NFTs.

Now they approach it, they approach it more as a, a layer, a technological layer that can be used in all sorts of different use cases that have different type of benefits.

But it's not about selling the NFT, it's about purely leveraging the tech. So you said a, a lot of brands are now engaging in, in gaming, and, and that's what we see as well.

I mean, most of the consumer brands nowadays, at least the big ones, uh, have done or experimented on Roblox itself or another, another gaming platform.

Can you break down for us what's so exciting about gaming, and what's your insider view and practitioner's view of why do brands care about gaming? Yes, yes, for sure.

So if I backtrack a little bit, so when we launched the company with NFTs, and then we went into the metaverse, the idea was to always explore new digital territories.

The idea was to bring, to help brands tap into these new frontiers, which we felt were very interesting, very new, very compelling.

And we knew that we had to stretch a little bit the tolerance level on the brand side because it was very exploratory with very little history, uh, to rely on. And so gaming has always been there.

Roblox was launched in 2006, you know? So the gaming world has always been there, but it's more in terms of the consideration and also the evolution of those gaming platforms.

For us, it was a very natural evolution because we built so many metaverse experiences. A metaverse experience is nothing else than a game.

You know, it's a immersive world with the same keyboard mechanics, the same way to move your character and your avatar, but it's just that it's never been built necessarily as a true game.

So for us, and so we acquired a lot of knowledge and experience in metaverse, and then applying that to Roblox was kind of a natural evolution for us.

And we also felt that that was the next frontier for brands to tap into these gaming plat- platforms with the gigantic benefit that the audience was already there.

These gaming platform already-- platforms already have their own community that they've been building for years and years.

So all of a sudden you have an existing territory, and it's just about introducing brands to that new audience and making them comfortable with this new world.

And if you, now let's assume you're in the elevator somewhere in New York with one of those CMOs of a consumer brand, and y- you have two minutes to pitch them the value proposition of Roblox, and how you can help them, and why you sh- why they should be there.

What would you tell them? Yes, it's very simple. I start with a question. As a CMO, do you want to reach Gen Alpha or Gen Z? Yes, no? And usually the answer is yes, but sometimes brands really don't care.

It's not their core audience or their target. But if the answer is yes, and then usually second question, do you have an omni-channel strategy? Usually the answer is yes as well.

And so then Roblox, especially Roblox compared to Fortnite, but Roblox becomes a completely natural option for brands and CMOs to basically add a new channel into their entire marketing stack.

Because you have about 80 million daily users on Roblox, and they spend more time on Roblox than any other social media channel or platform. And Roblox is aging up as well.

Right now, about, um, almost 60% of the platform is above 13 years old. In our experience, for example, we just launched a game for Care Bears, 45% of our audience in Care Bears is above 18 years old.

So as a CMO, it's an amazing opportunity to expose your brand, to, to show your brand to an audience who is completely immersed for a much longer time than any other social media platform.

So it's about building brand awareness, basically. Yeah. And following up on that, um, those, those brands, they usually like, they care about certain metrics.

Some, some of them look at engagement, uh, some of them look at brand affinity, some of them look at, you know, R- ROI or, like, getting r- real world foot traffic into their stores.

What, what are some of those metrics you will look at, and what do you see most effective in, in Roblox? Absolutely.

So it's a very good question because just also to give a little bit of, uh, historical context, so when we were really, um, 2022, 2020-- ear- early 2023, with the entire hype and the craze about the metaverse, at that time, all the experiences in the metaverse were made more as a marketing play.

Okay? Then with the state of the brand, like luxury brands, fashion, where the 2024 is a difficult years, difficult year, now it's all about ROI.

So it's no longer about either, you know, just an innovation project or a marketing project. It has to have clear ROI. Then it's purely about what the brand is looking to achieve, so it's about objectives.

And those objectives can be established throughout your marketing funnel from really, like, you know, top of the funnel, bra- building brand awareness, to then all the way down to retention, um, and also conversion.

There is-- you know, you can monetize an experience on Roblox. Brands can make money. And now Roblox is also introducing e-commerce. So in 2025, very soon, every brand will be able to...

Most brands will be able to add, uh, an e-commerce functionality directly into their Roblox experience.

I say most brands simply because that's, uh, Roblox is starting with Shopify, Shopify integration, uh, to start with, but we can assume that they will roll out more integrations than just Shopify.

And we'll s- we'll soon dive into a, a demo where you show us some of the work that you did, and you're, you guide us through the platform.

And before that, it will be helpful for the audience to understand what are some platform specific features if you now compare Fortnite to Roblox? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So let's talk about Roblox first.

So in terms of feature, the first one that comes to mind, it's UGCs. What we call UG... So it, it's tricky, uh, because what we call UGC on Roblox is basically any, any type of item that can be worn on your avatar.

Skins. We can call them skins. But it can be clothes, it can be accessories, pets, companions, you know, and there are millions and millions and millions of UGCs on the platform because anyone can create a UGC.

Roblox made it now a little bit more expensive to actually upload UGCs, so it allows to kind of guarantee a level of quality because you have to pay to upload UGCs. But that's the first thing.

So in terms of self-expression, in terms of identity, your avatar as a player is the most important thing as part of your Roblox experience. So brands can really capitalize and leverage that entire UGC model.

Then, of course, we talked about e-commerce, so e-commerce is coming up.

Then we have advertising, so when I said that Roblox is a new channel for CMOs, it's also, it's the same evolution as all the other, the older platforms, you know, Insta, Facebook, et cetera, where now Roblox is really rolling out an advertising network.

And so brands can come and spend money on advertising to target specific audiences without having to build a game because the advertising will be displayed on billboards

that will be set up in many, many, many different games. And then, just like you have your advertising command panel, you can do the same.

You can navigate and select specific audience that you want your, your advertising to be showed to.

And those ads are immersive, uh, so it's very dynamic, it's videos, and then you can also track the, the results of your, uh, your ads. Then another very important feature, it's the, uh, the entire ecosystem.

So you can leverage, like as a brand, you can work with UGC creators and developers, influencers as well.

So we're talking about an immense cohort of people who have been working day in, day out, working or, or playing or developing, creating in Roblox out of passion. Usually it's out of passion.

A lot of them actually, you know, develop a lot of things for free. A lot of them are in school actually, or at university.

And so I think there's an opportunity for brands to really start building very strong relationships and promoting also, shedding some light onto these, these very talented creators of 3D clothing and digital fashion and environments.

We have a project like this in the works, uh, that will come out in, in 2025, where a brand is actually like nurturing and incubating almost five young creators who are going to reinterpret the designs of the maison.

I think it's very cool concept. So, so brands have different options to enter Roblox. Uh, and, and Roblox is unique in itself because it has UC- UCGs, user generated content, those items. Yes.

You can start with those items. You can now start with ads. You can build your own game. How should a brand balance or think about those options? Yes. So exactly, you summarize it very well.

So there are three options to launch in Roblox. The first one, very simple, is to launch, uh, create a UGC collection. Second one is to create some type of a pop-up in an existing game.

We call that a game integration, so it's for a set time period, two to four weeks usually, and you create like a, a mini experience within an existing game, which is great because it allows the brand to leverage usually millions of users that already flock to that game regularly.

The third, uh, option is to build a game. So obviously from one to three, UGC is cheaper, faster. Brand integration is a great way. Game integration is faster,

not that cheap anymore because you have to pay the game, and you have to pay like a fee to the game, and you have to also, uh, build the experience, but it's more reasonable in terms of compared to building your own game.

And then building your game is a very different type of commitment and engagement, uh, for the brand. And then with, with Exclusable, you're also building your own games.

How difficult is it to build a successful game in Roblox? Yes. So we build our own games also to learn, to keep learning about the platform, the algorithm, the players, the community.

Uh, and then we learn so much, and it's very beneficial for our clients as well. Uh, it's very difficult to build a successful game because it's like flipping a coin.

But so we try to have a very methodological approach to that. We launched our first game back in July, um, and we're gonna relaunch it soon, and we learnt so much through that process.

But now we have about three to four games that we're gonna launch probably in the first half of 2025 that we're working on. It's really hard. So, um, you know, we, we hope that, uh, they will be successful.

The good thing is that obviously, it's very different. We control everything from the budget to the timeline. So at least we're very agile, we go fast. Yeah.

So that's why I think it's great to balance, uh, having, you know, building games for brands and then having our own games. We keep learning and also th-the-- we create synergies between them.

So for example, we're launching another game next week for someone called Like Nastya. She's the ninth biggest YouTuber in the world.

And so we're gonna create synergies between her game and the Care Bears game that we just launched as well. So then it creates a nice portfolio of, of experiences.

And are there some universal laws that you encountered in building games? Some things that you see that never work, and some things that you see always work. Yes, definitely. Something we learned is that

you can n- you, you, you can never launch a game which is not finished. It sounds very basic to say that, but we've heard it many times because many times brands have been asking us the question.

They think they can launch, like, a smaller, faster version of the game and then see if they want to keep investing.

The reality is that if the game is not complete when you launch, and you think you are in beta, and then, you know, you keep working on the game over the following weeks post-launch, it's gonna die.

Because the algorithm of Roblox will give the-- will keep trying to push your game for the first six to eight weeks, something like that.

And if your game is not finished, meaning you haven't have the right monetization, the multiplayer, the gameplay, the loop.

If everything is not finished and you're hoping-- thinking, like, "I'm gonna improve things very quickly," you're gonna hurt the algorithm, and at some point it's just not gonna pay attention to you.

And then it's a vicious loop because players have an option, and if they see a game that has not that good of a rating and there's no one in the game, no one is gonna go in that game. It's dead. So then you're done.

Like, you cannot-- Your, your game is done. You have to move on. There, there are ways to save the game, but I think it's too much details. So it's very important to launch a game that's complete and to prepare updates.

So wh-when we go live ops. So you need to update your game extremely frequently to keep the momentum going.

So for example, on Care Bears, we launch one small update per week and then one major update every six weeks, more or less. And y- you just mentioned an interesting point, which is the algorithm.

What does it mean when you talk about the algorithm, and what does a game that is in a good algorithm, how does that, the discoverability of that game change versus a bad algorithm?

How does that work from a user perspective? Yes, absolutely. So that goes into the marketing. So in terms of marketing, you have different ways to launch to support the game. Paid and then organic.

But ultimately, you want to be picked up by the Roblox algorithm, uh, so that it keeps boosting your game.

The way it works, so the algorithm looks at three, three parameters: engagement, time spent, and, uh, monetization. So engagement is like how many people actually visit your game once the algo shows them your icon.

Then time spent, how many minutes people spend. And if you are below, I think it's five minutes, then it's really bad, like the algorithm is, is gonna drop you.

So our game on Care Bears, for example, we average about twelve to thirteen minutes of average play. And then monetization. Does your game make money, yes or no?

And that's very important because Roblox is a free platform. The only way they make money, it's because they, they take a cut, they take a commission on every single transaction made on the platform.

And Roblox, it's a micro transaction platform we're talking about. So they have their own internal currency called Robux.

And so they take a thirty percent commission in your game on every single transaction, and they take a seventy percent commission on every transaction on their marketplace.

So if you perform-- your game performs on these three dimensions, the algo will keep pushing it, and it pushes to different audience.

So every day it's gonna try, "Okay, let me show to like five thousand female on desktop in Europe, and male, you know, on mobile in the US."

It keeps testing different type of audiences, and then it, it sees based on what works, then it will keep pushing, keep pushing until it doesn't. And so that's why you want to like crack the algo.

And there are different ways to, to also like crack the algo with, with your game. Olivier, I'm excited to dive deeper in a demo now. Sure. But before we do that, uh, just a quick shout-out to the audience again.

If you have questions, you can ask them in the comments. We'll have a short Q&A at the end. Olivier, before we dive into the demo, is there anything we need to know? Yes.

I think just to, to, just to complete like how brands have to approach Roblox, I think it's very important to decide the objective. Is it purely building brand awareness, top of the funnel?

Um, what is-- Or is it meant to make money? You know, to, to speak in very simple terms. Because that will completely change the type of experience that can be built and also the marketing.

So for example, if it's purely top of the funnel, then in terms of the marketing, we'll be using, uh, Roblox advertising and also free UGCs to drive traffic to the experience. And that's very good, and we've done that.

A lot of brands have done that, and it served a purpose, and it works. But if you want to monetize, then it means that it's a long-term experience.

It's something that then the brand has the ambition to keep- Funding and investing into the game for, like, many years.

And so then it needs to be done the right way, exactly like the way that we built the game for Care Bears, because it's a long-term vision where you need to invest on live ops and updates and new items and, you know, the community.

Like, we're running the Discord for Care Bears, for example. And in that case, if you do that, if you build the game this way, then it can monetize.

But then also we need to be very strategic about the monetization, the pricing of items, and do things in a very balanced and authentic way so that it appeals to the users of Roblox while the brand is, um, also signaled without being too loud or too commercially driven.

Yeah. That's super helpful. Olivier, let's jump into the demo now. Sure. Yeah, let me share my screen. If you can share your screen. Yes. Do you see my screen? Yes. Okay, great. So first of all, I, I just wanna show you

the marketplace so that we can go through it quickly. So when you click on marketplace, that's where every single user can buy items spanning Robux. So you see that's the currency here, Robux.

Obviously, it's Halloween, so you can see a lot of Halloween item, um, Halloween items. Um, I'm just gonna show you also our store. So we have our own group on Roblox with almost, like, 10,000 members.

And if you go to the store, these are all the items. So it's completely random, the items that we produce, because as a very strange way, quantity matters more than quality.

So we generate a lot of passive revenue from selling all of these items literally, like, 24/7. But we are working on an elevated version of our UGCs, which is fashion.

So we're gonna separate our UGC strategy, where on one hand we're gonna have all of these very whimsical, completely Robloxian type of UGCs, and we're, we're gonna increase our catalog to, like, really high numbers.

We want to have, like, thousands of items on the platform.

And we're gonna separate the UGC strategy with meant for more fashion and really cool clothes that we're gonna display in a very different way to elevate and, and create almost a, as visible as a brand within Roblox.

And I'm, I'm sure there are also, like, a lot of trends on the platform itself, uh, and, and kind of micro culture communities that you need to be part of to, to see around the corner what kind of UCG will be successful.

Absolutely. Right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. We actually have a data approach to UGCs. We, uh, keyword, by keywords, so it's very interesting. But yes, absolutely, you have trends.

Like, we, we capitalized a little bit on the brat trend over the summer, and it was, uh, it's our number one item. We have a brat MP- MP3 player. This is the store of our Care Bears UGCs.

So you see they are both for sale on the platform and also on the game, in, in our game, but also directly into the Roblox marketplace. So that's something else to understand.

Whenever there's a UGC in a game, it's also automatically available on the marketplace. And so we launched those Care Bears head last week, and it's pretty cool. Yeah. So now let me go into the game.

So we're very pleased with the numbers. We've had, uh, more than 3.6 million visits in, uh, six weeks. Right now there's 240 people playing the game. I'm gonna launch it.

So when I was talking about authenticity, the great thing about this project is that we were...

So CloudCo is the company that owns Care Bears, and we worked very, very closely with them throughout the process, and they trusted us at every step of the way.

And they let us do things the way we felt was the most interesting and compelling to guarantee the success of, uh, the game. So first of all, you have a lobby.

It's called the Caring Center, where you can do all sorts of things. I'm using the, my daughter's avatar, actually. I'm logged in with her account. So just to show you the different, the, the cool features of the game.

So if you come here and you see there's someone else with us, you can actually watch clips from Care Bears episodes.

And so the, the audio is spatial, meaning that you can hear now everything, every other sound stops, and you can literally watch an episode. So that was really great.

Uh, in our Discord, a lot of people actually told us that they didn't know Care Bears, they had never watched an episode before, and now they do, and they are actually, uh, interested in buying and starting collecting the toys.

What, what are those? What's that bird, uh, next to you? So you ha- you have two companion pets. Those are pets that you can collect and unlock, and you can put them in s- three slots. Uh, I only have two slots unlocked.

And they basically boost your powers in the game. Those are buddies or companions. And so of course then we, we recently published new ones for Halloween. Then here we have a UGC store.

So as part of our marketing when we launched the game, we created a lot of really cool collabs with UGC creators and also games on the platform.

And so you can see there's, each one was given the assets of Care Bears, and we asked them to reinterpret or, like, build anything inspired by Care Bears. We gave them a lot of freedom, and it was really, really cool.

Like, this one is super cool, so Dowincella, he's so talented. So you see there's fashion. That's a dress inspired by Care Bears.

It Girl is a super successful game on Roblox, and we're very close to them, so they created all these hats. Spiraxi created also these jackets. Simply Lemon, then our Halloween.

So the, the-- we have more than 110 UGCs in the game, which is, it puts us in like the top 10 of branded experiences where people have the most UGCs to buy.

Then here, this is probably one of the most exciting parts of the game. Uh, it's a gacha, it's called a gacha mechanism, where basically either you can shop, so people can buy bears, or you can buy seeds of caring.

The seeds of caring is what you need to collect in the game. And you have a shop as well, another shop. Because basically you have to find and unlock random friends.

You have to unlock all-- collect all the bears, all the buddies. And to do that, you basically use your seeds of caring. And so here I just got, randomly I got a pumpkin.

And this, so this mechanism is super important because it's very common in, in Roblox, the ga-- it's called gacha. NFTs was the same, if you remember. The, the idea of like getting something random.

And it makes people come back because they keep collecting the seeds, and then they basically use the seeds to unlock random items, and some of them are super, super rare.

So people are like playing and playing and playing to try to unlock the very rare bears. And then I'm gonna show you the game. So I'm actually gonna go to the game. So we launched with this chapter one, Care a Lot.

Last two weeks ago, we launched an event, so a small extension to the map for Halloween. But I'm gonna go into the main game here.

So everything I've showed so far is literally just the lobby, but there's a lot to discover in the lobby, and now we're gonna play the game. So our approach to the game was to create...

It's, it's like a, between a role play and a simulator. So here you see it's no longer my avatar.

I'm playing as a bear, and I can go-- And so you see it's multiplayer, so there are a lot of people in the same server as me.

And I can go here, and these are the bears that I e-either bought or I unlocked through the friend finder. And so I can switch bears anytime. Whenever I go here, I can switch.

And then the whole point, the whole story of the game is that there is the bad guy called Bluster. You see, he basically covered the entire world with goo, this goo, and so we have to clean it up.

And so we use our belly badge to clean up the goo and also free another bear that was held captive by Bluster. And so when I clean up the goo, I gain points, and then I can use the points to win seeds of carings.

So first of all, you have a very strong world, very strong environment, and then what's really cool is that each bear has its own secret level. And so I think I have, yeah, this one.

So you see it's signaling there that I have the bear for this. So we have those signals everywhere, and then you use your belly badge, and you are transported into a completely new secret level.

So it creates gigantic, like a lot of extension to the game because each bear has its own secret level. You have to have-- You have to find the secret level, and then you can collect more,

you can collect more points, more seeds. You can complete the game more. And then what, what, what's the end game here? So you complete those tasks, you collect- Yes... seeds of cares. Yes.

And then seeds of cares unlock new character items? Uh, yes, exactly. So we keep expanding. For example, you can see here there is a to-do list.

So you have to unlock, so you have to collect, uh, 82 seeds, and once you have collected 82 seeds, you basically complete the chapter, and you unlock, uh, a special bear that's only available at that moment.

You cannot buy it. And then people keep coming back. So once they complete the game, or, or it, it takes a long time to complete the game to begin with.

But then they can keep playing and keep collecting the seeds of caring, and then they can keep coming to the friend finder and either shop for like new items.

That's why like when we launched the Halloween part, it was really cool because it gives a reason. Now we have all these new bears that just came out, you know.

So you might have finished the game two weeks after the launch, then you come back, there's Halloween. So now there's a whole new, you know, collection.

There's a whole new set of bears and companions that you can play with. And then on Saturday this week, we're actually launching chapter two, and chapter two will be you see on the right it says, "Hit the beach."

So that's the next zone. Um, and so now it's gonna be another gigantic zone with like lots of different quests to complete, more seeds of, of different seeds of carings, a whole new collection of bears.

So that's why we-- that's how we keep extending the game, so that players keep coming back because they have something to do. And you know how people are obsessed with collecting things.

So my daughter is absolutely adamant about collecting every single, um, Halloween items before we close down next week after Halloween.

So that's also something great, like the idea that there is, there are some items that are, will only be available for, you know, a month, for example, and then those bears are never gonna be available anymore.

Is there also a place where players can show off what they collected, where they convene, where they chat with each other? So that's, uh, Discord. So we have a very, very active Discord.

Players can chat with each other. Every server has about 20 people, so you play with 20 people on the map. Okay? So you can chat. You have a chat function, you see.

But when it's-- Discord is, is better in order to really create a sense of community.

Where we asked everyone to submit ideas for-- where we wanted them to submit ideas to create a new companion list, a new companion, okay?

And we were really blown away by the amount of creativity because everyone started submitting... Sorry, I'm just showing the chat.

But you see people started showing-- submitting ideas for a Halloween pet, and they are very creative.

And so now we are reviewing with CloudCo which one is gonna win, and we are actually going to create that pet into the game. Mm-hmm. So we're involving our community into creating extensions, new items, new characters.

Okay. This is super interesting, Oliver. Yeah. One question that comes to my mind when I see this, uh, I mean, it looks, looks amazing, and it looks like a ton of work.

How many team members are working on this, and what's the approximate budget or price reins-- range a brand needs to think about when creating a game like that? Yes.

So usually for every game, we have a team of about eight people who work on it, on the game. You know, from project management, 3D developers, and, uh, game developers, like tech.

In terms of time, Care Bears took us three and a half months, four months, more or less, which is really record time to, to build a game of that magnitude and stature.

When it comes to budget, that's when it gets tricky, because it depends. You know, the answer is always it depends. But let's say that like a low six figure could be usually the, the target to build a game like that.

But then, of course, it depends because, again, brands don't have that budget, brands have more budget than that.

So it all depends how much basically the timing is very important, and then also what type of functionalities do you want to add.

When-- to go back to what I was saying earlier, uh, it's absolutely critical to launch a game that's complete, and otherwise it's not gonna go anywhere. It's gonna die very soon.

But you can start-- it's more important to think long term, and therefore to also dedicate budget.

So you can build a great game on a lower budget, but then dedicate budget towards the live ops for like twelve months, twenty-four months, so then your game keeps growing over time. All right.

Oliver, this has been extremely interesting. We're almost at the end. We have a Q&A coming up. We already have a question here.

I wanna ask you my last question, which is, if you look into the future three, four, five years down the road, again, from the perspective of a brand, of a CMO- Yes...

do you think Roblox is the place to build the next brand experiences, and how will brand engagement look like in five years? Yes. So I think it's gonna be a fully integrated

media or channel, let's call it a channel, which includes both communication and distribution. Communication channel in terms of like your traditional marketing channel, where

you can recruit a new audience, nurture it, grow it, raise your brand awareness, you know, all these good things top of the funnel.

But then it's also a distribution channel because you can create digital extensions of your collection. So think about if you're a fashion brand.

For me, it's absolutely obvious that in the near future, every brand should and probably will launch a digital twin of their physical collection, and these twins will be available in Roblox, at some point Fortnite as well, uh, and probably other gaming platforms.

But so it's, it's an extension of your physical product, and you can monetize that. You can sell both digital items, so UGCs, and also then sell physical items that maybe you linked to completing a quest.

Chipotle did that, and it was very interesting. They actually did before e-commerce because it was not ready yet. They did drive to store. So

the first thirty thousand players in their Roblox experience got a coupon code, and then people could go to a Chipotle store, a restaurant, and then use the code to get a free burrito.

That was a very successful experience. So these ideas that you can use Roblox or your gaming experience as a standalone

point of contact with an entire new audience, and that you can launch all sorts of promotions or all s- all sorts of activations that are both either marketing and awareness driven or commercially driven to drive to your e-commerce, drive to your store, or have your e-commerce in the experience.

For me, it's a very, very compelling story, especially when you know that you are educating today the customer of tomorrow. I think that's why Roblox for me it's an absolutely...

And that's why there are different ways to adapt to different budgets. I think that's the most important thing. Yeah. Yeah, and something you just mentioned, I think Starbox did that as well with their recent activation.

They, they, um, distributed vouchers that then people could use in, in real stores. And, and we had Newbit on the show last week- Yes...

also a, a game builder, and they had some really successful results with driving in-foot traffic in stores with those activations. Absolutely.

And also, uh, Beetlejuice, the movie, uh, they actually sold movie tickets directly in the Roblox experience, and they saw a direct increase in ticket sales compared to the benchmark. All right.

Then we have a few questions from the audience, from Michael Maloney. I'll just show it here on the screen.

"Have the CB rights holders seen any bounce outside Roblox in merch sales, retailer interest, social following, et cetera?" Very good question.

So it's too soon to say-- to tell in terms of sales, just because I think those numbers take a little bit of time to come back. But in terms of, you know- Media, it's been really, really good.

If I can maybe show my screen very quickly. There's something that's, that's really relevant. Uh, sorry, I'm just gonna go to another page. A lot of organic- You need to share it again, Olivier... yes.

Do you see my screen? Not yet. To share it again. Yeah. Yes. Just wanna show something very, very quickly. Okay, good. A lot of organic content was created around Care Bears. And we did not pay for any of it.

People just love the IP, and it really gave a boost. I don't wanna say Second Life, because the IP's doing really well. It's, it's on HBO, and it's, it's amazing.

But we had all this organic content from a really young audience across different channels.

If you type Care Bears Roblox on YouTube, you have pages and pages and pages of videos that people created just around the game itself because there is such a, such a passion for it. Because people also...

YouTube is a very good channel also to support a Roblox. Uh, yes, sorry, it's a bit slow. Okay, no, that's not the one I wanted to show. But anyway, I, um, I'm not gonna waste time on this, but the...

We know that Cloud Co., so our partners w- who own Care Bears, they are very, very, very happy with the impact of the Roblox game, uh, across all the different, uh, metrics that we are looking at.

All right, then we have another question from Steve Fowler. "How often do IP holders want to keep all in-game monetization versus just have the game for brand marketing purposes?

And does that decision change how much you charge them to build the game?" Sorry, I'm trying to understand the question.

Does it mean, like, how often do they want to either make it as a marketing activation as opposed to making the game make money? And does the decision change?

So if I understand the question correctly, like, how often do brands want to do pure- purely marketing activation compared to when do they want to monetize?

I want to say it's usually, I don't know, 50/50, something like that. A lot of brands go there without necessarily the need for monetization or the desire for monetization.

Uh, also because it's a little bit too soon, because it's completely new for them, so they are just happy to launch and to have everyone comfortable within their organization with that type of experience.

And so it's more marketing play, and then they want to have those top of the funnel metrics saying, like, millions of impressions, millions of visits, 10 minutes of play.

Then s- the page I just showed you with all the different, um, you know, um, actions from the community. So that's already, like, a very big win for them. Monetization,

if monetization is the priority, then yes, we have different type of discussions. Also because there is marketing, it's a different type of marketing that you run, different type of marketing budget.

Basically, there's more money that needs to be put towards the live ops rather than the marketing. It's a little bit of a different split here. And yes, of course it has also an impact on the cost of the game.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I also have a question that burns, uh, on my mind, and we touched upon this i- in our previous conversation, Olivier, about the apparently inflated user numbers on Roblox.

There was a report coming out- Yeah... um, two or three weeks ago that claimed Roblox massively inflated user numbers. Um, what do you say to that?

Yeah, so first of all, the source of this report, it's a short seller, so it's in their interest to basically communicate very negative findings, their own research and findings on Roblox, because they have an interest in the stock tanking.

Uh, and it did happen, like, the stock went down, uh, quite a lot on the first day, but then it re- recouped, uh, regained, um, its position within, like, you know, 48 hours. So it was almost like a non-event.

I think it was... I think it's a known element. It's something that's known. It's the idea that they, they are, they are counting some accounts that are duplicates.

But they are not the only ones, and also it actually speaks to greater volumes about Roblox. And when I say they are not the only ones, I'm not saying condoning or whatever.

I'm just saying it seems to be standard practice sometimes, or it's not out of character for, you know, some of those social media platforms, let's say.

And then it speaks volumes to the performance, because it means that they achieve sales revenue with a lower number of unique visitors.

And so then it increases your average revenue per user, which I think it's, it's very interesting. The CEO of Roblox announced in September that his objective for the platform is to go to one billion...

No, he wants to get 10% of the gaming market. The gaming market is about three billion. So he wants to go to 300 million, uh, daily users. And so that's, that's, that would be like a...

So right now they are at 80 million, so that, that number of 80 million is being challenged. Maybe it's not 80 million, maybe it's 65 or 70. I don't, I don't know the exact number.

Uh, and then there was another point also that they were criticized for.

It's, uh, in terms of, um, child safety, you know, the content, the moderation, and the type of people who can engage with users and stuff like that.

And last week, so a few days ago actually, they just announced that they are launching new reinforced parental guidelines and parental measures, uh, directly on the platform. Okay, super interesting.

Uh, Olivier, before we end it, a quick lightning round. Uh, very short questions. One, one-word answers. Yes or no- Okay... or, or one word. We do that with every guest on our show. Okay.

The first one, your favorite brand on Roblox? Vans. Vans? Yes. Um, the biggest myth about virtual experiences you'd like to debunk? So not gaming, just virtual experiences? Yeah. That it has an audience.

What's a common mistake brands make when entering virtual experiences? That they don't trust the experts. And last one, if you could bring one real-world experience into the virtual world, what would it be?

My God. [laughs] That's a difficult one. It's funny because we talk about that with my team. Soccer, football, soccer on Roblox, uh, is not... could be much, much, much better. Yeah. All right.

Olivier, we're at the end of the show. Thanks so much for joining us today. Uh, where can people find out more about you, about Exclusible? Sure. Uh, on our website, exclusible.com, and, uh, about me on LinkedIn.

Yeah, perfect. We also have a QR code on top for exclusible.com. Thanks everyone in the audience for joining. This was great. Olivier, thank you for joining.

If you like this, please support this show, share it, like it with your friends, and then we'll see you soon next time. Yeah. Thank you so much, Marc. That was great. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.

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