Joana: 0:00

It doesn't really matter if we are a Web3 game or a Web2, or a mobile or whatsoever, if the experience is good enough, if the experience is exciting and if we are convincing them and telling an interesting enough story for them to join us.

Joeri: 0:16

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Joana. Hello, bom dia.

Joana: 0:29

Joana, bom dia, bom dia, como estas Joeri Tudo bem, May you speak a little Portuguese Guys if you're wondering who is Joana.

Joeri: 0:39

Yes, she's Portuguese. She lives in Lisbon. I live in Sintra. Actually, we could have done this in Sintra or in Lisbon, but for now let's do it online. Joana Guys, if you're wondering who is Joana, jonna Barros, she is actually the marketing director at my Neighbor Alice. She is into Web3 gaming. She has a post at Microsoft. And what is my Neighbor Alice? It's a Web3 gaming. She has a past at Microsoft. And what is my neighbor Alice? It's a multiplayer builder gamer. Anyone can buy and own virtual islands, collect and build exciting items and meet new friends. So, yeah, I will put a lot of those information, those links, in my show notes, as always, Joana, so people can go there. But I'm also curious about to start it, about your background. You worked across Microsoft gaming startups, now into Web3. Tell me a bit more about that and maybe also the mind shift that you need for those different environments.

Joana: 1:40

Yeah, first of all, jodi, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. We just realized that we could have done this in person, but maybe for a second round, who knows? So yeah, I've been working in technology for pretty much my entire life, and as a professional, so for my whole career. I started at Microsoft when I was only 20 years old, and I did a couple of different things throughout the five years that I was there. I was working at Microsoft here in Lisbon, also in Portugal.

Joana: 2:12

One of the things that really opened my mind to this gaming world was I was responsible for the Xbox brand during two years, which was like the craziest experience. I didn't have any gaming background. I didn't have any professional background at the point, because I was just starting my career, and so I had to learn a lot from scratch, but it's really easy. That's something that I really found out. It's really easy to fall in love with gaming even if you are not a gamer and I was not. I was not back in the days. I was definitely not a hardcore gamer, but it's really interesting to understand how this industry works and how you play and you work with something that people are passionate about. It's not like a common product that people just buy because they enjoy it. It's like you are working with like work, people and how people spend their free time, and that's a lot of passion. There is a lot of passion involved, and so it was really easy for me to also fall in love with this industry.

Joana: 3:15

After Xbox and after Microsoft. I did a couple of more things there, from managing some startup programs and like doing some transformation inside the company. Then I opened my. I started my own venture, also in tech. It was edtech, so education technology. It was during COVID, so it was a huge struggle and it didn't go as well as we wanted. So it was a huge learning for us. But in the end, we decided to part ways me and my partners. But it was still a two years adventure right before I joined the Web3 world.

Joana: 3:52

So the Web3 and this whole industry came to my life as a surprise. To be honest, I was never an investor. It was back in December 2020. An investor, it was back in December 2020. So the hype of Bitcoin had already started back in 2017, something like that. I had a lot of people around me who were already really deep into crypto back in the end of 2020. And also some people who were already starting their ventures in this industry. So that's how the opportunity also came up to me and I joined as an adventure. To be honest, I really wanted to learn because I saw the huge potential of this industry and it was the perfect timing. My business was not in the best shape. We were considering if we should move on or just stop for a while and see how the market would change or would move, and so that's where I joined the Web2 world.

Joana: 4:51

It was again for the second time in my career, and I would say the first one was when I joined gaming. This was also a crucial moment for me because I had to study from start, from zero. I had zero knowledge, and so I was reading a lot, I was hearing a lot of podcasts, I was trying to talk to as many people as I could in this industry, and I was very lucky because I got really great connections back in the day, and so that's when I joined ExceedMe. Exceedme was just releasing their token and I was responsible for the whole project management of the release of a token. So you can imagine how crazy that was With zero background, with zero knowledge. In one month we're going to release one token, and I had no clue the craziness of releasing a token until I was actually hands-on with that. That was an amazing experience. I really liked it and of course, then I was almost part of the funding team because back in the day it was just me and the two founders and a community manager.

Joana: 5:55

I ended up staying at the project and helping that project to grow, because obviously I also felt, first of all, felt in love with the project but second, got attached to it also personally, and so I really wanted that to succeed and to grow. So I was doing a lot of things inside ExceedMe and that obviously also needed me to shift a bit the way that I was working. I was hired to do project management, but then in the end, as any startup, you end up doing marketing community project management, but then in the end, as any startup, you end up doing marketing community project management also. But you know like you have to do a lot of other things, especially when we're talking about this very small team. Then the team grew a lot also, but it was really really good to be part of that since the beginning, and that's when my roots in Web3 started and I decided, at least for now, that I really don't want to leave this industry because, especially when it comes to gaming and XSeedme is also a gaming company I think it's really easy to see the value of this industry and how impactful it can be into, like putting Web3 into games or building games on top of the Web3.

Joana: 7:04

The fact that you are giving power to the players, giving them the tools to build their own assets, to actually own something that they are working for or spending their hours on, it's game changing for like forever, in my opinion, and it takes the biggest, one of the biggest burdens of the gaming world off the shoulders of the companies. I'm putting these obviously in very positive words, but basically what this means is that, by decentralizing the games, the companies are not in control so much. The gamers, who are actually the centerpiece of why games are built, become actually that actual centerpiece, indeed, in fact. Yeah, long story short, I'm talking too much. I'm sorry. I really get passionate about telling this.

Joeri: 7:59

I feel your passion and they're really good. So I wanted to hear all of that, all the story, and it seems you are already at a lot of places and you've got a lot of experience and you just took the action and learned on the spot. But I'm also curious because now, of course, my neighbor Alice, it's a game. I think you launched chapter one or I'm launching chapter one. We launched in June, yeah. So I'm curious about, yeah, how is the marketing around a game? Did you discover surprises or a surprising challenge, maybe about marketing a game like that?

Joana: 8:34

Of course, when I after Exceed Me and then I had nine months in another Web3 project, I finally ended up in my neighbor Alice, and it was, first of all, it was a huge surprise of how this was the first time for me working at a project like that is. It can be considered a startup environment because it's still like a kind of a young project, but with such a robust team and such a robust structure. That, of course, also comes with some challenges, but gave me for the first time, the freedom to OK, we can have an entire marketing team and we are marketing this project for Web3, but also web2 players. So when I joined back in one year and a half ago, something like that, we were still in in beta phase. Okay, so we released we were releasing beta season one and then we released beta season two and while we were in beta, it was very clear that we were targeting only web3 players. Okay, of course, this is a challenge for many reasons, because web three, you have to find the niche players that are web three users, web three avid users plus that enjoy this kind of gameplay. So it's like the niche inside the niche. So it's a very but they exist, of course, and proof of that is that we have an OG community since like five years, four years ago, that keep playing and really enjoy even building the game with us and giving lots of suggestions.

Joana: 10:12

But of course, that's a niche and that's not enough to keep a game up and running and making it profitable. So so when I joined, as I was saying, I was set the objective of getting 1 million players in our game. Of course, it was almost a provocative from the person who was interviewing me. Can you do that? And of course, my first thought is if that's the goal and I mean, we can get there, but we cannot be only focusing on Web3 players, right? What we have to do is open up the game, like lower the entry barriers so that we can also onboard Web2 players, because these kinds of games like my Neighbor Alice that was very inspired, for example, in Animal Crossing has the potential to become a very big game, but for that we need to onboard more players, and so that has been the path. Since around one year now, we started to move towards that objective.

Joana: 11:17

How did we do that? So how can we lower the barriers? And I'm talking about this? Of course, this is more product-based, but it's also very marketing-related, because you cannot properly strategize anything, any release, without understanding from the product side what is possible. Because if I was told that, look, that effort cannot be made, there are no ways for us right now to lower the barriers, okay, then my strategy would have to be okay, let's focus, keep focusing, on the Web3 community and we have to target them, and maybe investing more on increasing the ticket per player, or I mean trying to leverage in another way. But as there was this opportunity of opening up and lowering the barriers, of course your strategy as a marketeer needs to change.

Joana: 12:04

So how can we impact the most, the biggest number of people to a successful release? And that has been my challenge since, I mean, the last release of Beta Season 2 was in September last year, so from October, november last year, that's when we started planning for this big release. That just happened in June, in 17th of June of this year, and it has been great. To be honest, we have definitely lowered the barriers. How did we do that? Now the game is playable on browser. That was one very important topic, because before this you had to download a launcher and, especially in Web3, people are a bit skeptical about downloading whatever it is to play a game and of course, that was a huge barrier that we have. So now it's possible to play on browser. Second thing one click to play. You just go to our website, you click on play and you are in the game, like as seamless and that, as simple as that.

Joana: 13:05

Of course, then, if you want to create an account, to get a free trial and et cetera, you need to do a couple of more things, but what we really wanted was to open up our world. That is, by the way, beautiful because we've been developing for five years now. There is like a huge story around that. There is so many, there are so many Easter eggs and so many corners that you can explore, and it was a pity that we had it closed to a launcher version, to a couple of thousands of people that were actually downloading it, and so it was a huge success. We, in two months we didn't do yet two months, so only next week we did two months we reached 100,000 accounts created, which was like which is a great result for us, the best result ever in terms of the number of players and number of accounts created. And it has been proved that, not only the fact that we are now on browser, that we are one click to play, but also that we are Web 2 friendly.

Joana: 14:09

And how does that happen? Because to create an account, you don't need to add your MetaMask or whatsoever. We can create. There is a way and it's called Web3Auth. That is a plugin and you, just by using your email or your phone number, you create a wallet. We create a wallet for you on the background that is associated to the game and to your accounting game. So this way, there is no excuse for a non-Web3 savvy person to join the game. You know, that's not an excuse. All of us have an email, all of us have a phone number if we don't have an email. So that's really really easy to create an account. And yeah, and that's that has been pretty much the biggest challenges that we have been that we've been facing and it's going really well.

Joeri: 14:54

Amazing to hear and yes, actually that's one of the biggest hurdles always You3 is that people need a wallet and they don't know where to get a wallet. And if you take away that burden, that obstacle, then you can't really get to the advantages of Web3. Now you explained that you are onboarding these Web2 users, but of course both Web2 and Web3 people, they need to know that you exist. I know you have been doing campaigns, you have been using TikTok, I think. Tell us a bit, how did you create that big onboarding of?

Joana: 15:24

users.

Joeri: 15:24

How did they? Yeah, what kind of awareness campaigns did you do?

Joana: 15:28

Okay. Okay, one of the challenges, as I was explaining from this, from like marketing this project, is when you have two different audiences. I don't want to treat them and I don't usually treat them as two different audiences, but we have to be aware that we are also a Web3 project and that in the beginning of my Neighbor Alice back in 2021, when we were Binance Project of the Year, we got a huge attention from the public. Our token was totally over the top, so it was like a really great moment for the project, which means that we built a community that is also Web3, very Web3 savvy, and they are really into the token price and so on, and we cannot forget those ones, right? So we are here communicating almost two different things, although we're talking about the same thing, and that's a challenge, of course, for any marketeer, so we need to be clever enough to not stop talking about crypto, web3, the technology behind, and also, how can we, how are we still building this project towards that token and towards all those investors that we got from like back in the day and also new investors, of course but at the same time, communicating the product, because we are a product, and that's this is the biggest change. I think that we did, and since, since I joined, at least, the team, because we were not communicating so much the product and we have such an amazing product and that's where Instagram, tiktok, also enters the chat, let's say, because we had, and we still have, our main focus and our main channel of communication is still X. Okay, and on X we are communicating for both audiences, never forgetting that we are a game and so we need to put out gaming content, we need to show how cool our game is. We do live streams, game nights, we do lots of things on X regarding that, but we also talk about trends. We also talk about the technology. We also talk about how Web3 and how gaming in Web3 can change the ecosystem and so on, and that's on it Everywhere, everywhere, sorry, everywhere else, namely on Instagram, on TikTok, even on Discord.

Joana: 17:56

Our main focus is the game. So this is our product, this is what you can do. Look how cool these outfits are inside the game, look how cool it is to landscape in our game, trying to build this excitement around a product that, in the end and I truly believe in this back in the day when mobile gaming started, everyone was talking about mobile gaming Now, it's just gaming. Right Now, apple considers themselves as the biggest gaming company in the world because of mobile gaming, but there is not such a big difference when we talk about mobile gaming and PC gaming anymore, at least when we talk about it, and I truly believe that in the end and in a couple of years maybe there will not be this thing of Web3 gaming.

Joana: 18:43

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for the real player that we are targeting. It doesn't really matter if we are a Web3 game or a Web2 or a mobile or whatsoever, if the experience is good enough, if the experience is exciting and if we are convincing them and like telling an interesting enough story for them to join us. So that's the core. This is not the challenge, but that's the core objective of building this community together with the Web3 and Web2 users, because in the end, they are all players right, because in the end, we want to treat them and we want them to have fun, to have a great time, to create a great community. And it doesn't matter what's the technology behind. What matters is the experience that they are actually having by playing our game.

Joana: 19:34

So that's mainly the difference between the channel that we use the different channels that we use, but of course, on top of that, for this release, we also used some KOLs and we invested a lot in the Asian markets Because, I mean, this is the type of game that it's like easy to sell in some of these markets. We got a lot of Chinese communities boarding Thailand is, vietnam, is Vietnamese. We also have, interesting enough, a lot of Latin communities from Brazil, from Mexico, from the United States also. So we did a couple of KOLs and guilds campaigns. Guilds have played a very important role in this and we are still we have still some going on campaigns with some guilds.

Joana: 20:23

But you know, and this is another very important thing what we truly believe that also impacted this release apart from the entry barriers and having the game on browser and so on was also our airdrop.

Joana: 20:39

So we developed a rewards platform inside our game, so it's fully connected and we're not using any third party or whatsoever, and we are using that airdrop campaign that's going to last for four months, so it ends in October around that, and, of course, that we are also onboarding a lot of people because we are giving away half a million of Alice tokens and so that's also, of course, a big investment from our side, but also it's bringing us a very good result because it's an extra incentive for people to not only try out the game but also increase conversion in terms of doing more activations, doing more in-game quests, doing more stuff inside the game, because they're earning points and they are going up in the leaderboard.

Joana: 21:26

That was, I would say that, if we need to state out the most relevant activations, of course social media always we did a couple of, we did some PR also and, of course, the release with Pudgy Penguins, and that was that also had a big impact in our communication, because we released, with this last release, released the Pudgy Penguins integration in our game and then the guilds and airdrop. So these four things were where we invested the most for the release.

Joeri: 21:56

Oh yeah, it's interesting. So actually at different places, and X, of course it's logical and you're all building this community everywhere. Tok is always. It has this viral potential. I know you did a campaign once on TikTok that went viral or went really well without any budget.

Joana: 22:13

I'm curious to hear more about that. Yeah, that was in another project that I was. I was also as a marketing director at Proper Home. It has nothing to do at least the campaign itself, nothing to do with Web3. The platform was a marketplace rentals and the selling houses, marketplaces and the objective of the campaign was to put the brand out there. It didn't matter, of course there was a Web3 background of the platform, but we were at all. We were not mentioning that ever. We weren't at all, we were not mentioning that ever.

Joana: 22:51

Okay, and so the campaign was basically we appropriated this idea that I've seen, I had seen in other countries, working very well. There was how much you pay for rent in X like in place and the most famous one was the guy from New York how much you pay for rent in New York, and then people just show these crazy houses, of course. Then I got in touch with the guy in the end and it's like everything was obviously arranged, because normal people are not just showing your house just because. But I have to tell you that we had some people not all of them all of the videos that they are all on TikTok, if you want to see, it's Proper Home on TikTok and there are some of those cases of people who actually opened their doors and just showed us their house. But in the end it got really viral in Portugal, which was our main objective, because Proper Home was acting in Portugal at the time and the whole content is in Portuguese and we didn't invest anything.

Joana: 23:51

Basically, our investment was to pay a videographer to record and edit the videos and it really went well because we just followed the trend that was really working and I think that back in the day it was two years ago already the algorithm was really favoring. That back in the day it was two years ago already, the algorithm was really favoring If you had one good video. It was just it was really easy to ramp on the next videos. Now I don't feel that I've been following and I've been also managing other TikTok accounts. It's not that easy first of all, to get viral and second of all, to build up on that virality of one video. You need to keep getting viral until you get some numbers. But yeah, it was a great campaign and I think I mean it also helped by. At the time it was responsible for I think 30 something percent of the website visits while the campaign was on, and that's huge because the investment was zero and it's like you had google adwords without paying anything you know.

Joeri: 24:55

So it was good yeah, yeah, I'm tiktok to myself, right, so, and indeed I feel that I started my own account, ai with yuri about everything around ai for entrepreneurs at one one video. It did really well and then, but then you need to build up on that, right? So I think that one had 40,000 views and then all the rest is small.

Joeri: 25:17

Sometimes it's a few thousand, most of the time, most of them get a few hundreds, it's not because one time you got a lot of reach at all the others, and sometimes it's all the videos that suddenly start to pop up. So yeah, tiktok is a.

Joana: 25:29

And sometimes it's a bit random. That's what I feel with TikTok. It's like the videos that you put the least effort, those are the ones that are going to work, perform. But what I've been feeling, by the way, since we're talking about this, is that maybe this is happening because with the growth of AI and back in 2023, it was not as crazy as it is right now. With the growth of AI, it's really easier to do great videos right, To create, like, great storylines, to edit amazing videos even without a lot of resources. So maybe that's why TikTok is favoring easy content, like the content that you can really prove that is organic, because it's just a guy getting a camera, saying a bunch of stuff and putting it out there, and that is something that AI still cannot replicate so well. Let's say so. Maybe that's why TikTok is favoring easier content or lo-fi let's say lo-fi content.

Joeri: 26:33

Yeah, and also people. You know, when you see that it is real, when you think, oh, it's AI. You know people are a bit more. They are aware this is fake or this is done, but it is really authentic. It's a story. Like you are telling your story today, then this is I cannot invent this. So, yeah, maybe that's one of the reasons.

Joana: 26:53

Well, 100 and and sorry just to to finalize this I think that's one. Something that really makes a difference and that I've been feeling in pretty much all the accounts that I've been managing and proper home being one of it is creating a connection with somebody, like when you show your face and I've been trying to do that also here in my neighbor alice like showing off the faces of who is behind the project the ceo, the marketing director, the game developer, whatever. Like showing that we are people so that the users can actually create a real connection with someone that is human on the other side. That also for me has been proved as a successful strategy.

Joeri: 27:39

Yeah, in any case, even outside of Yahoo, before AI. One of the sponsors of my podcast is Rio. I just came over the call with them before we had the podcast recording. They also show their face for Crypto Project. That shows the faces of the founders, their story, their background. This builds trust. The time really flew talking to you, listening to your stories, and I guess lots of people want to know more about everything that you're doing, or about my neighbor Alice. Where would you like me to send them?

Joana: 28:10

Okay, so you can follow me on X I think Baro C Joana, but maybe then, judy, you can share the links down and also on LinkedIn. So if you want to contact me also, drop me a message on LinkedIn and I'll be happily answering you.

Joeri: 28:28

Yeah, perfectly, I will directly connect with you after the episode. But, guys, yes, there are always show notes, always show notes there. The links and the socials that Joana mentioned will be in there. Joana, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Joana: 28:44

Likewise Nuri. Thank you so much once again for inviting me, and maybe the next time we can do a walk in Sintra.

Joeri: 28:51

Yes, because there are some episodes I did as a walk and talk in Sintra Guys. Yeah, what an amazing episode. You know what a cool story that Joana told us. I guess this episode is really an episode that you want to share with people around you, so be sure to do that. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment with the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these five stars, this will help me reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.