London-based Clarion Gaming will extend its ICE brand beyond the borders of the United Kingdom for the first time this year, when it stages the inaugural ICE Africa on October 24-25 at the Sandton Convention Center in South Africa.
Clarion Managing Director Kate Chambers, who has been instrumental in the development of both ICE Africa and ICE London – one of the world’s largest gaming technology events – said the move has been both challenging and exciting.
August is Women’s Month in South Africa, and to celebrate, Chambers shared some of her thoughts on branding, the African gaming market, and why business-to-business doesn’t have to be boring.
“Why do we have to market in a different way just because we are in the B2B landscape? I feel very strongly about that,” Chambers said. “(In B2B marketing) organizers have treated attendees in an overly simple way, so the headlines read ‘If you are a CEO, CTO, CMO, you should go, you’ll meet blah blah…’ and you’re half asleep (already.)”
What we need to remember, Chambers said, is that everyone is a consumer.
“We all watch TV, we all read magazines, we’re all online. Why do B2B people think we have to treat people differently?”
Clarion began looking at their campaigns more as business-to-consumer. That allowed the company to begin treating their audiences as sophisticated people making subconscious buying decisions.
“If you can tap into that, you can leverage the research that goes on via mainstream ad agencies,” Chambers said. “(It’s) a whole new world of sight and sound, smell, touch and taste.”
Chambers said after Clarion ran its first ICE campaign with the new philosophies in place, there was a change in “registrations, engagement and pre-registration conversion.” Clarion’s campaigns now incorporate many of those elements, if not all of them.
Speaking about the decisions that led to the development of ICE Africa, Chambers said the health and profile of the ICE brand was considered. The company concluded there is only one main ICE event, ICE London.
But, she says, “now we can use all the things we’ve learned… take all the best bits of the ICE brand and share it with another community… and where better than a market that is still young, like Africa, so that it can create its own cultural personality (and) tone of voice.”
Chambers said that Clarion looks to help the “exciting new areas” in the African gaming community find their own paths in the global gaming landscape and that the company can “support that growth by giving it a really good, stable platform to discuss and debate and find answers (about) what new tech is out there, what next to put on the casino floor, (and) how to harness, sports betting or eSports.”
It’s challenging, she said, but “I like challenges… as long as you learn from your mistakes, and you learn something new every day.”
