A quote from the late Dolly Parton provided the epigraph for Bluberi CEO Andrew Burke’s September 28 Global Gaming Expo presentation. Burke’s subject was “Six Principles for Building a Great Brand.”
Said Parton, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” Burke expanded on that theme and ended his presentation with a list of 10 recommended books, with authors and subjects ranging from Ayn Rand to his personal idol, Steve Jobs.
The whole concept of branding, Burke began, sank in when he moved from his native Cincinnati to San Francisco to work in private equity. “That’s the equivalent of moving to Mars. Even then, I was thinking about my brand and what it meant.”
From Alpine Investors in California, Burke transferred to Las Vegas to work at AGS, then owned by Alpine. In 2019, he left for gamemaker Bluberi, “a proud business that had limited success.” Since 2020, Bluberi’s revenues have grown tenfold; it now has 15,000 devices in the field and 353 employees.
What, Burke asked, is a brand? “It’s not just a cool logo.” He cited several successful brands, among them McDonald’s. Putting the McDonald’s logo on any food item, he said, makes it immediately more valuable. Ditto placing the Nike swoosh on relevant products, to the tune of billions of dollars in revenue.
The CEO also raised the subject of bad brands, such as Blockbuster Video, Enron, and Theranos. In the case of the latter, he said, it was built on bad leadership and false promises. As for Enron, “Bad behavior, bad corporate citizens. You were painted with the Enron brush for the rest of your career” if you had worked there.
“It takes one bad day to ruin it,” Burke said of brands. “You have to protect your brand at all times.”
Burke’s first principle is “Define who you are,” which he elaborated on as “strategically think through what you want your brand to represent.” He used the example of a 2022 town hall at Bluberi, at which he laid out a vision of moving from the company’s cramped and miserable Las Vegas headquarters to something spacious and aspirational. Today, the company is based out of just such an office, in Drummondville, Quebec.
“Be the company you said you were going to be” is Burke’s second precept. Principles, he said, are hard to live by and require a great deal of work. Core corporate values must be internalized by employees and become part of their lingua franca.
“This organic nature of your core values is what sets you apart,” Burke explained, especially because everyone has “an authenticity meter” and can suss out a phony. As a counterintuitive example, he cited Goldman Sachs, which says, “We are a miserable place to work.” But if you make it at Goldman, you can write your own ticket afterwards, he argued.
“You attract the people you want to attract,” Burke continued, “and to do that you’ve got to be honest.” At Bluberi, that took the form of “Your results speak for themselves.”
For Bluberi, “Mindshare is greater than market share” is principle number three. In Bluberi’s case, this amounts to raising brand awareness, while waiting for the product to catch up, a two-year process. “You have to portray, ‘Hey, we’re gonna make it,’” Burke said. The concept, he admitted, is paradoxical. It boils down to, “Today can be hard and really suck, but you can win tomorrow.”
Burke pointed to the Global Gaming Expo itself, saying that trade shows like it are opportunities to build one’s brand, not just one’s return on investment: “We always feel like this is the Super Bowl,” especially compared to more jaded competitors.
“Your product isn’t your only product” is Burke’s fourth maxim. He defined Bluberi as the answer to an equation drawn by adding games, company, and culture. People don’t think of their companies as products unto themselves, he contended, but rather as a series of metrics and paychecks to be met.
That led to Burke’s penultimate precept, “Everything you do reflects on your brand.” For him, Bluberi is a combination platter of discipline, hygiene, technology, and culture. “We have a really good operating rhythm, but you have to back up everything you say. The things you’re saying need to be real.”
Culture, he added, is the most important value. “You can’t just say, ‘This is a great place to work.” It has to be measurable. To that end, Burke has one-on-one meetings with every one of his employees within a year of their hiring. “People will tell you stuff,” he said, even if it’s something as seemingly minor, but fixable, as having problems with their security badge.
Burke also holds roundtables every other year with sub-managerial workers. He asks, “Is there anything we can do to make your experience better?” When his executives complain that the roundtables produce only negative comments, Burke said he tells them, “All of these people are saying all of this and worse behind your back.”
But feedback given to employees must be carefully couched. “Overpromising gets a lot of people in trouble,” Burke warned.
Many companies, he continued, won’t do internal surveys. Blubber conducts them twice a year, once after bonuses go out and once just before Global Gaming Expo, when employees are respectively feeling at their best and worst.
Morale was also cited as an important factor. “You have to actively try and make your environment fun,” Burke said, pointing to a CFO who had devised a Price Is Right-themed office game to guess how financial metrics were being met. The winner received $500 from Bluberi to donate to charity.
Burke’s final maxim is, “Evolve your brand without losing yourself.” Bluberi is, he said, a more serious company than it was perceived. Indeed, after being seen as too frivolous by a potential client at ICE, the company had trotted out a new slogan, “Playfully serious.”
The Bluberi CEO said his company tries to refresh its image every two years and its values aren’t static. “Nothing is ‘set it and forget it,’” he remarked. It is, he said, an everyday struggle “or it’s going to slowly erode and slowly decline.”
