Why You Need a Brand Bible, According to a Historic Video Game Launch

On Sept. 6, the video game Starfield was officially released on Xbox and PC. It was the first new intellectual property developed by Bethesda Game Studios in 25 years. Because the ambitious and lavishly produced role-playing game came from the mind of Todd Howard—the Bethesda game director and executive producer who led the creation of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls series—there was feverish anticipation for it among diehard fans of his RPGs. By Sept. 7, Starfield had exceeded 6 million players. It was Bethesda’s biggest video game launch of all time. To industry observers and gamers, success was almost a certainty. Starfield’s beautifully realized aesthetics, innovative game play and impeccable execution was sure to attract positive press and enthused players. Yet the historic release would not have been possible without an intricately wrought “brand bible.” As Bethesda and AKQA discovered, when companies conceive and launch new products from scratch, a well-articulated brand bible can help marketers and their partners make better decisions and stay aligned. Whether referred to as a bible or a “brand book,” “brand compendium” or “brand guide,” such a document can provide helpful guidance for how relevant stakeholders should interact with, talk about and ultimately activate your product in the market. An effective brand bible isn’t simply a style guide in Google Docs or a PowerPoint of acceptable fonts and color palates. Among other things, a brand bible must convey the product or brand’s unique selling proposition, a detailed imagining of how customers will experience the product and brand and, most importantly, your company’s "why" (i.e., why does this brand or product exist?). In an interview with Adweek, the teams at Bethesda Softworks, the publishing operations at Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda’s long-time creative partner AKQA talk about the Starfield launch and the importance of their brand bible. What follows are their observations. How Gaming Marketers Innovate to Reach a Changing Audience Ed Davis, AKQA's director of client services: We had to help people imagine what the game is like—this big open experience where players can do all these different things in space. So, some of what we included in the brand book was about the inspiration from the studio, and some was helping people see what the world is going to be like and look like. We created some animated shorts to help people see a slice of what it might be like in Starfield—whether you’re going to go out and be a heroic space pilot, an explorer or a space criminal. You have to help people imagine this because you can’t just say the game is an “open adventure in space.” Matthew Clinkscales, senior director of brand marketing at Bethesda Softworks: We needed a brand bible because Starfield was such a new brand. With Skyrim, everyone knew what that game was—it’s yourself versus a dragon. It was a pretty clean concept. With Starfield being a new IP and a gargantuan project, we wanted to understand, “what’s the base-level elevator pitch for this game? What’s the easiest way to tell someone about Starfield?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek3I6_9c58E ED: When a consumer sees any part of the brand marketing for Starfield—from the first trailer to when they boot up the game—we want it all to feel completely cohesive and connected. We wanted nothing to feel jarring or out of place. MC: We had our brand bible for maybe two years before we put any public stuff out there. We all asked ourselves, “How do customers need to feel about the game? What does the game need to represent? How do we represent this publicly?” This was stuff we discussed a lot. I mean, maybe too much. But we wanted to lay the foundation and do it right. ED: There are many people who touch these campaigns—lots of partners and lots of people inside the company. How do we make sure they’re not just following a rule that says, “here’s the padding around the logo,” but understanding the reason and philosophy that we’ve chosen these colors and this logo. Akira Takahashi, executive creative director at AKQA: Our brand book is more about the dos than the don’ts; we didn’t want this book to read like a list of “don't do this” and “don’t do that.” We want to make sure that our brand book also inspires people to take it and have fun with it and make it their own, which also stays true to the game itself because, in Starfield, you get to be what you want and do what you want to do. So, we wanted to leave a little bit for people to interpret for themselves, but with solid foundation. Erin Losi, vice president of global marketing and communications at Bethesda Softworks: A lot of what's in the [brand bible] is also, "how do we want people to feel when they consume the marketing material?" There are other agencies and partners that touch this product. This book helps us to go back to and check that we’re still meeting the objectives of what we’re creating. An important question we ask is, “Are we allowing people to feel what they want to feel, based on those initial guidelines we set out?” ED: Our goal is to inspire the next generation of explorers—and that can be people literally going into space and people writing the next science fiction novel. With this brand book, we also want to inspire any marketer, designer, product manager or salesperson to say, “I feel like I’ve got the tone ... and I've got some guardrails to help me activate on that.” With their brand bible, Bethesda and AKQA wanted to inspire marketers the same way the game inspires users. AT: The important thing is that sometimes you just have to be done. You have to complete it and then release it so that it’s not ever-changing stuff. ED: The team got to have a lot of fun finding words like “great-hearted” to describe the brand attributes of Starfield. Another is “unapologetically optimistic.” It was so important that everything we were doing—from trailers, key art, concepts—had these ideas woven through it. The Cultural Evolution of Gaming Brand bibles are more than touchy-feely mission and vision statements. They are practical guides for on-the-fly decision-making, they articulate the why and what’s at stake, and they help bring a brand and product to life. As marketers face myriad challenges, from budget constraints to staff turnover, those who can create and follow a brand bible will be better equipped to handle any problem or opportunity that might arise.