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Valve: Ad Agencies are "Pretty Close to Worthless"

by Alex Co, posted on 18 March 2011 / 1,401 Views

Valve’s Portal 2 is a big game and big games need big marketing campaigns run by big ad agencies. Seems Valve doesn’t believe in this way of thinking as they’re making the game’s ads themselves.

What’s the reason for this? The studio endured late meetings and unoriginal ideas from third-party agencies that they deemed “pretty close to worthless.”

Doug Lombardi, Valve’s marketing VP, said “No one knows the product better than the folks who made it,” in speaking to MCV.

He added that “we’ve had many creative kick-off meetings with agencies over the years” and he was shocked by the treatments ad agencies have come back with. These ideas range from cliché treatments to copycat ideas that reveal the ad agencies weren’t listening to the initial meeting.

The studio spent two months making its TV ad following a series of successful Valentine’s Day-themed online videos for Portal 2.

Portal 2 is schedule for release on April 21 on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.


9 Comments

YoshMaster
YoshMaster (on 18 March 2011)

I must admit that Valve did some awesome ads for Portal 2. The humor was great!

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Mijin
Mijin (on 18 March 2011)

I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I bet all the ad agency suggestions were terrible, and valve will no doubt to a better job. On the other hand, games developers can be terrible to work with. I don't know the valve guys but from my experiences with the industry it would not surprise me if they treated the ad guys with contempt from day 1.

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MightyGrogg
MightyGrogg (on 18 March 2011)

If they can do it themselves for a cheaper amount, go for it. I totally agree with Valve on this. I've seen some of Valve's ads and they are pretty good. Save your money and put it towards more games. It's a win-win for Valve and the gamers.

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DonFerrari
DonFerrari (on 18 March 2011)

Use the Ad money making the game better or cheaper.

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kitler53
kitler53 (on 18 March 2011)

most ads are terrible so yeah, terrible. besides, the best ad for portal2 was playing portal.

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Alby_da_Wolf
Alby_da_Wolf (on 18 March 2011)

They are right,I remember very few good ads for games and consoles: the ads for XB1 and XB360 were brilliant, Uncharted 2 one was good too, some in the golden age were funny for their naïvety, but generally they range from dull, bland to awful. Nintendo ones are generally terrible, the most recent ones rely almost exclusively on celeb testimonials without any noteworthy creative ideas, they are lucky their products are very good and people already know it.

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mchaza
mchaza (on 18 March 2011)

they are still one step above what EA has for there marketing

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Heat
Heat (on 18 March 2011)

Ad agencies are close to worthless <i> for video games.

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NightDragon83
NightDragon83 (on 18 March 2011)

Well when it comes to a game like Portal, being that it's flagship platform is Valve's very own Steam client on the PC, it really doesn't need much in the way of marketing since it's practically self-promoting. A couple key web ads, a TV commercial, and maybe some XBL/PSN ads and bam, there's your console advertising as well. No need for a crappy 3rd party marketing agency to get involved at all.

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