In this episode of the Here's Waldo Podcast, host Lizzie Mintus sits down with Sarah Anderson, Head of Global Marketing and Partnerships at Amazon Games. With over 30 years of experience in the gaming industry, Sarah has held strategic roles at Sega, Canopy, 2K Games, and now Amazon Games, where she leads growth initiatives and fosters community for major titles like "Battle for New World" and "Legends of Lost Ark," along with overseeing upcoming releases.

Join us as we uncover Sarah's career journey, gain insights into building effective teams and nurturing talent, and uncover the authentic marketing strategies that have shaped the success of renowned titles like Bioshock, Borderlands, and Civilization, as Sarah provides a behind-the-scenes look at her impactful contributions to the gaming world.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Insights from Sarah's journey from Sega to Amazon Games
• The Importance of Risk-Taking in Career Development
• Career Advice on Networking, Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, and Embracing Risks
• Successful Marketing Strategies in Times of Reinvention and Change
• Cultivating Effective Teams and Cultivating Talent
• Leveraging Data and Amazon's Leadership Principles for Success

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Sarah Anderson on LinkedIn
• Amazon Games
• Lost Ark
• New World

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together, we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Lizzie Mintus: Hi, I'm Lizzie Mintus, founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique video game recruitment firm. This is the Here's Waldo podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and executives about what it takes to be successful. You can expect to hear valuable lessons from their journey and get a glimpse into the future of the industry.

This episode is brought to you by Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm for the game industry. We value quality over quantity, transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs. Before introducing today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Perrin Kaplan for introducing us and GamesBeat for hosting GamesBeat Next where I got to hear Sarah speak.

Today we have Sarah Anderson with us. Sarah is a proven dynamic brand innovator, having spent more than 30 years leading growth initiatives and building brands and communities for major business and interactive entertainment and digital streaming. She joined Amazon Games in 2019 as global head of marketing and partnerships, where she's been focused on current games, New World and Lost Arc, and new games coming next year and beyond. Excited to hear more about that. 

Before Amazon, Sarah served as chief marketing officer at the video game streaming service, Canopy. She was a founding member and senior VP of marketing at 2K Games, where she was behind powerhouse franchises such as Bioshock, Borderlands, and Civilization, and was with Sega of America and later SegaSoft, where she helped launch Heat.net, which ultimately became the Dreamcast Network. 

Sarah also previously served as a long term board member for the annual Game Marketing Summit and Awards, formerly known as MI6. Let's get started. 

Sarah Anderson: Thank you for such a nice intro.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you for being here. I'd love to start by hearing more about Amazon Games. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, Amazon Games is a growing developer and publisher of video games within Amazon. We're running two live games currently, as you mentioned, so we have Lost Ark and New World are live, and we're building community in and around our games. We have a lot more in development. As you mentioned, there's a couple of things launching within the next, I'll say 12 months to keep it clean. And then we have a whole bunch more projects in development. And it's a mix of things that are being developed in our studios in house and also projects that we're working on with great teams and studios that are outside.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you. I know everybody knows of Amazon, but maybe they're not super familiar with what Amazon Games is doing.

I mentioned in the intro, but I heard you speak at GamesBeat Next about how career paths are not a straight line. Could you please elaborate on the twists and turns of yours? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, sure. I mean, it started early. My undergraduate was, I have a BFA in graphic design. And I thought I was going to be an art director. And I had actually been working in my father's advertising agency, like all through high school and college. So after school and summer breaks and all that. And so I thought I was doing what I really wanted to do. But he was somebody who was sort of a hard truth kind of person, but also a champion and supporter.

And he was saying, you know, you really seem like you have interest in the business side of things. And, you know, you're talented as an art director, but I don't know if you're ever going to be one of the top creative directors in New York. And he's like, maybe you should pursue, lean into the business interests that you have. So I don't know what he was really saying there, but, anyway, he pushed me to go get my MBA and I did that. 

So I ended up in marketing and that's really where my passion is. So he was right, I think, because I love the blend of creative and directing products for an audience and connecting to customers, ultimately to grow a business, but I still enjoy the creative part still.

I stay connected to all of that. And I think that's creative problem solving, but it's also just having fun. I love when creative decisions are made and the team involves me in that because I know that I enjoy that. But I guess later in terms of twists and turns, I have moved across the country a couple of times for roles, and always with the support of my husband. You can't make decisions like that for two people alone for sure. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: And sometimes those worked out and sometimes they did not work out. But you know, you learn something from all those moves and you build and expand your network along the way, which I think is really important. 

I saw a statistic from the U. S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics that the average professional maybe has 15 jobs over their career and that employees stay at a job on average, like four and a half years. So, you know, people are moving around and trying different things. And I think that's important in your own discovery of what you really love and what's important to you. 

And I would say one of my biggest learnings through all that is the culture is really important to me, but also doing your due diligence when you're going to make one of those moves and making sure, like, if a place has a reputation for, like, if they're saying to you, we want you to be the change to help us fix our culture problems and other things, unless you're really going to be empowered to do that, you should do more due diligence into that. Talk to as many people as you can. And if it's not looking great, even though you really might be interested in that role, look at the red flags and go the other way. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. That's good advice. Absolutely. And there's so many different avenues that you can look at now, and people have different experiences at different companies, but there are flags and I feel like you're right. People have their heart set on, Oh, I have my dream job, but you want it to be so good. And you kind of ignore the flag. Yeah, that's important. 

How have you thought about risk taking in your career? 

Sarah Anderson: Sort of with my twists and turns, I was taking risks and going to new roles, usually, in most cases, not all, but in most cases, there was somebody who I knew, who was a peer that I'd worked with before or somebody from my network, who would open the door or pull me in or something. So I felt pretty okay about most of those risks in terms of understanding what I was getting into. Obviously I had a couple of exceptions to that, that I was just speaking about that I learned from.

But I think when I was younger in my career, it was easier to make some of those moves though. And now as life gets more complicated, the risks feel more extreme. 

So it's not that you don't want to take them, but you have to think of, you know, the impact is bigger if it involves a move. It's moving your kids, and it's thinking about all of that, and what's the downside. It's like it's not as easy to move back and resell another house or do whatever. So I guess it's just the risks get more intense as your life gets more complicated. 

Lizzie Mintus: They do. I always ask people, tell me about relocating? Because people always say, yeah, I can relocate, but what does that mean? Is it you in an apartment, maybe with your cat? Or do you have kids? Does your significant other have a job?

I remember once I had a guy and he really wanted this job, but his wife had, she was a lawyer or she had some job where she would have to recertify and there was this big painful process.

Sarah Anderson: It's a big deal. Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: It's a huge deal with kids. Yeah, that's hard, especially these days when you don't know how long you might be there. I guess you never know. 

Sarah Anderson: Well, I mean, that's the point too, right? Like if it's gonna be something where you're there for a couple of years or is it where you can really build your career? One of the things my father also helped me with was sort of creating a visual roadmap and thinking about your long term goals and what you want down the road in your future, and then working backwards so that you could sort of see when the opportunities came up that might help you get towards those goals farther down the road. 

Because it's not always clear what these opportunities are going to help you work towards. And you know, is it working towards developing your skill set in a certain area, or is it a place where you can, you know, climb the ladder? Or what is it that that particular opportunity is going to help you achieve towards one of those three or four goals that you have at the end? And it helped me to reframe and think about opportunities that way. 

Lizzie Mintus: How did you figure out what your end goal was? That's the hardest part. 

Sarah Anderson: That's really hard. Yeah. I mean, I have like, you know, three or four that are options, I guess. 

Lizzie Mintus: Hmm. And then you evaluate it with what matches with each direction? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, exactly. You know, like a CMO is a goal. Is it the CEO? Do I want to be a CEO somewhere? I don't know. You know, so like, I sort of went through and thought about those things. Do I want to have my own company? Do I want to be in a big company or in something smaller? Do I want to be in entertainment? You know, and I sort of mapped it out like that. 

Lizzie Mintus: Good. I like that. You're right. If you don't know where you're going, how will you get there? 

Sarah Anderson: Exactly. Because it's not always obvious, like, how something connects to your bigger plan. And like you said, your plan, your end goal might not be super clear. I think that's okay. We're all changing what we want and our priorities based on things that are happening in our lives, right? And new things become interesting and there are new trends or things that happen in business. You know, who knew that AI was going to be a career path for people? I'm sure there are people who knew that, but it wasn't obvious to some of us, I guess. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. The takeoff was really wild. Can you share some stories from your early days in the industry? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, sure. I started in Sega back in the early nineties and I actually met my husband there. So that was fun. And there was just a whole crew of us and we would work till 10 or 11 at night. We're working really hard, but then we would party hard together. You know, we had so much fun, but did a lot of great work together, but the industry overall was like, so much more of a boys club at that time. I have 2 examples of that.

I think it was a Sony party at E3 back in the, I believe it was the 90s, but I was trying to figure out exactly when it was and which act, because I've told this story before, and it was when they would have big headliners like the Foo Fighters, but that concert was in Atlanta and it wasn't this one. But anyway, it was one of those big events at E3, and I went to go to the bathroom, and the line for the men's bathroom was down the hall and around the corner, and you never see that on the women's line. There wasn't one. I just walking right in. And I was making signs to people and joking because it was really kind of funny. But it was sad at the same time. And you don't see that now. Like, that has completely changed. So that is, you know, one thing there just weren't enough women in the industry at that point in time. 

And my second example is just when I was at Sega soft, I was the general manager at the time. And I went over to Japan for a meeting at headquarters and there were 30 people in the room and I was the only woman there who wasn't serving tea. I was the only woman who was sitting at the table, you know, and, that was kind of eye opening because it had gotten better in the US where we were, had definitely had more women in the business at that point. Still a lot of, you know, work to be done, but it was a stark contrast with Japan who has also since caught up a little bit. But that was really sort of eye opening. And I did feel like I had to work to be heard, but people were asking my opinion of things. And so it was great. 

Lizzie Mintus: It's getting better. But yeah, I told people at DICE, just look for me for the meeting. I'll be the blonde woman. It's gonna be pretty easy. It's not me. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah.

Lizzie Mintus: What changes would you like to see or from the game industry to be more inclusive towards women? And I know we talked a little bit before the show about being a working mom. So maybe about moms too. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, I love being a mom and I love working, but being a working mom is really hard. And I think it's hard for everybody who's a parent or maybe has somebody who's an ill loved one or somebody who's older that they're caring for. 

I think it's really important to just work with people and within a culture that allows for us all to be humans. And it's important to make time to connect with your peers so that you can share things that are going on if you want to, but so you can ask for support. But also then you have information about what's going on with them, and when maybe you need to lean in and help your peers out. Because we all have to be supporting each other, if we're going to have a work culture that is positive and productive and doing great things. People are going to have things going on in their lives and their ebbs and flows of that. And so we all have to figure out how to sort of adapt and support each other.

I think generally supporting women in this country, you know, we absolutely need better maternity leave in the US. Aside from that obvious statement, I think schedule flexibility is probably one of the biggest things.

And you know, having women in leadership who can be role models is also, I think, something that's super helpful to just women feeling supported. In our Games Leadership Org, four of the nine leaders are women, and we are all working moms. And, you know, we try to just be open about things when we need to go deal with something or we want to be to practice or our kids are on break, so we're taking a day off. Or whatever those things are. I think everybody in our group is pretty open about that stuff so that we can support each other and role models that it's okay. It's what we all have. 

I saw a Gartner survey that, like, 60 percent of the people agreed that after the pandemic, it shifted their attitude towards the importance of a company being understanding of their aspects and life outside of work. And their expectations of their employer have changed in terms of that support. Like it's just the reality now. I don't think you can operate any other way successfully and be able to keep talented people.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And I think when you feel supported and you're able to leave a couple hours early to do baseball practice or whatever it is with your family or care for somebody in your life you need to care for. You're going to do better work because you feel heard. 

I will add that I think it's important to think about new moms that are breastfeeding because I've been in closets. And people are just shocked that, that's even a thing. They haven't even thought about that. Like, what do you mean you need to take a break in this meeting or do X, Y, Z? 

Sarah Anderson: I totally agree. 

Lizzie Mintus: I'm in the CEO group. And a lot of people, they're not malicious or anything, but I had to explain to them, like here's what happens when you have a baby, and here's why I won't be in the meeting right after my due date. And here's some breaks I'm gonna need, and some things that are gonna be occurring for me. And I think maybe they hadn't experienced it before, so they were just unaware. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, well, and good on you for helping people understand the situation, too, because I think you have a lot of people who just, it's not bad intent. They just don't understand. And if we can all talk about it and communicate, I think the better. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Offering flexibility is huge and everybody did have a taste of that during the pandemic. I'm a huge proponent of that for my team too. If you need to go to whatever you need to do, I mean if it's not disrupting the workday, and you can make it up, right? 

Sarah Anderson: And, you know, when we all feel like we have that balance, maybe if you're working at home, you're making time to walk the dog. At some point, you do one of your calls. While you're doing that, you're getting some exercise. You're getting some fresh air. Like, it's going to make everybody more productive to be able to do something like that. 

Intro: Yeah, I've been on a couple calls with CEOs. One guy was on his bike, but he was actually bike riding in the wild. This is a classic. 

Sarah Anderson: That's kind of crazy. Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Maybe not that. You've moved up the ranks. You've had such a successful career and a really important part of the podcast is for me highlighting that everybody has highs and lows and often imposter syndrome. Can you share a little bit more about career obstacles and imposter syndrome and how you've dealt with them? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. It's an interesting question. I mean, I've definitely had my share of highs and lows, and things that didn't work the way I wanted. But you know, I've had a lot of good success and I try to have a growth mindset and always continue learning. And so when you have those setbacks, it's like, okay, after you sort of mourn it or dig into it and take the ego hit and recover, whatever, it's, what can I learn from that?

And I try, instead of comparing myself to others, celebrate and learn from other people's success. I for sure have days where I feel like I'm not good enough, or I haven't accomplished enough, or my memory isn't the same as it was, so I have to operate differently. Or I'm not a good enough parent. You know, I think imposter syndrome is all over the place in our lives, right? 

But I think it's really important to give yourself a little grace, but also have a support system with people around you who will push you or tell you to snap out of it so that when you're feeling low, you can call that person up or say, here's how I'm feeling. And they'll pump you up. You know, like you need those cheerleaders around you.

And I think for me too, like some of my success is a bit of luck. It's being in the right place at the right time and being associated with the right people. Some of that you control a little bit and some of it's luck. And so, I try to acknowledge that and be grateful for the opportunities I've had and the people that I get to work with.

If it's luck or whatever it is that's put me here, I will make the most of it. So I have to sort of cheerlead myself and pump myself up. We're all struggling. We all have days where we feel like, I don't know, we're not good enough or whatever, but I think that's the thing. Everybody does that or at least a lot of us do. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I like what you said about finding a cheerleader. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, someone to pump you up. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. You 're behind powerhouse franchises like Bioshock, Borderlands, Civilization, what stories can you share from launching successful franchises? 

Sarah Anderson: I think it's really like the magic in games. Marketing comes from the developers and the marketers working well together. And also staying true to what the game is, having mutual respect and partnership, to really spend a lot of time talking about it and figuring out what audience is going to love, what are the things we can do to really highlight that and how can we innovate.

So it's taking chances, I guess. And you have to have . , when you have that environment where everybody's working together and they're collaborating, then the developers are giving you ideas about art and things, which sometimes can be tricky because you don't necessarily want a crowd of people making decisions for things. But a lot of really good stuff will come from those development teams who are super close to it. And they understand the core vision. 

And so when you have this collaboration in the circle of people all working together in their space for ideas, then you can come up with some really creative plans and tactics. And so we did take risks with some of the brands there and, I think it came sort of out of that collaboration because we had support from the developer development teams too, but we also had leadership pushing us to take risks.

So that was great. And we had some good vendors we were working with, but I think it's really just that collaborative environment is so important because that's where the ideas can flow. 

Lizzie Mintus: And being willing to take the risk. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't know if you think back to the Borderlands key art as one example. Like, the front of that box was an iconic character from the game doing something with their fingers to their head. It was not the hero. It was very edgy and the game itself was edgy. So it was reflective of what the product was going to be. But there were things in that, it maybe doesn't sound that bold now, but it was then. And we had to really sell that art into Walmart and other retailers, because they were not sure. It was a little risky for them.

Lizzie Mintus: How did you get them over the edge? 

Sarah Anderson: Well, we had to do some things like there was a part of the art that was sort of coming out of the guy's head that showed the environment and it couldn't be red or suggestive of blood or anything like that. So we were working with them on what they thought was acceptable and not acceptable and how we would like, keep it edgy. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. So maybe you started riskier and then you made compromises. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, exactly. And we tested it a lot too. And like, it didn't really, it still was edgy to people. It didn't matter as we were compromising. So you can get sort of stuck in your vision of what you think it needs to be as somebody who's working on the art and the design too, and say, okay, like, is this really going to change? The overall impact is still going to be there if we make this compromise. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I bet that's challenging, getting everybody aligned. When you're at 2k you manage marketing of 2k products through the transition from traditional retail to a digital business. And I know a lot of companies are going through a reinvention right now in their own way.

How can companies think about marketing during a time of reinvention? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, one thing I love about this business is that things are always changing and evolving and it feels like we're moving really fast. People who come into this industry from other industries will say, wow, the speed, the pace is really fast here.

And I think, change is always a little bit uncomfortable, but if you can find a way to operate in a dynamic environment, it means you can take risks, which lead to big success. So I think part of that is just being open to learning and collaborating and challenging, trying new things, testing, measuring, and then being willing to pivot or give up on something or go in a different direction, if you're seeing that it's not working.

But, I did a digital marketing class and agile marketing. And that's all about listening to the customer and adapting and it doesn't work completely when you're doing something like a big game launch, it's a different kind of process. But I think if you apply those ways of working where you don't have plans that are so concrete that you can't adjust them and move them as you're seeing things shift, you have to be able to adjust to what you're hearing from the customer, what you're seeing in your data.

And so with our games, we also care so much about quality that we're not going to put something out until it's ready, which means it's harder to march towards a hard date for the marketing teams. So we have to create plans that are modular or where we can say, okay, well, let's build this towards a certain plan, but let's have some alternatives and let's think about different ways to try and achieve this. And we always make room in our meetings for let's talk about the big ideas or how we can do something totally different to innovate. Let's make sure we have some budget where we can test and try some things because otherwise we're just gonna be operating a playbook. And that's not how you make cool things happen. But the playbook is good because it helps you be efficient and helps other people come into the team and learn how to do it, but you need to be able to have room to disrupt the playbook too. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, makes sense. Can you talk about how marketing has evolved since you started your career?

Sarah Anderson: Well, in the early days, it was a box product and once they shipped it, there wasn't even a patch necessarily. Like it was just, it was out and that was that. And the marketing plans, we had longer lead times. The magazines were paper magazines with months of lead time. And so there was a lot of work to try and get everything ready so that it would all coordinate and hit at the same time.

Then there was a middle ground where digital transactions were happening. And players were playing together, but the physical retail was still really important and we were still pushing really hard to drive pre-orders. And pre-orders would be used as a metric for the retailer to decide how much they were going to order so that we could manufacture the right amount and figure out how big our TV budget was going to be based on what the indicators were.

And now, at least in my world, which is PC and console games and live service games, we have to build and engage the community, so we will build to a launch, but then we're continuing to run it. And so we need to be completely authentic to what that game and that experience is going to be and constantly be working with our community to take their feedback and try and get that to the developers and help communicate what changes are going to be happening. It's all about relationships and communication with them. And, it's just a completely different thing.

And when we launch, we will most likely have patches and, you know, big multiplayer games are super complicated anyway, in terms of things that are going to be changing based on the number of players in and what's happening there. But also there's new content that comes online all the time. And so it's more like marketing a service in a lot of ways than it is just a game.

But also you're thinking about the IP. And as we're seeing with so many things Transmedia, IP things that have been happening lately, where things go to movies and shows and they can even bring IP back.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: That's been a little bit dormant for a while, and then the show comes out and everybody's excited about that game IP again. So that's been really fun to see, and there's obviously so much opportunity there. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I'm excited for the future. Even though things are a little dark right now, I think people have opportunity, maybe more time, like they've been laid off, right? They have the ability, if they have a good package, to figure out what it is they want to do and try new things they wouldn't otherwise. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, the ebbs and flow of this industry are hard, and this is definitely like one of the hard periods, where there are so many people who are, who've been affected by things and who are looking around, but I'm hoping that, if you take the forest fire analogy, right? Like, after things burn a little bit, it creates all this growth and life and people trying new things. And I don't know, maybe that's a terrible analogy, but I'm hoping that there's a lot of good things that come out of it for people where there's new paths they can pursue and things they can try. And I think we'll see some interesting things that'll happen in the industry a couple of years from now as this turns into new growth.

Lizzie Mintus: I have the same positive outlook. There are a lot of people who are going to start a new studio and Yeah. To pursue a road that they wouldn't have. And I've talked to a lot of people who were working somewhere and it was okay. But then once they left, they said they realized they weren't even really happy there anyway. So there's a lot of tragedy for sure, but there's some light as well.

You touched on companies being so entrenched with their game community. How do you feel like game companies can listen to and advocate for their players via the development process?

Sarah Anderson: I'm not sure if I understand totally what you're saying, but I think one of the things that we have done a lot of is like trying to figure out how to respond to what we're hearing from the community. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yes. Yeah. How can people figure out how to respond and integrate feedback and what feedback? Integrate versus not. 

Sarah Anderson: I mean, we have a pod structure that we work with, which is where we have like somebody from the development team, like a. A franchise leader or somebody there and a global marketing lead and a product manager and, in our group, the product manager is really like managing the economy of the game and the product offering that we're putting forward.

So it's those three sort of key stakeholders who are meeting regularly, and they're empowered to be making decisions. So they're looking at player feedback, and we have a bunch of sources and data that we use for that and tools that like to gather that feedback. And then also they all played the games.

And so they're in the game and they're seeing what players are seeing and they're reading through the forums and stuff like that. But then they work together and they also look at the actual data in the game and you try and marry the data in the game with what you're hearing from the customers. And then we have things we do like player pulse surveys, which is where we actually survey our current players about things they're experiencing so that we can try and get a sense of what's really triangulating all that data to get a sense of what's really an issue versus maybe a vocal minority issue.

And the vocal minority is important too. It's legitimate complaints, but what is something that's really affecting a wider population, play experience that we need to address. And then we try to address those things if we can. You can't always fix everything that everybody wants fixed or changed but... 

Lizzie Mintus: yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: We try to be transparent about that. And with the New World team specifically developers have been, they do these update videos and they talk to the community and they take community questions. And so we've been experimenting with things like that, of how to talk to our players and what's the right way to do that. And we've gotten pretty good feedback from it, but we're going to keep trying things like that and see. 

But I think it's all like mutual respect. We have to respect our community. The players need to respect that we're trying to do the best thing for them and the experience that we can. Like we really do prioritize the players in decisions that we're making, but we are, we do have to run it as a business at some level. Like we have a lot of people that are working on the game and we need to pay them.

Lizzie Mintus: There's a business side. 

How can you market authentically? You kind of touched on that with community and being transparent. What else can you do for marketing these days? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, I think there's a bunch of vectors to it. Like it's knowing your customer and how they connect with the product for sure. It's also an interesting balance between being fully transparent and also bringing the community along the journey.

But also as a marketer, you're trying to tell a story. And you want at some times, you want there to be some moments where you can maybe hold some things back and create a surprise and delight moment or have something that you're really like building the marketing towards. And that's the storytelling of marketing. 

And so in those cases, we're maybe not sharing everything because we want to be able to create this moment. So we're trying to find that balance between, how much are we telling the community everything because they want to know everything and how much are we holding. 

So I think the authenticity is just about right, especially with games like this, where it's a live service game and the players are deeply connected. In a lot of cases, the players have thousands of hours in the game, which is more than the average person on the team. We have a lot of people who play a lot of hours, but they're also working for a game. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: And so it's making sure that we are being true to what the players really care about and that our marketing represents that and that we're not trying to sell something that isn't authentic to what the experience is and that we're putting the players first and we're making sure that whatever we're delivering has more value than what we're charging for it and all of that. I think that's just an important part of the whole relationship. They need to trust that we're going to value their participation in our game and try to offer value for what they're paying us, which is either time or money. You know, people invest a lot of time. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. There's an amount of time, a thousand hours. You're an expert after that.. 

Do you have an example of a marketing strategy that you've implemented that was particularly successful? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, we've had a lot of success in things that we've done working with Twitch and getting creators, because I guess that's another one of the vectors. To authentic marketing is letting creators and others speak for you sometimes. And that means you're giving up control of what that message is and that's hard to do. There's risk with that, right? But we've had success and it's partly because we would have the developers work with us closely and they would have to put some things in the game or give us some features that we could work with and then we would do an activation where we could get the creators competing against each other or do things like that and that creates these watchable moments and we're delivering twitch drops and doing fun things like that and that was incredibly successful for us.

It helped us make two of our launches, like really big moments because they were climbing on Twitch and they were climbing on Steam for viewership and playing. So we're going to continue leaning into doing stuff like that. And I think anybody can do that, but you do have to have the support of your developer partners. Like it's something that maybe they were a little bit motivated because Twitch is part of the Amazon family and we were all trying to figure out how we could do cool things. But, you know, what we found out is, it was really effective for us. And so now everybody sees the power of it, but it really does require that collaborative group effort. 

Lizzie Mintus: I want to talk about team building. You've built out so many big teams throughout your career. What do you look for? What traits do you look for when you hire? 

Sarah Anderson: I think I want to see the ability to show impact and that could be impact without direct authority. If somebody is younger in their career, like what was something that you worked on even when you were in school, where you were able to rally a bunch of people around a project and make something happen.

I also want to see passion and energy because you're going to need to, especially in our culture, like get people to collaborate with you to solve a problem. And so are you somebody who can sort of rally people around something, an idea that you're passionate about. And are you interested in learning and developing yourself? Because if you can go into something and learn, then you'll be able to try all sorts of different things. 

And I think we need more people, I like to hire people who are gamers, and who are passionate about games because it is really important to be able to connect with the product, but you don't necessarily have to be from the game industry, and have that experience.

And so, I think if we're going to get more women and diversify the audience of people, not audience, but I guess the employee base you've got to be willing to welcome people in who aren't from games, but you've got to be willing to play and enjoy the product, find that passion for it. And then, I think you'll, you'd be able to fit in and do great as long as you're interested in growing and learning, developing, trying new things.

Lizzie Mintus: That's such a common mistake that people make in the interview process. They don't play the game before they interview, or they tell the hard manager, oh, I've never played your game. Like, why are we having this conversation? That's really the least you could do. And if you're really good, you could create a document, what you notice, what you'd like to implement or whatever, some feedback that just shows you care, right?

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really important thing just about interviewing in is doing some research. You can look online at what does the company care about? What are the interviews look like? If you know who you're going to be interviewing, look them up on LinkedIn. There are some things that you should do just so you go in informed. And actually when people do that, you can tell. And it says to me like these, this is somebody who's going to prepare for a meeting and come with their, an organized approach, which is what I want to see and people who are going to come in. So. it's actually like a good indicator of if somebody is going to be able to do well in the role to. Like, do you care about it? Are you passionate enough about that? You put a little bit of that time.

And I know it's exhausting going through the interview process and having to do all that research. And especially when you're looking for something, you're trying to find that fit. But it's worth it. It's important to do the research.

Intro: I mean, you're going to spend more time at work than with your family, so it is important that you put in work to find the right place and take it really seriously. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. Do the due diligence. It's your decision right? 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, interviewing goes both ways. And I think people might have a different mindset depending on the economy, right? If the economy is great, and they have seven offers, they might waltz into an interview, not as prepared. And when the economy is bad, they have to prepare more. If you just stay prepared throughout regardless, right? Yeah, the best thing to do. 

Sarah Anderson: Exactly. 

Lizzie Mintus: How do you build a positive work culture, especially when you're part of a larger organization that has a culture?

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. In the games group, we sort of have our own microculture, I guess. And every group within Amazon, I think operates a little bit differently, even though we have sort of an umbrella structure. But we're all thinking about how we can best serve our customers and make the product that is, in our case, players first. And so, we may adapt or adjust our culture in the way that's going to serve our customers, which is going to be different from other customers that are parts of other Amazon businesses, right?

I saw a video recently from Jen Donahue, and she's somebody who's a speaker, but she has a military background. And she talks about creating a culture of trust, and I think that's really important.So the leaders need to share information and provide context and treat people with respect and all of that. But it's also about valuing collaboration. 

And I think leading by example in helping people understand how to challenge ideas in a way that's productive or supportive and when you see toxicity, you shut it down. And talk to the teams about when things come up, understanding that people generally have positive intent. And so maybe they're not the best communicators, but how can we work together to work through this and just try to lead through things where it's sort of going astray and reward the positive approaches and the people who are collaborating.

And, you know, it takes time to build all that. And I think making time for social connection, like our meetings, we're all distributed now, but those meetings where we get together in person are so important. We get a lot of, you know, they're highly productive, but also because we go out to dinner and we hang out together and we just have that time for the social connection so that the next time you have a conflict, it just feels like, you know, that they're not coming from that place of being negative. We're all trying to solve the problem. And Maybe they didn't phrase it well, or the tone in the email was strange, but you can just call them up because now you know them a little bit better. 

Intro: Yeah, it's about practicing curiosity, too. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, exactly. 

Intro: Why is the email this way? Maybe something's going on. Or if you know them, like you said, you have that personal connection, then you know you have the context that they're struggling with something in their life, and that is impacting.

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, exactly. 

Intro: How can you build a more inclusive culture? 

Sarah Anderson: It's all those little things like just making sure that people are included in meetings and that you find a way for everybody to contribute. In some cases, it's calling on somebody who didn't say anything, but I think you also have to be cautious about that and making sure that it's not somebody who isn't comfortable sharing in a big group. And as you get to know participants in the team better, maybe you're slacking someone and saying, you know, what do you think about this? Or like just finding ways to get input and how do people like to work and communicate so that you can make room for the different participants.

And there's a lot of people in the workforce now who have neurodiversity and are more open about that. And so some of that is like, how did they communicate or what's the way for them to be most effective communicating and how can we make room for that because there's so much brilliance there and great creativity and whatever. All these people are talented that's why they're here but how can we tap into that And make room for that.

And it's hard because sometimes they have a hard time, or various people with different things going on have a hard time being in a group of people who are sort of type A on a call and making room to participate in that. So I think it's all of us just figuring out how to tap into everybody's talent and superpowers in different ways.

Lizzie Mintus: I know Amazon also believes, like you touched on, in challenging each other with data. Can you talk a little bit about how that plays out? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, I think, it's definitely a big part of our culture in terms of people asking if the data is there. And so as a marketer, it's working with business intelligence and engineers and product managers to make sure you're getting the right data.

 And then, we're looking objectively and testing and adjusting. And I think it creates this atmosphere where things are transparent and it's okay to fail as long as you learn from it. So you can say, we tried this. Here's the data. This is what we saw, this is what we think about that. And here's what we're learning. 

And we're doing that with creativity too, and so that sounds awful, right? It's like, oh, you're using data to check your creativity? But it's sort of a balance. You have to be able to look at some of the data and let it guide things. And you can say, well, the return on this type of asset just isn't working. We're not getting the return on investment in this. So let's shift to things that we know, connect with the community better or work better. Let's put our money towards that. But maybe we leave some room for testing some of that stuff, because It makes us happy or we like doing it and we think that there's a longer term benefit or the data isn't telling the full story. So, like, I think there's a balance of trying to just. Leave room for the art. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: And so I think we have a healthy culture of that and it's more like challenging the status quo than it is aggressively throwing data at each other. Because I don't want to be in that culture. So as long as the approach is likely to help solve the problem and help us all succeed, then it's welcome. If it's like just I'm smarter than you. Nobody wants that. 

Lizzie Mintus: Very true. And how do you balance getting data with. I've been biased. I know that's another value? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, we have all these leadership principles that we use that sort of guide decision making and operating and they're all naturally intention. And so part of what you have to do is use judgment to balance what's more important. And part of bias for action is knowing when do you need to go to your manager to get something approved? And when should you just be trying to solve this problem or make something happen? 

And there's another sort of guide that we use, which is like, is it a one way door thing or a two way door? Because if it's a two way door, then you can walk it back easily. And the impact to customers is minimal. And this is something that we can like, if we see data down the road, we can adjust. If it's a one way door, it needs much more attention and careful planning and thought because you can't walk it back.. 

Lizzie Mintus: I like to think about that. There's a lot of Amazon-isms that I feel like are quite helpful in any company. It's good learning. 

Sarah Anderson: Exactly. 

Lizzie Mintus: And I know you talked a bit about mentorship in the talk that I heard, but I'd love to hear about who's been your biggest mentor throughout your career and maybe some specific advice that resonated with you.

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, I think I mentioned him before, but I think my father was one of them because I was actually working with him through high school and college. He really pushed me and challenged me. And I talked about the visual map, and asked me to evaluate, helping me evaluate opportunities.

And my mother had her own career path. She went back to school after we were, I think I was in kindergarten. And she ended up going to law school and then became a lawyer. And so she was pushing and has also been somebody that I just, I guess she was more role model than mentor, but I really respected everything that she was pushing for and how she was so successful in her career and made so much time. 

She was working really hard, but also was around for us mostly. I was a little bit of a latchkey kid, I guess, which I don't even think we use that term anymore, but when I was growing up, that meant that you had your own key and let yourself in the door because your parents weren't home. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Now I think you have to be much older. It's a little different. It still happens. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. I was in, I don't know, seventh grade, whatever. But she's had a really impressive career and she's also really good at networking and has really prioritized being on boards and building her network and being involved in things. And it's really sort of inspired me as I think about what I need to do to take things to the next level.

Lizzie Mintus: I like that you're always pushing yourself and with your parents. It sounds like success was your only option? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's good though. I have one last question, and it's from WIGI. They have a whole program built around, I wish I knew X at Y stage of my career. They say they're cheat codes for the next generation, so we don't have to learn the hard way. What cheat codes can you share? What is something that you wish you knew when you started your career? 

Sarah Anderson: I've said this before in other talks, but I really think you need to build the network before you think you need the network. Even if you need them now, and you're just getting started, there's a mountain of research that shows that professional networks lead to more job and business opportunities.

Broader and deeper knowledge, faster advancement, greater status, all that kind of stuff. But, and I think I saw another statistic, like aiming for a job in the games industry through blind application without networking is a lower success rate than most gotchas in games. I thought that was funny.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. 

Sarah Anderson: Like the odds of success are a mere 0.05%. But I think, you know, about networks this way, which is that you're always building your connections and your network with the way you work with your peers and form the opinions they form about you, are you great to work with? Do you make an impact? Do people want to work with you on the next project or job? Because then they'll bring you in or they'll find ways to open doors for you. And attending conferences and mixers helps you meet new people, learn new things, but it also helps you reconnect with the network that you have.

And that's really important. It's like continuing to feed those relationships and just reach out to people. And also how you work with agencies and vendors and partners. You're building your brand and your network with all of those things that you do. And then, if you find yourself in a place where you're looking for a job or you're thinking about taking a chance or you want to find a new great vendor to work with, you can reach out to your network that will open doors for you and help you find those opportunities.

And then finally, I think with all that, it's also important to make time to do that for others and pay it forward because that's a part of it too. It is a symbiotic relationship. 

Lizzie Mintus: Absolutely. And it's so fulfilling too. Giving somebody else a gift is better than receiving a gift. 

Sarah Anderson: Absolutely. And I remember being, when I was in an agency and I was calling on people and people would not call me back because they're in a corporate, powerful job and they don't have time for it. But when you're in the agency and you're like, wow, this person won't even call me back or return my message. You feel a certain way about that. And I always think about that. Cause like, yes, I am really busy and I have a lot of people reaching out to me, but people deserve the courtesy of a response, even if you don't have time. And so how you communicate and just respond to people is really important too.

Lizzie Mintus: Even when you're super busy. 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, like we all are, especially as working moms. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yes, my friend with no kids told me he was really busy the other day. Are you? Like you went skiing one day this week. We've b

Been talking to Sarah Anderson who's head of global marketing and partnerships at Amazon Games. Sarah, where can people go to contact you or work with you or learn more about Amazon Games? 

Sarah Anderson: Yeah, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, but I would ask for people not just to send me a blind connection, but send me a note, and make the connection to the podcast or whatever. And I would love to hear from people.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you so much. 

Sarah Anderson: Thank you. Appreciate it, Lizzie. 

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.