__twocolumncontent.jpg)
“It’s been an amazing instrument to get advice and grow as a leader and manager of people,” says Dustin Brower, senior channel marketing manager at Square Enix. He’s talking about PromaxGames, where he’s been a mentee.
It was at a Games conference (being held again this year at the The Midway in San Francisco) when Brower learned about the program, during a time when he was looking to grow in his role. Brower began his career working in television production, then switched gears, went for his MBA and hasn’t looked back.
Daily Brief Contributing Editor Kareem Taylor sat down with Brower to hear his story. He talks about his career journey so far, being a mentee and playing video games for work.
DAILY BRIEF: What exactly does your job title mean?
Brower: It’s an all encompassing position that involves marketing, but we also function as sales. We work with the various retailers and what we do is create marketing plans geared towards those retailers, to help maximize pre-orders and awareness to help them gain as much market share as possible. From marketing, we try to be as creative as possible. We work closely with our product teams to make sure we’re utilizing the ideas that they’ve created as the foundation for the games we’re working on. We’ll do is offshoot some of those ideas and implement them at a retail level both online and instore to maximize awareness and get people as excited as possible about the games we’re working on.
What are some of those games?
Previously, I’ve worked on Rise of the Tomb Raider and Hitman. We also have some companies we distribute for: Deep Silver is one of those companies with Homefront: The Revolution and some of the bigger ones they’ve released over the last couple years.
Did you always know you wanted to do this?
I knew I always wanted to be within marketing. I got quite lucky and fell into video games, after coming out of my MBA. I always imagined you had to be a serious gamer to work in the industry. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played games my entire life on my old systems, Nintendo, Sega and Nintendo 64. But as I grew older into college, I found less time to play. But I still had a passion for the video game industry. When I was in my MBA, I had a little more time to play and get back into it. After I graduated, I had a great opportunity to jump into the industry.
What made you get involved in the PromaxGames program?
I got involved a few years ago when my company, Square, submitted some of our marketing campaigns into the Game awards. Once we found out our campaigns were accepted into the show as nominees, we attended the event in San Francisco and my team ended up winning Best Marketing Team of the Year. And I won Best Pre-Order Campaign. At that event, they mentioned they were kicking off the mentorship program. I thought that was something that could be invaluable in terms of growth in the industry. To learn from an executive with a wealth of experience. My mentor is Ryan Jones, the VP of Communications at 2K. It’s a ‘you can ask me anything and I’m willing to give you answer.’ It’s been an amazing instrument to get advice and grow as a leader and manager of people.
To listen to their whole conversation, tune in here:
Subscribe to The Daily Brief Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Podomatic, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts for newsmaker interviews, in-depth conversations and creative insights, with new episodes delivered each week.
