A Finnish success story: the “Angry Birds”
A Finnish case study: the success story of “Angry Birds” by Rovio Ltd – and how framework conditions and public support schemes enabled it
With Nokia as the lead company facing severe challenges, Finland is looking for new growth enterprises and success stories in the ICT sector. The success of “Angry Birds”, a computer game and brand produced and marketed by Rovio Ltd, is a big promise in this context. This article argues that the environment and framework conditions play an important role for enabling such success stories.
Background
“Angry Birds”, a computer game and brand created by the Finnish software company Rovio Mobile Ltd., is currently a smash hit in the software and games industry. According to Peter Vestebacka, the “father” of Angry Birds, the game has been downloaded 250 million times across many different mobile and fixed platforms. Additionally, more than three million Angry Bird plush toys and about 30 million T-shirts have been sold. New extensions to the brand are under way, including an animated movie Angry Birds Wine & Dine, Angry Birds Magic and a cookbook.
As often in the software industry, the publicity and commercial success of Angry Birds came fast and with force; however, when taking a closer look, it took Rovio Mobile Ltd (note that there are further companies in Finland including “Rovio” in their name!) eight years of hard work to make this success story happen, with the usual ups and downs that occur in software production. The founders of Rovio Mobile Ltd had also collected a reasonable amount of basic capital before in other businesses before they started this project.
The right framework conditions as enabling factors
Angry Birds is based on brilliant software competence, but also on marketing know-how, namely how to establish a brand. The availability of a large pool of excellent software engineers and programmers can be largely attributed to two background conditions: the Finnish education system, and the experience and critical mass of the national software industry, including Nokia as a lead company that has been driving the development for many years.
An important capability that enabled the development and success of Angry Birds was the ability of Rovio Mobile Ltd to enter into alliances with industry giants, in particular with Nokia, Google and Apple. Google, for instance, has recently launched Angry Birds for Chrome on its Chrome Web Store (in May 2011).
The business model of Angry Birds is well established in software and internet markets such as social and professional networks: a basic version of the product is freely available, while more sophisticated versions and by-products have to be purchased. Users themselves play a critical role in the marketing, as interest in the product is very much pushed through dedicated pioneer users. Once a product has a cool image and the “flavour of success”, new users want to become part of this community – thus driving the success story further. This process can evolve very fast.
The Angry Birds brand is already reaching the spheres of “Hello Kitty”, a world-known brand with a much longer history and therefore being much more established. Google provides around 89 million links for Angry Birds, compared to around 180 million for Hello Kitty.
Public support through Tekes
Rovio Ltd. has benefited from support schemes by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. According to the public information provided by Tekes, the company received grants of € 379,510 over the years 2005-2007.
In addition, the Finnish Film Foundation, an institution backed by the state, has granted Rovio Ltd. € 50,000 of support for the production of an Angry Birds animation movie. Already before, Rovio had announced cooperations for producing “Angry Bird” films, including a cooperation with 20th Century Fox.
Awards
Angry Bird has already won several awards. It was granted the Webby Award by the New York based International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in May 2011. In November 2010, it won the award for the best Finnish game of the year by the Finnish Association for game industry.
Finland is proud to be the home of many internationally acknowledged software developers, including for instance Linus Torvalds. However, it seems to be part of the Rovio brand culture that its developers and owners shy away from publicity, at least in Finland. They are more present in international special magazines which focus on software and game industry. It can be speculated that the success of the company could also be linked with the fact that its founders come from the Swedish-speaking minority population of Finland. This community is known for its rich social capital and its cohesion – which holds true for Linus Torvalds.
Conclusions
The success of Angry Birds shows that, in order to develop a successful growing company, activities are needed in several areas. In addition to solid technological skills, business and alliance skills are crucial. Allying with right partners seems to be particularly important. This case suggests that the role of public support for developing a project over many years can also be critical. Having enough basic risk capital is another important factor - besides the willingness to take risks: in the case of Rovio, there were definitely moments when it seemed that all the inputs and capitals would be lost.
At least in the games industry, but certainly in other customer goods and services industries as well, a know-how in innovative methods of marketing and brand management are increasingly important. The goal is to tell a success story in a credible way even before it actually becomes a success – in a way, the trick is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, with support of the user community that wants to be a part of it. Rovio Mobile Ltd. has been a master in managing this.
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