MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
[INDEX – DEVELOP’S VISUAL ARTS SPECIAL]
Wanako was envisioned as a company working across the entertainment industries, based in Montevideo in Uruguay, a small country in South America.
It was co-founded in 2010 by three partners; CEO Homero Noble, art director Felipe Van Gonzalez and film director Federico Gonzalez. Since then, Wanako has been one of the fastest growing audiovisual companies in the nation.
We believe that constantly considering the global market is the new way to do great business; no matter if you are a business person or an artist, you must think globally.
When we were setting up the company we attempted to think of a name that could work globally. Something easy to spell in any language and which shouldn´t seem to be either English or Spanish. In offering suggestions, the team had basic rules: you should first check that the web domain was available, it could be a .com or a .tv, but we didn’t want to add the country code on it like wanako.com.uy. That didn’t look like a global company.
Finding the name was a real challenge, but we finally got to one we were all happy with. This is just a small example of the way in which we felt the need to consider globalisation from the off.
Globalisation has been a constant force since the first commerce took place between seafaring countries. With the birth and growth of the internet global trading possibilities have grown so much that the world has become flat. Every single business person or artist on the world is involved with globalisation and it´s up to them how they play their cards.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
We believe that new companies should be versatile and not stick to a single product or industry. Our business model is different from other production companies in Uruguay by necessity. Wanako produces graphics for any company or client who needs them.
It doesn´t matter if it is for the advertising or game industries. Thinking this way has helped us to grow and learn faster.
In approaching this globalised market, we found we learned a lot of tricks to pass on.
Although we believe the most globalised communication method in the world is obviously email, this is by no means the best way someone should approach either a company or an individual.
Wanako recently travelled to Spain to assist in Gamelab, one of the best video game events in Europe. Due to the trip costs, going to the event was big decision for us as a new company, but we decided to go regardless.
We believe that travelling that far was a great way to show the global industry how interested we are in helping them with their productions. We made some amazing contacts and going to the event was one of the best decisions we made this year. We recommend all artists and new companies make these kind of decisions.
Another great thing that’s helping companies and artists outsource their work is search engine optimisation. When people are searching the web for art suppliers they are trying to find the best resource available to them. Most of these searches are not branded, like ‘concept art for games’ or ‘3D modelling’ – no brands in them. When these searches occur you should try to be there, it´s free global marketing.
We are working on this now. Currently our site is full Flash. We wanted to do something amazing and we think we did, but our site is hard to find, and we will be updating to HTML as soon as possible. Not doing it is like not being on the map.
CULTURE CLUB
When you are setting your global strategy, you should consider your culture possibilities. In our case, most of the Uruguayan population were Europeans, Spanish, English and French people.
Our culture is very similar to the European and American, and this gives us a lot of advantages. You should consider time differences; four to five hours for example is great, it gives time to work with a client after they leave the office.
Globalisation is a great thing; it’s turning the world in to a single more competitive and strategic place. It’s about people who can offer better opportunities, people who can buy the same or better quality at better prices and about millions of emerging partnerships and joint ventures.
As Albert Einstein said: “You have to learn the rules of the game and then you have to play better than anyone else.”
