Speaker 2 (00:00.814)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Dave Jenkins, founder of a quick world style game I think you'd agree called Cryptic DJ. Dave, hello, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, thanks for having me on.

You're welcome. Now could you please give a little bit of an introduction to yourself and your background?

Yeah, I live in Reading, have done for about 40 years. I've got a background of kind of marketing technology. I've always been self-propelled. I've always had my own businesses. And most recent formal business was an e-commerce business, which I came out of in August 22. Since then, I've been working on my passion project, which is Cryptid DJ.

know we went into a lot more detail when we had our one-to-one, but I really love this attitude you have of if you want to do something, you'll go and you'll make it happen and you'll be very intentional about how you do it and what you need to develop.

Speaker 1 (01:00.078)
Yes, that's right. That's probably, I don't know, maybe a bit of naivety in that attempt to not have everything worked out to the nth degree. It's like a general kind of concept of the direction I want to go in with a business. And I think one of the things which is important for anybody starting a business is don't try to have it all worked out. It's just, you have to create your thing in order for things to happen to that thing, if you see what I mean, and always be prepared to pivot.

learn all the time, try different things, see what works, what doesn't work. Crypto DJ is growing very, very quickly. It's been a couple of years in the making, but yeah, it's out there now, live, growing. And from that, other ideas and opportunities are coming up as well. So that's the thing really is it's not in the form that I planned way back in pencil and paper time, but more opportunities are coming out of the walls and

Yeah, I'm following every avenue.

think that's a really good lesson to learn that a bit of naivety is sometimes a good thing because of the curse of knowledge I think can really prevent you from going and doing stuff. But if you throw yourself in and do one little step at a time, it's amazing what a difference you actually make. So could you give an explanation now, what is cryptic DJ?

In a nutshell, it's an online music quiz, one a day music challenge, where you listen to four songs, four famous songs, and you try to guess the word link in the songs that you've heard. So for example, song might be Riders on the Storm, followed by Raining Men, followed by Candle in the Wind, and the answer that day would be Weather, for example. So it's kind of a music quiz.

Speaker 1 (02:48.526)
but it's also a word game as well. And in fact, you can pass on the music if you just want to play the word game as many of the players do. So yeah, it's just like an instant hit, your type of word or Sudoki crossword type morning routine.

about your game when I played it before with my husband was it's an auto fill so it's not as if you've got to get the correct spelling you start to type something and you'll get options so people don't need to worry about not being able to spell or anything like that so I really like that and when we spoke before you said there were three reasons that were all became popular which I thought were really interesting and that's helped with Cryptic DJ so could you please share those

I've taken some of the ingredients and the reason why Wurdle took off was because first of all, everybody was playing the same game every day. So it's not like you're all playing different versions of Angry Birds or something, which mean nothing to anybody else. Everybody's playing the same challenge every day. So you have that kind of, you get today's Wurdle? The other reason obviously is very simple. And I've tried to keep mine simple. There is obviously a different and added element in that it's got audio and music in there as well.

The other reason Wordle took off is because you could play it in a browser. You didn't have to install an app. If I came across a new app that was recommended, probably wouldn't install it if I didn't know who it was from. I don't want my data harvested. So the fact that it played in a browser, you could just go onto wordle.com or whatever it was and play it. That was one of the key elements for uptake. I've taken some of the ingredients that made Wordle a success and trying to kind of put those into the

let's say the pillars of cryptic DJ. Plays in a browser, simple, everybody's playing the same challenge. are the, I reckon, are the viral ingredients.

Speaker 2 (04:43.63)
I totally agree with those. And I think they're really interesting points to make that you can have this little formula and try and apply that to something else, which is really interesting. Now, once you have the game, Cryptic DJ in mind, obviously people, I'm sure there are loads of people with ideas in mind, but what stops them is the technical side. So great, I've got an idea. How do I actually make an app? So could you give a bit of background how you went about doing the technical side of creating Cryptic DJ once you had the idea?

I've always had this kind of useless knowledge bank of music. And I thought, how can I transpose that into something which is kind of businessy? And it was kind of difficult to see where I could do that. But I thought, well, I do have a marketing sort of technology background, because as I said, I've always worked in this kind of area. But I'm not a programmer. I'm not a techie. I couldn't sit down and say, right, I'm going to design an interface or an engine or a database or anything like that.

I kind of know how things work or just enough. And I suppose that's one of the advantages of naivety is that I didn't get put off with thinking how complicated it was. So it was like, of course you can do that. So I'd had the idea for the game for a while. It was based on different formats of music quizzes that I'd been to. And I thought, right, how can I make that into a standalone product? I thought, you know what? I'm going to sit down and just sketch this out.

I was actually in an airport waiting for a flight, being delayed at a gate and I thought, I'm on a bit of a digital detox. There was no wifi available in the airport. And I thought, you know what, I'll just grab a bit of paper or a napkin and start scribbling down these ideas. And I literally drew some very rudimental game screens to think, right, it's going to play like this. It's going to look something like that. And developed that on, you know, first draft, second draft.

realised that I've designed myself into a corner, that doesn't work if I do this. And I finally got to a kind of brief or a design, non-technical. I didn't know any programming languages or how you were going to do this, make this happen. But it's kind of a PowerPoint presentation that I then went out to jobbing app developers on the internet through various portals where you can submit your designs.

Speaker 1 (07:07.566)
I mean, it could be for a website, could be for a game like mine, it could be for anything. And people who are app developers or techies will bid on that project. So I went off, put it up onto this developer for hire forum with my rudimental sketches. Didn't give the game away. Just kind of a very loose brief that then attracted software development companies from around the world. Probably most people know.

It's a lot cheaper to get it done offshore places like the Far East or Asia. And I actually settled on a company in Serbia who had a good portfolio of things that they've done for other businesses. Signed them up with an NDA to allow me to tell them some more about the game. We agreed a price bit backwards and forwards and said, yeah, let's do it. Let's get a

Proof of concept. That's the first thing or an MVP minimum viable product is another word for it So that started in I think probably January 24 So yeah, it was really an idea in my head that went down to scribbles that went into a PowerPoint presentation that went out for for tender I suppose

What were the portals that you put the job on?

website called freelancer.com and they're one of the leading kind of software development portals where, a like a jobs board, but you can post a project and people with various tick boxes say it's this type of project, it's going to be an app or it's going to be a web page and people from all around the world, development companies from all around the world are on there looking for work.

Speaker 1 (08:55.822)
You know, you have to be fairly cagey in your brief and then, you know, take some references, look at their portfolio. It was a long process going through and obviously as a, as a novice, I was kind of a bit kind of, or I don't know, they look good. But then personal engagement was probably the thing that really kind of settled me on the company that I chose. You know, what's their, what they like to communicate with, standard of English, of course, how long they took to respond, whether they answered my questions.

Now we should say as well that you didn't just have this idea and put it down, you actually did a lot of research, didn't you, before you had this project in mind. So could you share how you went about doing the research and a few things that you learned?

Yeah, a lot of research went into it in terms of how do you stream music? One of the biggest elements was I always wanted it to be legal. You know, I'm using copyrighted material, it's somebody else's work. Strangely enough, that actually slowed me down more than the technology. Technology and the development of the app was fairly elementary, I suppose. In the background to that, I had to sort the music licenses.

and I went from pillar to post, had meetings with various consultants, went to like music seminars, spoke to lawyers, spoke to a couple of big record companies and just kind of felt like I was a lamb to the slaughter and wish that I never bothered. know, a lot of people off the record said it's better to ask forgiveness than seek permission and those words kind of rang in my head.

for about six months thinking, blimey, I'm just trying to do the right thing here. I'm using 15 seconds of a clip and four a day, that's it, that's 60 seconds of music a day. It's not like I'm starting Spotify version two or anything like that. How do I just get permission to do that? But finally got a breakthrough, got licensing, got music. I want this to be a big brand business.

Speaker 1 (11:05.28)
Eventually, that's the dream. And I don't want to be looking over my shoulder waiting for a cut, a shutdown. In order to do proper serious marketing PR, I have to be confident that I'm legal. I don't want to be some kind of spare bedroom pirate that's going to get a knock on the door at any moment. So yeah, do it, do it right. Even though that was painful, do it right. And then with that on the shelf.

you can speak a lot more confidently to your PR and your marketing. Yeah, so that's one of the flags that I fly is this is legal.

I think you touched on an interesting challenge though, like you said with the copyright, were there any other challenges that you faced?

One of the main challenges is if you've got a one a day music quiz running 24 seven, potentially, you know, hopefully for years to come, that's an awful lot of content that you need to gather. A lot of inspiration you need to be able to just keep the questions quality, engaging, not too hard, not too difficult, picking songs that people know.

picking links that people can work out. So that's, that is a big ongoing job. You know, I spend probably a solid week a month just queuing up questions, going through questions, making them, sourcing the music for them, burning the midnight oil on setting things up. So yeah, that's a big challenge is pitching it right. But it's a big requirement because it's one a day. It's not like

Speaker 1 (12:48.79)
I can just repeat that question and people will spot it. So everything's got to be new and original all the time. So it is a bit of a millstone, I suppose. I didn't see that when I first came up with the concept. I just thought, yeah, this is great. You know, what a brilliant format, but you drill down and you think, wow, that's a lot of work. It's not generating any money. I don't want to take anybody on to do that. So yeah, it's my night job is actually question creation.

Other challenges are things like making sure the technology works on all platforms. You know, it's, it's, primarily a mobile first game, which means that you're looking at Android and Apple and they do behave differently and you have to have the way that your screen looks will look different on different devices, whether it's an iPad or even a desktop computer. So trying to, you know, kind of make it one size fits all.

it's a challenge. But one of the key benefits of having it as a browser game is that there's no app to update.

How have you promoted the game?

Word of mouth is obviously a good place to start. So that has done well with my cohort of music and quizzy type friends. I've also have a live show running at the Purple Turtle in Reading. So once a month we do cryptic DJ live and that brings in 80 odd people a month. That's all very local. And of course I'm aiming for word of type viral phenomena.

Speaker 1 (14:23.724)
So I'm quite a thing big. So one of the other ongoing tasks that I have is the social media channel, setting all those up on all the different platforms. So Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blue Sky, YouTube. And I want to build up a social community there, which will help spread the word on the game. But also it allows me to kind of take the temperature of the players as well and see what works, what doesn't work.

So for example, on Facebook, on all the social media channels, I post yesterday's game and that goes on all the platforms, whether it's a little video or just a gallery of photos, this was yesterday's question. And then I invite people to comment on it to say, what else could we have played? So I had four songs on the theme of American States, for example.

So people will then ship in and say, you could have played New York, New York, or you could have played something by Texas. So it's kind of an engagement and the algorithm loves that. If you've got social media presence that people are actively chipping in on every day, the algorithm loves that. So that has helped. get a lot of new users from that, from people seeing on social media. I also do.

Any kind of PR, any kind of mention that I can get for it, I was on actually Popmaster, the Ken Bruce quiz the other week. I was a player on that and managed to slip in. Cryptic DJ had a massive spike that day, had about 2000 people, you know, within half an hour of me mentioning it, because they were exactly my demographic, know, geeky music people with a daily habit. So yeah, anything.

that allows me to promote it. I've got tie-ins with local radio stations have wanted their own branded version which they can put on their website. Again, it's music based so there's a fit. There's a music festival who've got a branded version. Same game, but they just have their logo on it. So that's the thing about digital media is that you can repurpose it. Other people can embed it, link to it.

Speaker 2 (16:35.51)
It's great that you're doing so many things to promote it. Now, one thing that I'm sure people will be interested to hear about is how you monetize games. Like I said, you put a lot of time and effort in, so how can you monetize games like this?

Well, that's the nub really. Got to have a degree of naivety in order to start something. If you think it right through, you'll never do it. So naively, my approach is build the traffic and the money will come. Don't try and monetize it now. Obviously you need some gas in the tank to get you over that launch period. Don't get disheartened.

by saying, oh, I've only got 500 people, I need 5,000 people a day. You've got to go through 500 to get to 5,000. So don't let the standards slip. Don't say, well, there's no point because nobody's played it today, so I really can't be bothered to make it perfect anymore. I'm just going to kind of cut and paste and bit of slapdash. You've always got to kind of behave like you've got a million people coming to you every day.

bit like manifestation, I suppose, a business sense is keep on going and always do the best version of what you can do and then the money will follow that. I'm a true believer in that. I've had businesses before where I was like my e-commerce business, I was ready to throw the towel in after three or four months. I was just like, well, I've spent a load of money setting up.

paying, everyone got their orders and then all of a sudden in month six something happened and it just took off. I had to be there for that moment. I had to be there in the game for that opportunity to take off. So monetization, go back to the actual nitty-gritty of monetization. Where it comes from is number one it comes from having high traffic. Everything comes from that. So whether you want to sell advertising

Speaker 1 (18:40.098)
Imagine if you had a million people a day coming to that one webpage, that then has real estate value. has somebody, there was a market value for getting your brand on that page. But again, comes from the visitor numbers first. Or maybe like with Wordle, somebody saw the potential. I think it was the New York Times. They saw this website that was getting millions of hits a day and they bought it and they thought, right, we want those people to be visiting our website.

So it's now Wordle is now hosted on their website and they're pushing other products while you're playing Wordle or they're selling advertising space on that page. I don't really want to go down the route of either pay for play or pay for an app or stuffing it full of videos that you have to watch before you can get the answer or anything like that. really just kind of thinking, well, what would appeal to me? What do I like? And trying to keep it ad free.

But that means that it's me that's funding it personally. know, that's the way, but that's, that's part of the business process is build it, build it, build it, build it. And all the answers will come from that. My first hill is build the traffic from that. The money will come. So keep, so today I need to do this, which will build traffic. I started actually a very

soft way of getting something for it. I put a little donate button on the game screen just to say if you like this and you like the fact that it's ad free and you like the fact that it's good fun then you might want to 10p in the pot kind of thing like a tip jar and for that if people do that they can get access I'll send them an email with access to our games archive

They're not just the daily game. You can go back and play other games as well. At this stage, that's not the earner by any means. I mean, it is literally loose change, but I've created a thing, you know, it's a validation and it keeps me motivated.

Speaker 2 (20:52.974)
I totally agree with your approach for getting an audience engagement and suing it for the passion of everything, that's really important. Now, is there anything you'd like to leave our listeners with?

First of all, play Cryptic DJ. Every visitor number counts on my journey. So yeah, please play it, share it with your friends. I'm looking at different formats all under the Cryptic DJ banner. I'm seeing Cryptic DJ as a music quiz brand, not just the daily game that you see now. I'm actually talking now to a board game company who are interested in making it into a physical product. And there's big potential in that. And I've got...

the confidence now to be able to say to them, yeah, it's had 30,000 players. You know, this is already a thing. And what I want to do is work with somebody to make it into a physical game. I didn't have that idea or opportunity when I first sat in the airport lounge with my serviette and pen saying, oh, I wonder what this screen will look like. How will it work? And that's what I was saying earlier. You have to create a thing in order for things to happen to that thing. You can...

being nice to say, or to say, well, I haven't worked out where the money is, or I can't do it because of this or because of that. Just do it. Just do something with your lump of clay. Just continue to mold it and meld it as you go.

Dave, thank you so much for putting on the podcast. Everyone listen to Cryptic DJ and get those donations in.

Speaker 1 (22:21.36)
Thanks, Maria.