Pocket Gamer Connects will be heading to Vancouver for the first time ever on 28-29 June.

Tickets are still available.

So, to give you a hint at what you can expect, we're shining the spotlight onto our speakers to provide a deeper look at the personalities who will be taking the stage.

• Philip Hickey is VP of Marketing and Communications at Seriously, and will be talking about the company's influencer marketing strategy.

PocketGamer.biz: How do you go about approaching influencers for your campaigns?

Philip Hickey: When working with influencers, it's important that they are a natural fit for your brand. The influencers we have worked with are fans of Best Fiends and they resonate well with our audience.

We’ve also found influencers get excited when they are integrated into the game.

For example, in our “World’s Biggest #MobileEggHunt” for Easter, we worked with 10 of the biggest YouTube stars including MyLifeAsEva and Telea Dunn, who each designed their own Easter eggs which were hidden throughout the game for players to find and collect.

We often work with MCNs (Multi Channel Networks) and talent agencies that work with a number of influencers to determine the best fit for our brand and campaign goals.

How much influence do you have on what the influencers do as part of your campaigns?

We find that influencer campaigns work best when you leave the creative freedom with them. This way, the integration is a natural fit and feels authentic to their audiences.

These influencers know their audiences and what works, and integrations are always the most successful when the content is authentic and unscripted.

Recently, you ran a Mother's Day campaign incorporating lifestyle YouTubers instead of your usual gaming YouTubers. Why did you decide to make this change?

For Mother’s Day, we worked with nearly 200 lifestyle influencers including Bratayley and CuteGirlsHaristyles.

With this campaign, we wanted to focus on reaching women, and expand our reach to new audiences.

As a result of our Mother’s Day campaign, Best Fiends hit all time highs on the US App Store Free charts #15 and UK #12.

And, we had top 25 charting positions in Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, all on the back of the campaign.

On the day of Mother’s Day alone, there were 265,000 downloads of the game.

What other major trends do you predict for the rest of 2016?

I think we will see more brands try to leverage influencers in their marketing strategies.

It’s really hard to build an influencer campaign strategy without having a strong or emerging brand, as influencers want to work with interesting properties.

For us, we want to stay ahead of the curve and have some ideas we’re working on to take influencer marketing to the next level. Stay tuned!

What are you looking forward to seeing at Pocket Gamer Connects Vancouver 2016?

I’m looking forward to connecting with industry peers and collaborating on best practices.

I’m also excited to share some of the interesting campaigns we’ve done at Seriously with influencers and strategies to attract and engage new users.

You can find out more about all the speakers at Pocket Gamer Connects Vancouver here.