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Research Outline

Prepared for Emily S. | Delivered April 17, 2020

Innovative launches- apps/mobile games

Goals

Discover best-in-class examples or case studies featuring innovative ways brands have launched apps/video games using experiential marketing on a global scale, in order to guide a competitive pitch for the advertising/marketing of XR Games' mobile game experience called "Find the Tickets".

The "Find the Tickets" app will be launched for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It allows anyone with a smart phone to search the AR globe for tickets. Every week, the app is updated with a new mission. Each mission involves a scavenger hunt across a virtual, AR globe, viewable through your smartphone. The goal is to get +100 million downloads by November 2022.

Early Findings

Generally, successful game launches rely heavily on gamers themselves to spread the word rather than on a push strategy. They are also much longer-term than launches for other products, with excitement being built slowly over months and many pieces of content being slowly doled out before revealing the final picture. They are most successful when they manage to mobilize existing rabid communities- whether it's KFC fans, current gamers, or the broader Xbox community for a game that may have lapsed users. Any part of the campaign becomes fodder for content, although there is a heavy bent towards digital rather than on-ground activation (both because of the nature of the product, and the fact that on-ground inherently can't touch as many people as needed for a global launch.)

  • KFC's Pocket Franchise mobile game won two Gold Lions at Cannes in 2019. The campaign generated CNY42 million, and had celebrities and ordinary consumers participating to create 2.5 million "pocket franchises", and crushed its launch by encouraging the social aspect of the app, meaning consumers themselves had the incentive to spread the news. For example, an "add sugar" feature gave rewards but relied on friends providing sugar to one another. There were also real-world incentives: by purchasing from a digital pocket franchise store, consumers unlocked discounts at an actual KFC. Lastly, the app was refreshed a few months later with a new challenge (to become "chefs", not just franchise owners) and new rewards.
  •  Clash of Clans relied heavily on YouTube influencers to pump up the excitement for the latest Townhall release - but more than that, created storylines that deepened gamers' connections to each character and released mystery-filled teaser videos that had clues for viewers to discover about the upcoming release. This inspired influencers to post breakdown videos, driving communities to share findings and their theories about what was coming. They created 11 different videos, localized for different regions. In 2019, they had over a million likes and over 150 million views for the social media channel.
  •  Gears 5, Fractured, is a finalist at the Shorty awards for its disruptive launch that drove it from a game with lapsed users to Xbox Game Studio’s biggest launch title for this console (current gen). Overnight, the team took down all posts on the Xbox's Instagram - a place where a highly involved gamer community routinely posts thousands of comments on each post. This grabbed the attention of all fans and editorials, setting the stage for piecemeal ambiguous content, stuffed with Easter eggs and taken from the game. This drove even more discussion as fans tried to discover what was coming next. It finally ended with a hidden link to a video and a worldwide launch. The activation had over 50M daily profile impressions and 1.3M daily profile visits, as well as 18.5K owned comments on Instagram and over 4.6 million video views across 27 pieces of Instagram content.