Whenever we take stock of IP cooperation cases, Honor of Kings always has a place.
Firstly, it is because it is indeed "highly productive", covering almost every aspect of our daily consumption, from beauty and skin care to food and beverages and 3C products. Secondly, it is because the quality of its joint ventures is not low, and many of them have gone viral.
Recently, this popular cross-border brand has a new work. On December 26, the Little Prince OTR x Luban No. 7 co-branded trendy speaker luxury gift box started pre-sale across the entire network.
This joint product organically combines the "Luban Starry Sky Dream Skin" of Honor of Kings and the Elvis Presley and The Little Prince speaker design, creating a retro and cool new year's product for trendy toy buyers. Through this collaboration, Honor of Kings has opened up another new category for its IP cooperation.
This makes people wonder, why has King of Glory been able to continuously attract various brands and expand the boundaries of cooperation over the years? Today, 007 will show you what creates the king's gravity.
1. Self-evolving IP Support the growth of group culture and continue to develop derivative content
When brands choose IP cross-border, the most fundamental appeal is "consumers". Consumers like IP because they identify with the IP content, which includes image, attitude, personality, group culture, etc.
Therefore, an IP that can attract brands must first have the ability to attract a specific user group. As one of the most popular IPs among contemporary young people, it has strong appeal in itself.
This IP content is based on the Honor of Kings game itself, with a huge user base and a very high proportion of young users. Soon, this group established a new popular culture. Among young people, this culture is highly perceived and appealing.
For example, not only in the game, but also in various online social scenarios, the King of Glory jargon such as "gather and prepare for team battle", "keep calm, we can win", "develop slowly and don't waste time" are often used by young people.
Not only that, Honor of Kings also has extremely strong scalability.
It is not satisfied with creating IP only in the gaming circle. In various young cultural fields such as music, literature, animation, boy bands, etc., Honor of Kings has derivative content to further attract users from more circles.
This summer, the offline pop-up store [Liansheng Department Store] of MINISO x King of Glory opened, attracting a large number of fans to check in.
On the opening day, four canyon heroes, Li Bai, Zhuge Liang, Da Qiao and Mulan, made a "stunning appearance" and served as MINISO store managers, taking turns introducing new co-branded peripheral products to consumers.
Elements of King's culture such as "Stay calm in favorable winds and stand firm in unfavorable winds", "Jungler", "Gold Medal Shooter", "Be careful with the bushes", and "Keep steady, we can win" can be seen everywhere in the theme store, allowing consumers to shop and play at the same time, and further consolidate the group's cultural identity.
Group culture creates consumer loyalty and reasons to pay, and coupled with the huge user base of this IP, it is undoubtedly a high-quality young traffic pool for brands. Growing IP content not only continues to enrich IP and expand the IP user base, but also provides more diverse options for brand cooperation.
2. “Open” cooperation “closed loop” Professionally customize the licensing model to fully explore the value of IP
Although the King IP is attractive to users, this does not mean that simply printing the IP image on the co-branded packaging can convert consumers for the brand.
The transformation between IP influence and brand influence also requires the help of IP joint operations. In this process, Honor of Kings has already formed a professional licensing model and created an "open cooperation closed loop".
This closed loop is first of all an IP influence conversion closed loop of "co-branded product creative production-co-branded promotion conversion" . The reason why it is still "open" is that Honor of Kings itself is versatile and is open to cooperation with brands from all industries.
1. Product creativity and rich content to meet the needs of all brands
In all the brand collaborations of Honor of Kings, we can see that the creativity of the co-branded products is not simply the addition of logos.
As of now, there are 104 heroes in Honor of Kings. Rich IP content resources and image library capabilities can provide cooperating brands with rich and in-depth creative perspectives, meeting the cross-border needs of various brands. At the same time, Honor of Kings' product capabilities, which are familiar with the preferences of the young market and extremely creative, have also become a good helper for many brands to enter the young population.
For example, in cooperation with Daoxiangcun, a "traditional pastry brand that is eager to be younger", King of Glory once borrowed Chinese cultural characters in the game to create a "younger interpretation of traditional culture" for it.
The "Glory Rice Fragrance" gift boxes released by both companies during the Spring Festival use festive red packaging, and add a revolving lantern design and several popular hero images from "Honor of Kings" that are linked to history: Da Qiao, Hou Yi, Zhuge Liang, Li Bai, and Mulan. The pastry shapes in the gift box also ingeniously incorporate hero skill elements and lines to express New Year wishes. For example, Zhuge Liang’s corresponding mung bean ice cream is printed with the hero’s famous line “Deciding the victory a thousand miles away”.
For a daily-use brand like MINISO that offers multiple categories and a sophisticated style, Honor of Kings plays the "emotional card" and the "appearance card" - on the one hand, it prints the King's jargon on the products to arouse emotional resonance among the player group; on the other hand, it launches a large number of cute and exquisite customized hero images to add buffs to the products and attract the attention of more general consumers.
The collaboration between Honor of Kings and Elvis Presley just hits the interest points of trendy play crowds. The character of Luban’s hero is originally associated with fashion, coolness and technology. In addition, the image of short-legged Lu Ban itself is suitable for being made into trendy toys. This is in line with the product image of the Elvis speaker itself, which is technologically retro, exquisite and trendy. When the two collide, a trendy surprise is born.
From Chinese-style pastries, to youthful and exquisite daily necessities, to trendy toys favored by Generation Z, for brands of different categories and styles, Honor of Kings can provide eye-catching product designs that are deeply loved by brand users.
While activating the brand's consumers, these designs also highlight the unique impression the brand wants to convey to consumers through the highly consistent content of the hero's personality, image, brand and products, adding points to the brand's style and cultural connotations.
2. Channel promotion integrates resources and continuously outputs sales influence
After the creative co-branded product is formed, the way in which Honor of Kings cooperates with brands to spread its influence is also different from general IP cooperation.
It is not limited to advertising, marketing and promotion, but is better at combining the appeal of IP with the sales channels of partner brands to turn the sales end into advertising space. At the same time, with the help of licensing business, Honor of Kings can also allow product content of different categories to cross-circle, integrate the channel advantages of cooperative brands, and continue to create channel sales exposure with long-term vitality.
This is very clearly reflected in the cooperation between Honor of Kings and MINISO. After the joint product of the two was launched, it was covered in all 2,500 offline stores of MINISO overnight. Whether it is for brand or IP, each store is a precise promotion channel.
Consumers can even buy the co-branded Daoxiangcun mooncakes with Honor of Kings, the co-branded Youyi C milk, and the co-branded Miniso daily necessities in the same supermarket. High frequency and full-dimensional coverage double the influence of IP.
It can be seen that this "open" "closed loop" can not only transform IP value for the brand, but also continuously empower IP and help it go further.
3. Ideas for “Co-creation” of Value Adding value to partners is also adding value to IP
IP is different from a brand. Its value lies not in how much it can monetize its own products, but in the value it can create for its partners.
The value that Honor of Kings creates for brands can be divided into “visible” and “invisible” values.
Visible growth in traffic and sales
It was only the first time that Honor of Kings and Elvis collaborated together that the limited edition gift box was sold out in advance across the entire network, setting a record for the fastest sell-out of Elvis IP co-branded products.
Invisible brand equity growth
The content cooperation between Honor of Kings and the brand with a high degree of fit creates both short-term and long-term value for the brand.
For example, if traditional brands need to be rejuvenated and reshape their brand image, the lively elements and culture of Honor of Kings can be a good helper.
Some time-honored brands need to emphasize tradition and Chinese aesthetics. In this case, Wangzhe’s traditional Chinese cultural background and strong artistic ability can provide them with many Chinese-style contents that are more in line with the times.
There are also some brands that were originally young brands and hope to enter specific young circles such as the two-dimensional world, ancient music, and trendy play circles. They can also expand their brand areas through the derivative content of Honor of Kings and its huge user base.
The social value of cultural inheritance and development
In addition to creating commercial value for the brand, as an important pop culture IP, Honor of Kings is also shouldering social responsibilities and creating value for the development of contemporary culture.
First of all, in terms of IP content, Honor of Kings was originally based on Chinese culture and oriental aesthetics. Its cross-border dissemination, while realizing commercial value, is also expanding and developing Chinese culture and deepening the influence of Eastern aesthetics.
In addition, Honor of Kings also cooperates with brands to make cultural and creative attempts, and cooperates with many cultural heritage protection institutions to convey the charm of Chinese culture in a younger way.
During this year's Mid-Autumn Festival, the gift boxes jointly launched by Honor of Kings and Daoxiangcun present traditional cultural images such as Chang'e and Jade Rabbit using game characters that are more popular among young people. The gift box inherits and promotes Chinese traditional culture in a popular way, and also gives new vitality to Daoxiangcun's intangible cultural heritage products.
In fact, looking at it the other way around, while the King IP is creating multi-dimensional value for multiple parties in cooperation, these collaborations are also constantly feeding back the value of the IP.
Accompany users in their lives and consolidate emotional connections
The most direct growth is that Honor of Kings vigorously develops its licensing business, expanding the industry's licensing boundaries while also consolidating user connections with the help of actual products.
Although King Authorization has no category boundaries in co-branded brands, we can still find that it often focuses on selecting down-to-earth products, those that are closely related to daily consumption, and especially category brands that resonate with young trends.
From Hanfu to trendy toys, from national cuisine to popular audio, while King of Glory provides entertainment through online games, it also penetrates into users' lives through various licensed products, providing users with more comprehensive and long-term companionship and establishing a stronger emotional connection between IP and users.
Continuous content delivery to feed back IP cultural value
As mentioned earlier, the licensing cooperation between Honor of Kings and brands is all content-based cooperation - starting from the interests of the target user group and delivering brand value points.
Therefore, for Honor of Kings, every authorization is actually a simultaneous interpretation and delivery of its own content in different fields, which not only spreads its influence but also continuously increases the value of the content. In addition, Honor of Kings actively cooperates with cultural heritage protection units to continuously accumulate the cultural heritage of this IP.
It can be said that the "selective"and "borderless" cooperation of Honor of Kings has broken the shackles of long-standing unilateral consumption of IP influence by cross-border IP, and realized the two-way value co-creation between IP and partners. This is something that IPs can learn from.
Now, Honor of Kings is a mature IP with a large and vibrant user base and a mature IP cooperation model. Therefore, it is not surprising that it has become the choice for popular brand IP linkage. More importantly, it has the ability to continuously evolve and develop itself, and will surely create unlimited commercial value in the future and provide more surprises for the brand. Which growth area will Honor of Kings enter next time? Let's wait and see.
