How does Kuaishou Games do brand marketing?

As a top national mobile game, the total number of views of Honor of Kings content reached 44 billion in 2019, of which the number of views of official professional competition content reached 24 billion, an increase of nearly 41% compared with 17 billion competition content views in 2018. Looking at the entire mobile game field, perhaps the biggest enemy for Honor of Kings is itself. How to deepen players' recognition of the Honor of Kings product and IP and find new growth opportunities to break the brand circle has become its marketing challenge.

The creation of the holiday IP "55 Black Festival" by Honor of Kings is a social exploration driven by this marketing challenge. The term "kaihei" originated from competitive games. Nowadays, the term "kaihei" has long entered the mainstream context and has become a cultural symbol. The "55 Black Game Festival" establishes a strong connection between Honor of Kings and the "black game culture" to create a "Double 11" carnival for game players.

1. When the King of Glory 55 Black Festival meets Kuaishou, innovative marketing breaks the circle

Honor of Kings advocates that where there is group, there is gathering, and the 5V5 team combat method also determines that there are strong social relationships between players. Yao Xiaoguang, vice president of Tencent, once said that Honor of Kings can no longer be understood as a "game", it has become a new way of socializing.

Kuaishou, which has over 300 million daily active users, has developed a "old iron culture" with close social relationships based on the values ​​of equality and inclusiveness and relying on its unique "people + content" social ecology, which has high trust and high stickiness. In terms of social attributes, Honor of Kings and Kuaishou have a natural fit, which also lays the foundation for their cooperation.

During this year's May 5th Black Game Festival, Kuaishou and Honor of Kings jointly launched the "Peak King's Game". Through innovative marketing methods and leveraging the May Day holiday, they created a "black game" carnival experience for users and helped the brand break out of its circle.

From Kuaishou anchors challenging AI and selling skins live, to Zhang Jie's first live show as the King of Glory, Kuaishou tried multiple marketing methods during the 55th Black Festival. It not only innovated the game sales model, but also used celebrities to cross-border to create popularity, forcefully breaking the dimensional wall and attracting the attention of a large number of fans and pan-entertainment user groups.

The finale of the 55th Black Open Festival is the civil war between the traffic kings and internet celebrities. The most talked-about thing is undoubtedly its "god lineup". The Kuaishou game anchors who won the points competition formed a king team to fight against the Tencent Wangka team of Kuaishou entertainment anchors. The entertainment anchors are top KOLs from sub-fields such as music, dance, and food, with tens of millions of fans. Their cross-border challenges created a strong contrast in their personalities, sparking fans' expectations. Moreover, the format of ten top anchors broadcasting live at the same time attracted users from different segments to watch and interact, which greatly amplified the volume of the event and also attracted fans to each other.

The maximum number of people online at the same time for this live broadcast exceeded one million, the total number of live viewers was over 12 million, and the total exposure times of the live broadcast room was over 70 million. During the game, #55kaiheijie# topped the Kuaishou hot list and sparked a lot of discussion.

Kuaishou collaborates with the platform's top KOLs to enable King of Glory to communicate and interact with more users through scenario-based marketing methods and diversified and innovative marketing strategies, strengthening the social attributes of the May 5th Black Festival to further consolidate its IP value.

2. Deeply cultivating the game content ecosystem, Kuaishou has become a battleground in the game field

Kuaishou’s cooperation with King of Glory on the 55th Black Festival allows us to see more potential of Kuaishou in the field of game marketing. In fact, when it comes to entering the gaming field, Kuaishou has been "growing wildly". According to official data from Kuaishou, by the end of November 2019, the daily active users of Kuaishou's gaming short videos reached 77 million, and the daily active users of game live broadcasts exceeded 51 million, far exceeding other game live broadcast platforms. Kuaishou's sudden rise in the gaming field has accelerated the accumulation of its gaming marketing value.

The marketing value of Kuaishou in the gaming field can also be summarized into the following aspects:

The first is the value of users and anchors.

A large number of core gaming target groups have been gathered on the Kuaishou platform, and they have great potential for game consumption. According to the "2019 Kuaishou Platform Game Industry Value Research Report" released by Miaozhen System, the proportion of heavy game players on the Kuaishou platform is higher than that of short video users as a whole. Among them, 73% of game users play games every day, 90% of game users have paid for games in the past year, and the proportion of increased spending in the next year will reach 53%. The number and duration of game consumption by game players are higher than that of short video users as a whole, and they have great consumption potential.

Kuaishou’s game anchors have significant influence and can effectively promote communication and interaction between game brands and players, and the anchor ecosystem is diversified. During the King of Glory 55th Black Festival, Kuaishou game anchor Tianci released the single "We are one", achieving a crossover from anchor to entertainment star business. In the internet celebrity civil war, entertainment anchors from different fields crossed over to games. The cross-border marketing of these Kuaishou KOLs can not only effectively enable brands to achieve cross-circle communication, but also promote the diversified development of Kuaishou's internet celebrity ecosystem. Last year, Kuaishou also launched the “Million Game Creators Support Plan” to strengthen professional management and support for mid-level and tail-end game creators. A healthy anchor ecosystem will also feed back into the development of Kuaishou’s gaming content.

The second is the value of community culture.

As mentioned earlier, Kuaishou’s “old iron culture” is built on a community atmosphere with close relationships and high trust. Moreover, Kuaishou users are highly receptive to game promotions and are directly affected by the multiple effects of interest and action, which also gives Kuaishou a natural social advantage in the field of game marketing. In addition, the diversified and segmented content ecology has spawned different interest circles, and the Kuaishou gaming circle is also showing a segmentation trend. The characteristics of the players of Kuaishou's main types of games are different, which is conducive to the precise delivery of game brands.

The third is Kuaishou’s advertising technology capabilities and game performance marketing advantages.

In October 2019, Kuaishou's marketing platform was officially upgraded to the Magnetic Engine, which fully connected the traffic, data, products and sales systems, integrated and upgraded Kuaishou's four most unique driving forces: people, content, traffic and creativity. Through AI+DA (artificial intelligence + data analysis) technology, it helps customers improve ROI while providing "double LIU value" from traffic efficiency to retention. The maturity of Kuaishou’s commercialization system ensures its marketing capabilities in the gaming field.

During the King of Glory 55th Black Festival, Kuaishou integrated resources from across the entire network to create popular gameplay and bring about efficient conversions. Taking Zhang Jie's first live broadcast as an example, the celebrity effect gathered fan traffic from the entire network and diverted it to the site. Kuaishou relied on its content social capabilities and advertising technology capabilities to convert traffic into retention, helping the official Kuaishou account of Honor of Kings to increase its fans by more than 1 million, and the cumulative number of fans exceeded 10 million, thus realizing the brand's "double LIU value".

3. Brands are entering the market one after another. How does Kuaishou Games empower brand marketing?

During this May 5th Black Open Festival, we can see that gaming brands’ placement on Kuaishou is not just limited to information flow advertising, but through scenario-based marketing, it matches brand games with user entertainment scenarios, relies on a powerful gaming content ecosystem and social ecosystem to help brands communicate with users, and empowers brand communication in multiple dimensions.

The powerful combination of Honor of Kings, currently the largest mobile game brand in China, and Kuaishou, a national short video platform, has attracted the attention of the entire network before the game. During the live broadcast, fans can increase the heat value of the two teams by sending customized gifts to obtain corresponding buff cards. The original competition design and the cross-border "business" of KOLs make the content of the King of Glory live broadcast more interesting and bring more topic interactions to this PK.

This civil war among internet celebrities also attracted special sponsorship from Tencent Wangka. In addition to large-scale brand exposure and strong visibility, the naming of "Tencent King Card Team", customized gifts and pendants on the live broadcast page, and tangible card benefits all leverage the influence of the Kuaishou x King of Glory 55th Black Festival to build a bridge of communication between the brand and users in the entertainment scene of "black opening".

Tencent Wangka chose the Kuaishou platform, which is essentially paying for the social relationships in Kuaishou's gaming vertical. At a time when the internet traffic dividend has peaked, marketing efforts to compete for existing traffic are becoming increasingly sophisticated. On the one hand, Kuaishou has built a more vibrant customer base with higher frequency and deeper interactions, strengthening the connection between people and giving them stronger social potential. On the other hand, through refined user operations, Kuaishou has deeply explored the pain points of different social circles to accurately respond to user needs and achieve improved marketing efficiency.

Throughout the King of Glory 55th Black Festival, Kuaishou took content ecology as the core, linked rich resources of celebrities and internet celebrities, established in-depth social relationships with users, provided advertisers with a marketing environment with deep user participation, effectively connected brands and users, and formed a resonant field of "brand + content + user".

According to the "2019 Kuaishou Platform Game Industry Value Research Report", the high overlap between game players and short video users has fully released the strong aggregation capabilities of the short video platform, making Kuaishou a hot game marketing platform. This year, Kuaishou will make in-depth layout in the gaming sector, which will inevitably create greater space for more game brand owners in brand marketing and performance marketing, and achieve co-creation and win-win results.

Author: DIGITALING

Source: DIGITALING (digitaling)