Two ways to acquire users using brands

The mobile games Clash of Clans and Game of Thrones: Ascent represent two opposite approaches to acquiring users with the help of popular brands and stars. What kind of approaches – read in our material just below.

In a nutshell, some create a unique product and use stars in the acquisition and monetization of users. Others license the brand to create a product that further optimizes the cost of acquiring an audience.

The first approach

It can be conditionally called the Supercell approach. It is primarily aimed at informing a certain audience about the existence of the project, designed to increase the loyalty of a group of consumers to the product.

The classic technique here is the release of a game commercial for television, in which a celebrity plays the main role. Of course, not only Finns work this way. From mobile companies, King often resorts to this. The Candy Crush Saga advertising campaign in Japan was built entirely on this. From recent examples, it is also worth remembering the promotion of Game of War with the help of Kate Upton.

“TV advertising campaigns of mobile games are entirely dedicated to increasing brand awareness. The company expects that this ad will increase the likelihood that you will download Clash of Clans the next time you see its banners on Facebook or Twitter,” writes Jeff Grubb from VentureBeat.

The problem is that using a star does not at all remove the need for the company to spend millions of dollars on acquiring users: whether there is a popular actor in the video or not, advertising networks require money. The same Supercell spends from $50 million to $100 million to acquire users for Clash of Clans,” writes Scott Valentine.

The second approach

The second approach embodies the hardcore game Game of Thrones: Ascent, developed by Disruptor Beam studio. The key difference from the CoC model is that GoT, instead of paying stars to promote the game, uses the brand to acquire users and improve the monetization of the brand itself.

“The brand (and the celebrities associated with it) is the main advantage of Game of Thrones: Ascent, the essence of the offer. This app is just another leaf of the giant money tree named Game of Thrones. And every time a brand name is mentioned (in a show, on a social network, it doesn’t matter), the game makes a profit,” Valentine notes.

It is clear that this is also true for other products built on the brand (the game has become popular, it has become a little easier to sell T-shirts based on motives).

This state of affairs gives rise to a situation in which it is the developer of a mobile game who saves the most on promotion.

“One of the publishers of an application based on Game of Thrones told me that the acquisition of users cost a penny. Moreover, with the release of each new episode, he had a surge in downloads,” notes another VentureBeat journalist, John Koetsier

Companies such as Kabam and Glu are very fond of using this model of user acquisition today.

Source: VentureBeat