SCMP: Western luxury brands are looking for a rich audience in Chinese games
The trend for brand collaborations in games has not passed for many years. It has reached a special scale in China. Burberry, Maserati, Tesla and many other luxury brands cooperate with Chinese developers. In this way, they want to gain the trust of the local wealthy youth, SCMP believes.
A pipe dream of gamers from the Middle Kingdom
Two days ago, the British fashion brand Burberry announced that it has created exclusive skins for one of the highest-grossing mobile games Honor of Kings. The price of skins has not yet been announced, but it is already clear — it is definitely less than that of real prototypes of images (according to approximate calculations, one of these bows in real life will cost $ 6.3 thousand).
According to the SCMP portal, many gamers from China can only dream of one day going and really buying a trench coat from Burberry. However, such advertising campaigns within games make the dream more tangible.
“Who doesn’t want to wear things from Burberry?” wrote one Weibo user. “Mom, I can finally do this.”
Similar collaborations were arranged by other luxury brands. Last year, Louis Vuitton released a capsule collection of clothing and bags in the style of League of Legends*. Local streetwear brand CLOT has made several T-shirts for fans of the CrossFire shooter. And Nike sponsored the largest esports league in China, the League of Legends Pro League.
But car brands cooperate most actively with gaming companies. For example, earlier skins with BMW appeared in Honor of Kings. BMW also made skins for the QQ Speed racing game together with Rolls-Royce. At the same time, Tesla and Maserati have placed virtual models of their cars in Peacekeeper Elite, the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile.
*The game was developed by American Riot Games, but formally it belongs to the Chinese giant Tencent.
Betting on wealthy users
According to Matthew Kanterman, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, products from luxury brands are actually inaccessible to many consumers. That’s just gamers are a relatively wealthy audience.
“Brands are increasingly trying to find contact with young, rich and people who have grown up among digital technologies. Promotion in online games has become a real godsend for them,” Kanterman said. “It is likely that over time, even more brands will participate in gaming events and develop in-game items. This will allow them to increase their awareness among gamers.”
Liao Xuhua, a gaming analyst at Beijing-based Analysys, agrees that the trend for collaboration between luxury brands and games will continue to grow. In his opinion, such advertising works much more effectively than traditional advertising. Let people not go shopping immediately after it, with its help you can form the right reputation.
