We’ve talked previously about what drives the success of a mobile game, whether it’s a popular idea that takes off quickly (like Flappy Bird) or the involvement of a major development team (Angry Birds) or even a brand name that shoots up the charts like magic. However, as we’ve stated in the past with our articles, sometimes all you need to capture mobile lightning in a bottle is the right partner.

That’s certainly the case with Seriously, a start-up company that has produced a mobile game called Best Fiends. First introduced back in October on the App Store, Fiends has become a big success, not only receiving a recommendation on the site by Apple themselves, but also a huge push from YouTube sensation PewDiePie, according to Pocket Gamer.

Seriously teamed up with the Swedish-based streaming star, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, to provide a push for the game. And when you snag someone like that, you get a huge following, as he currently has 38 million followers with his Let’s Play videos – and makes quite a bit of money from it.

The company had to do some serious work to get the star, but Seriously’s vice president of marketing and communication, Phil Hickey, explained that they finally got a hold of him through Maker Studios. “The first and most important step was that PewDiePie tried out the game and genuinely liked to play it,” he said. “Short of that, nothing would have been possible.”

But it’s a move that paid off for the better, according to Hickey. “In our launch week, Best Fiends had a lot of momentum and racked up one million downloads, zooming up the Apple App Store charts with very little performance marketing compared to competitors.”

He elaborated further on numbers. “You can’t track the impact precisely, but we estimate that around 30,000 to 50,000 direct installs were generated through the video in the opening weekend, at a lower average CPI rate than we would have paid through mobile UA networks or Facebook Ads,” Hickey explained.

The video was also a big success on YouTube, with over 2.5 million views.

As part of the promotion, a Best Fiends tournament was also held, with a number of YouTube stars, including PewDiePie, competing to win $50,000 for charity. Video of the event can be found below. It turned out to be a rousing success, with nearly four million views during the first ten days of circulation. More details on the event can be found here.

This is a bold move by a start-up company in an effort to reach out to a certain audience, but it’s not the first time it was done. eMarketer recently broke down how certain college students connect better with brands than with general company business, through a new report called US College Students 101: Updating Fundamental Facts About This Diverse, Digital Cohort. With it, a number of methods were revealed about the best way to reach out to this audience, with word of mouth topping the list with 48 percent, followed by ads on the Internet (39 percent), ads on television (31 percent) and free samples in a store (29 percent).

Thus, going for the “popularity” angle with a certain celebrity or spokesperson to help endorse said product can easily get a community talking – and send the sales possibly soaring, if done the right way.

More about brands selling big in mobile can be found in our report here.