Launching a new mobile game is always a challenge, and publisher Com2us decided to pour some creativity and budget into its marketing efforts to help make its new game Summoners War fly. Com2us partnered with Vine influencers Cody Johns, Landon Moss, and Jake Paul to get some video sizzle for the game. Those Vine stars were paid to create and share Vines about the game, which have been generating good numbers (one Vine by Paul has been seen over 1 million times).
The marketing effort didn’t stop there, though. Com2us also worked with noted street artist Meggs to bring some street cred and interest to the title. The publisher recorded a time-lapse video of Meggs creating an original Summoners War-themed mural in Los Angeles. The Melbourne street artist painted an original 2,000-square-foot mural in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles all by himself during a six-day marathon. Clearly, Com2us’s marketing team was looking for some viral pickup on these videos, and so far the company has notched some 250,000 views on YouTube for its three videos.
“YouTube has been an extremely successful user acquisition strategy for some game publishers,” says VentureBeat Insight analyst John Koetsier. “For certain verticals — and gaming is one of them — YouTube can bring in not only a significant number of users, but also high-value users.”
This is all part of a push to bring Summoners War to Western audiences, noted VentureBeat. The game already has an audience of millions in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, and now Com2us has set its sights on the lucrative US market, hoping this gameplay can attract players over here.
Will all this creative marketing work It will be interesting to watch the results over time. There’s also an official commercial for the game, and perhaps we’ll be seeing that on TV at some point. Machine Zone and King Digital have been getting good results with their TV campaigns for mobile games, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see more publishers with sufficiently deep pockets go that route as well.
