Influencer marketing has become a go-to route for most brands to endorse their products. At a time when most brands are opting for this form of marketing, it has become imperative for them to break through the clutter to stay noticed.
Ludo Zenith has cracked the right formula and created an engaging influencer campaign for a game that provides a twist to the traditional ludo. It has been developed as a collaboration between Japanese Gaming giant Square Enix and JetSynthesys Gaming of India.
“Influencer marketing has slowly become a major part of marketing campaigns with the objectives of reach, brand awareness, and brand consideration. We planned the influencer campaign for better reach, brand building, and amplifying game installs. We think it is a great way to get the undivided attention of our potential users,” said Cibin George, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Square Enix Pvt. Ltd.
Ashutosh Rawat, Associate Director, Marketing at JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd. said influencers are an ideal way of reaching out and communicating with their target audience. “Influencers bring out a sense of trust and authenticity in a better way than traditional ad campaigns. So, we utilised the influencer marketing channel to reach different sets of the audience by engaging a variety of influencers such as cricketers, musicians, comedians, YouTubers, entertainers, etc,” he said.
According to data provided by content marketing agency Sheeko, the influencer-driven campaign has reached over 15 lakh people at a media value pegged around Rs 14 lakh.
Sheeko Brandscore graph of the brand’s performance on Instagram over one year:
The influencers adopt a humorous approach to promote the game, building a narrative around the product. The engaging storyline forces you to watch the video till the end. While promoting a fun product, they have created a narrative that reflects it through their campaign.
Speaking on the strategy behind this, George said, “Ludo Zenith is a casual strategy game and the inherent core of the gameplay is 'to have fun'. The game has a lot of unique USPs like superpowers, 3D arenas, special dice, etc., which is not present in a traditional game of ludo. All these features make it even more exciting and fun for a user. Hence, we wanted to make sure that we communicate the features in the same way — by keeping them engaged and letting them have fun. We gave the influencers the freedom to create their own storyboard as they know their audience the best. We just gave them direction and vision.”
Expanding on it, Rawat said, “Engagement and fun were some of the core pillars that were considered while designing the game. We wanted to keep these core elements intact even in our communication strategy as well. Hence, we chose that approach.”
What makes this campaign stand out is that the influencers have not simply shared an image with a caption. The posts have become more engaging through the narrative and storyline of the videos. The videos are quirky and attention-grabbing. Moreover, the content is not only fun but also highlights the features of the game and provides more information. But while doing that, they have remained subtle and not made it an in-your-face promotion.
The key to having a successful influencer marketing campaign is the right choice of influencers so that it reaches the right target audience. The brand has roped in a diverse set of influencers and from different walks of life. Almost all the influencers are digital content creators and have very good engagement rates. Most of these influencers are young and are followed by a youthful audience, helping the brand reach the right age group.
Speaking on the choice of influencers, Rawat said, “The goal was to cater to users from different walks of life. This would enable us to position this game as a game that can be played by users of all ages, from kids to their parents. We also wanted to communicate the friendly competitive spirit of the game through a famous musical duo and YouTubers live streaming the game and playing with opponents.”
For example, Saurabh Ghadge is a 21-year-old video creator, who regularly posts humorous videos on his handle.
Dolly Singh is also known for her funny videos. She’s known to promote products through an interesting narrative and her influencer videos also manage to keep the audience gripped right till the end. In this video, she plays the part of a competitive person.
These influencers also belong to different geographical regions. For example, Mira Jagannath and Neel belong to the Marathi entertainment industry. They have come together to endorse the game, highlighting its various features.
Srishti Dixit, another young influencer, is known to create funny videos.
Bringing in more diversity in their influencer campaign they even had cricketer Ajinkya Rahane and singers Salim-Suleiman endorsing the game. George said, “We wanted to target a wide range of audience set and hence we chose them. Cricket and entertainment have a wide reach in India and they spoke to the core audience that we were targeting.”
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