To mark the fourth Candy Crush Saga All Stars in-app tournament, the iconic gaming sought to ignite global excitement and drive players to compete for a share of the historic $1,000,000 prize pool in the Live Final.
King wanted the Candy Crush All Stars tournament to be the sweetest sporting spectacle in mobile gaming for its core 25-44 year-old target audience, by tapping into their love of sports.
The brand wanted to grow and keep its competitive players in the US and Candy Crush All Stars was the ideal proposition to do so.
Campaign objectives:
- Make Candy Crush All Stars one of the most talked about mobile gaming tournaments in the US through iconic, fun and unmissable content.
- Drive an increase in player engagement and cultural relevance.
- Drive awareness of the tournament and Live Final prize pool.
Through creators, we wanted to:
- Create the perception that Candy Crush All Stars is everywhere and everyone is playing, generating FOMO and a sense of urgency for audiences to join the tournament.
- Stoke the fun, competitive spirit and thrill of competition amongst our target audience by creating surprising, thumb-stopping content.
In line with the overarching “sweet just got serious” creative ambition, we drove excitement by seamlessly injecting Candy Crush All Stars into suspenseful moments inspired by sports—on the platforms our target audience goes for inspiration and entertainment: TikTok and YouTube.
Goal: Ignite excitement for the Candy Crush All Stars in-app tournament amongst its sports-loving target audience, driving participation for a share of the historic $1,000,000 prize pool in the Live Final.
Challenge: A digital-only in-game tournament launch lacks the physical spectacle and buzz that traditional sporting events generate.
Planning Strategy:
- Core target Audience: US sporting fans
- Core Insight: Sports fans are drawn to major sporting events due to the anticipation, iconic arrival moments, and star power. To resonate with this audience, we needed to channel these elements in our campaign.
- Solution: Create a fictional, high-energy IRL "sporting arrival" to inject Candy Crush All Stars with the same thrilling atmosphere as a major sporting match. This would be amplified through strategic creator collaborations.
CREATOR STRATEGY
- Objective: Pair high-profile, energetic creators in a never-seen-before way, to generate maximum awareness and hype.
- Hero Creator Strategy: Our WWE superstar's sporting association and iconic arrivals in the ring, combined with our TikTok star's viral "arrival" videos and established audience reach, created a powerful synergy aligned with our arrival concept. This combo capitalised on celebrity appeal and the familiar 'sporting event' trope.
- Mid-Macro Creators: An additional 12 sports-focused creators and everyday competitors built upon the arrival narrative. Their bespoke "arrival" content on TikTok and YouTube, using our branded audio track, sparked FOMO around the All Stars tournament.
Successfully planning this complex production across international borders and diverse creators required precise briefing, clear timelines, and exceptional project management.
EXECUTION
With just 3 weeks to deliver the campaign, we leveraged rapid, impactful production methods whilst preserving campaign quality.
Hero Content Production: To ensure we executed the vision correctly and delivered powerful content, we travelled to Tampa to film 8 pieces of hero social content.
Our team prepared clear briefs to ensure authentic content and helped nail the SAG-compliant production shoot in just FOUR hours.
- Custom Set Design: A bespoke Candy-inspired set with a branded Candy Crush All Stars coach established the playful tone, aligning with the "sweet just got serious" tagline.
- All Stars Wardrobe: Custom outfits for our stars reinforced the arrival concept and captured sporting event extravagance.
- Cast Extras: To enhance the big game feel, we hired extras to surround our creators.
LAUNCH STRATEGY
- Launch day: To maximise impact, all content was released across YouTube Long-Form and Shorts, and TikTok on tournament launch day.
- Response creator content: The campaign was turned up a notch when a wave of creators crafted their own seriously sweet arrival moments for social, all unified by our bespoke soundtrack - which matched the brand’s existing advertising.
- Paid Amplification: 6x15” paid assets, which delivered three key messages around education, rewards and social proofing, were created. They featured in a variety of placements, including YouTube Shorts and in-feed, plus TikTok in-feed and TopView, to boost visibility.
- OOH Reach: Underscoring the campaign's scale, All Stars TikTok content dominated Times Square in NY and The Moxy LA DOOH billboards, solidifying its 'big game' feel.
Candy Crush All Stars exploded into gaming and sporting culture thanks to our all-star creator activation.
14 creators created 21 pieces of thumb-stopping, surprising content that placed fun at the heart.
- Total creator content results in 51.4M total views (organic and paid) across TikTok and YouTube vs 40M objective - that’s equivalent to 24,500 hours watched and $6.3M in earned media value
- 626K Engagements exceeding the KPI of 360K engagements by 78.9%
- 6.3% average organic YouTube engagement rate - beating our King YouTube benchmark of 3.8%
- #CandyCrushAllStars hashtag - 1.2M posts
- We surpassed View-through rate benchmarks based on last year's All Star campaign by +27%.
- 81.5% positive sentiment towards the content and its creativity. There was tons of hype in the comments due to the competition-related content.
BDB’s award-winning brand strategy has been integrated into the overarching global internal King strategy and serves as a blueprint for cross-agency collaboration.
