King’s Luken Aragon talks 10 years of holding Sweet Crush on high | Pocket Gamer.biz

Sweet Crush Saga has develop into one of many largest and hottest video games on the cell market. So, not solely is it necessary that builders make sure that content material is stored contemporary for gamers, however advertising performs an important position in serving to to retain followers and make sure that new ones proceed to catch the bug.

We caught up with Sweet Crush Saga’s VP of promoting, Luken Aragon, to debate successful on the Cell Recreation Awards in one of the best advertising/PR class and the secrets and techniques behind Sweet Crush Saga’s successful advertising technique.

Pocketgamer.biz: Congrats in your award! What do you assume put King on the high of the pile and winners within the MGA Finest Advertising/PR class?

Luken Aragon: On the coronary heart of our Sweet Crush 10 Years of Enjoyable marketing campaign was the celebration of an enormous milestone for us at King, that Sweet Crush Saga turned ten years previous – one which we’re all immensely happy with. Each space of the enterprise got here collectively to mark the event, creating a really built-in marketing campaign that showcased all the things that makes Sweet Crush Saga so particular, the individuals behind the sport, the sport itself and, in fact, our gamers.

Inform us about your exercise this final yr celebrating Sweet Crush Saga’s anniversary?

We needed to have fun ten years of Sweet Crush Saga in a means that lives as much as the enjoyment and playfulness that the sport brings to the world. An ambition of this scale required cross-functional collaboration with media, social, model, PR, company communications, and recreation groups with a excessive degree of integration.

In-game, we launched a lot of new options to please our gamers, together with a revamp of our music and audio for the primary time because the recreation launched, in addition to an unique in-game occasion, ‘Sweet Cup’, in partnership with pop star Meghan Trainor.

As a part of the partnership, Meghan Trainor launched her new music video, “Made You Look,” solely in-game for twenty-four hours earlier than it was out there anyplace else. She additionally recorded all eight in-game lexicons and was candified to affix Tiffi for a full in-game integration.

In October, we ran an thrilling creator-lead marketing campaign, Sweet Cave, an initiative to provide aspiring content material creators the prospect to win a creator fund that enabled them to carry their Sweet Crush Saga fantasies to life. Six budding content material creators have been invited to pitch their wildest Sweet Crush themed fantasies to a panel of humorous judges.

We introduced the magic of the sport to the surface world too, launching a visible out of house marketing campaign with a sequence of billboards within the UK and US, highlighting on a regular basis conditions the place patterns, just like ones you’d see in Sweet Crush Saga, appeared, reinforcing that wherever you’re, you possibly can nonetheless play.

Lastly, to conclude our tenth Anniversary Celebrations and mark Nationwide Sweet Day within the US, we produced a blinding drone present with 500 drones recreating the Sweet Crush gameplay within the sky throughout the Hudson River in New York.

What do you assume is essential to a profitable advertising marketing campaign?

Plenty of issues, all the things from the preliminary planning phases to the ultimate execution. Nevertheless, the success of any advertising marketing campaign comes all the way down to individuals – each the gifted entrepreneurs who carry it to life and the individuals it reaches. At King, our mission is Making the World Playful, which exhibits via our advertising efforts. We consider that in at all times placing enjoyable on the forefront of what we do, we’ll efficiently stimulate emotion and set up resonance with our viewers, leading to long run affinity and engagement.

What sort of planning goes into creating the Sweet Crush 10 Years of Enjoyable marketing campaign? How many individuals throughout which nations?

It’s an enormous effort, however a rewarding one, with our gifted workers persevering with to be the important thing to our success. Whereas we don’t give particular numbers on every crew, I can let you know we’ve got round 2000 workers throughout the King enterprise, with places of work in London, Berlin, Barcelona, Stockholm, Malmö, Malta, Dublin, New York, and San Francisco.

What makes King totally different? How would you describe the corporate and its tradition?

It could sound cliche to say this, nevertheless it actually is our individuals. They assist form a tradition that could be a particular mix of creativity, ardour, and collaboration. Being a Kingster isn’t solely what you do, it’s additionally the way you do it. This enables everybody to thrive, really feel proud to belong, maintain one another accountable and craft good video games of mass attraction that carry moments of magic to on a regular basis life.

If there was one factor you possibly can change about cell – the platforms, the shops, the video games – what would you alter to make everybody’s expertise even higher?

At King, we at all times put the participant first, creating new content material that retains gamers engaged and coming again for extra. Now we have an bold imaginative and prescient for the way forward for cell video games and thru our continued funding in AI & ML, we’ll proceed to reinforce and evolve our enterprise and iconic video games to make sure we delight King’s thousands and thousands of gamers much more. That shall be thrilling to discover!

Why do you assume a recreation like Sweet Crush is so widespread and properly liked?

Gamers are on the coronary heart of all the things we do at King. The Sweet Crush crew has labored exhausting during the last 10 years to repeatedly innovate, holding issues contemporary for brand new and current gamers by including new content material, options and in-game occasions. All the things from the sport’s interface to the free-to-play, match-three puzzle design have helped Sweet Crush keep its standing as one of the performed cell video games yr in and yr out. We look ahead to doing the identical for the following 10 years.

What’s subsequent from you guys? Something you’ve got bought developing which you could share with us?

Whereas we’ve got nothing to announce at the moment, and might’t reveal something upcoming, we’re at all times engaged on new content material for our reside franchises growing a targeted pipeline of latest video games, all to shock and delight our gamers. Sweet Crush Saga simply had a Music Season with a collaboration with the Jonas Brothers, and bought them ‘candified’, in addition to debuting their new tracks “Summer season Child” and “Sail Away” solely for twenty-four hours earlier than being out there to stream anyplace else.