Brawl Stars
2023-04-05
Re-Energising Audiences: The Brawl Stars DareDevil Challenge
Getting extreme sports athletes to design Brawl Stars maps? Probably a bad idea! That's exactly why we went ahead and did it...
THE CONTEXT
Brawl Stars is a dynamic game with frequent updates and a lively creator community. Every time the update is released, reviews, strategy guides, gameplay videos and other content pop up on the creators’ channels all over the world. But as the game matured, creator update coverage became more predictable and the community started to experience fatigue. So, Brawl Stars decided to rock the boat.
THE MISSION
To celebrate their ‘60s/’70s stunt show themed update, Brawl Stars wanted us to launch a challenge for creators that would break this formulaic mould of the usual update coverage, re-energising existing creators and attracting new ones to the game.
The theme of the update reflected that mindset perfectly, championing the non-conformist spirit of the ‘60s & ‘70s and dropping the spotlight on “Evel Knievel.” All packaged up in “space”-like vintage futuristic aesthetics, our job was to design a challenge to go hand in hand with this new update and get the community going.
In the short term, we needed to engage creators in our challenge and drive quality update coverage. But we didn’t want to stop there. We wanted our campaign to have a long-term effect, reigniting the love for the game in existing creators and inspiring new ones to continue covering Brawl Stars beyond the challenge.
THE STRATEGY
Our strategy took a two-pronged approach to appeal to both current Brawl Stars creators and new ones:
We found that current creators were experiencing fatigue and were concerned about the future of the game on their channel as it matured. To re-energise them, we needed to create an event that disrupted their routine and inspired them to create fresh, exciting content for their audiences.
With new creators, we had a different challenge. How could we interest them in a game they never covered before enough for them to sacrifice the time they spend playing games they know their audience loves? We needed to draw them in with an experience they couldn’t miss out on, before converting them into long term Brawl Stars creators.
A core piece of insight was that there’s a whole thrill-seeking culture brewing amongst Gen Z, from the nostalgia & Tik-Tok-fuelled skate resurgence to Chase Tag’s YouTube popularity. Our two audiences were also absolutely echoing this trend; and so we realised that our campaign had to capture the chaos, skill, and unpredictable action that attracts thrill-seekers. This led us to our campaign proposition…
BRING THE THRILLS
We wanted creators to come for the thrills and stay for the game. Based on this proposition, we developed a creative wrapper: “DAREDEVIL TOURNAMENT.”
This season, we wanted to match the energy and excitement of Brawl Stars with real-world daredevils who would create a series of challenge maps for our content creators. Not only would this bring extra hype to the update, but it would allow us to engage with other thrill-seeking communities.
Our hand-picked group of Daredevils not only appealed to our existing fanbase, but had the potential to pull in a new audience that had yet to discover the excitement of playing Brawl Stars. This would allow us to grow our creator pool and attract their communities too.
We partnered with three daredevils and influencers: Pro Parkour & Chase Tag Athlete Charles Poujade, Pro Skateboarder & Stuntman William Spencer, and motorsport team Stunt Freaks Team. Together with BS developers, they created special maps designed around their sports and recorded videos challenging BS creators to test their skills.
We also sent 5 top-tier BS creators boxes with invitations and a challenge to participate in a Brawl Stars tournament alongside their chosen non-Brawl Star creator teammate. They recorded unpacking videos inviting their audience to watch them battle each other and we ended up with five teams of 2 creators each. By challenging BS creators to team up with non-BS creators, we overcame the barrier that we would have faced if we tried to invite the latter directly.
During the tournament, the teams competed on the three maps, created by our daredevils and posted the gameplay and their reactions on their respective channels. From the research, we found that BS fans love seeing genuine reactions from their beloved creators especially when they collaborate with each other as it creates unique chemistry and unpredictable moments. This insight drove us to make this a team competition and helped us take the campaign’s performance further.
Results
The Daredevil Challenge was a complete success. We inspired 35 new and existing influencers to develop dynamic social content that reached over 11 million total views. Beyond the numbers, the quality of the community response was staggering; the tournament generated lots of comments from excited community members, so much engagement for the videos, and plenty of buzz.
Not a bad stunt to pull off.