The Walking Dead: No Man's Land is the official mobile game of AMC's hit TV series and cult phenomenon, The Walking Dead from the leading mobile game developer, Next Games.
The overall objectives were to drive awareness with target audiences, increase positive social sentiment and drive installs of the game from U.S. and global audiences. To achieve this Next Games partnered with the leading influencer marketing agency, Mediakix, to promote their mobile gaming app to a primary target audience of males 25+ years old.
Next Games tapped Mediakix to develop influencer marketing strategy and creative for the game. Mediakix concepted, strategized, and executed an original campaign with creative content and themes tied to the game and storyline starring top YouTubers including Lele Pons, Anwar Jibawi, Rudy Mancuso, and Grant Thompson. The YouTubers published their content in June and July of 2017.
Mediakix worked with each YouTuber to script and produce creative video content that tied the game's storyline and themes into each individual videos. The videos included comedic skits and skills/tools needed to survive and fend off imminent zombie attacks and organically showcased feature gameplay, highlight missions, and unlocking special characters from the hit TV series.
To capitalize on AMC's record-breaking cable TV show buzz and zombie culture popularity, the team at Mediakix crafted a viral campaign with top YouTubers that tapped into audiences beyond just gaming to strategically reach Next Games' target demographics.
To achieve global reach and drive as many downloads as possible, the team at Mediakix identified a selection of consistently high-performing YouTubers across a myriad of video categories. Mediakix analyzed trends, formats, and engagement levels of their most popular types of content to help determine and craft creative content styles and angles for the campaign videos that would drive the highest reach for the campaign.
Mediakix worked with each YouTuber to ensure each piece of sponsored content would naturally integrate the game and its characters while also showcasing actual mobile game play footage to meet Next Games' KPIs and objectives.
The team at Mediakix orchestrated four sponsored YouTube videos and social amplification across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter serving to organically create a strategic and methodical "blitz" of highly-engaging Walking Dead and zombie apocalypse-related media served to global audiences. Within hours, Next Games' mobile game marketing campaign became a worldwide trending event.
The campaign successfully ran with exceptional content. The YouTubers published their videos on their channel with no boosting or paid media tohelp support or further distribute the videos. All of the views were organic. Three of the videos ranked in the top 10 of YouTube's global trending leaderboard. This is a rare and remarkable achievement for sponsored video content on YouTube.
Next Games' The Walking Dead: No Man's Land marketing campaign achieved exceptional results. The campaign achieved over 23 million organic video views across YouTube.
The total social reach (total followers across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) was over 46 million. Additionally, there were nearly 10 million organic video views on Instagram and nearly 1.4 million likes, comments, and shares across social.
As a result, several of Next Games' influencer videos received viral traction on YouTube's Trending leaderboard including Rudy Mancuso's "The Walking Dead: No Man's Land by Rudy Mancuso & Anwar Jibawi" (#2 in June), Anwar Jibawi's "The Walking Dead: No Man's Land by Anwar Jibawi & Lele Pons (#8 in June), and Grant Thompson's "DIY: Make Swamp Water Drinkable" (#9 in July).
YouTube video views - over 23 million
Video reach (total YouTube subscribers) - 24 million
Video likes (total YouTube video likes) - 500K+
Social reach (100% of total social followers for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) - 46 million
Social impressions (Twitter: 10% of followers + Facebook: 20% of followers + Instagram: 50% of followers) - nearly 19 million
Social engagements (all comments, shares, and likes across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) - nearly 1.4 million
