Our business challenge was simple – take a visceral, graphic, and terrifying 25-year survival horror franchise and introduce its newest video game installment to the TikTok generation.
Easy, right?
Capcom is undoubtedly a global video game publishing giant responsible for iconic series like Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Resident Evil is a pioneer in the survival horror genre and remains one of Capcom's most popular franchises - cumulatively shipping over 123 million units worldwide. With the first Resident Evil game dating back to 1996, the series has been beloved for decades by legions of fans. Our job was to help launch the newest mainline entry, Resident Evil Village, on TikTok (and thus introducing Resident Evil to TikTok for the first time in history).
We had three main campaign objectives for launch:
Drive mass awareness and excitement.
Foster audience participation by way of user-generated content.
Launch and grow the Resident Evil TikTok channel.
Tak Inoue, Director and Head of Brand Marketing for Capcom, revealed our driving audience insight in an interview with pop culture news website,TheGamer.com. “We discovered that a segment of our audience was gravitating to TikTok as a primary source of creative video content.”
So, we turned to TikTok for the first time in Resident Evil history.
Our strategy was to launch Resident Evil as a Creator and active member of the TikTok community. This included leveraging trending sounds, curating gameplay, participating in viral trends, and highlighting key scenes and characters - all amplified by an influencer marketing program that pointed millions of fans back to the verified brand channel.
We grew the @ResidentEvil TikTok channel from 0 to 530K+ followers in less than four months, making it one of the most subscribed and fastest growing social channels for the 25-years-running Resident Evil franchise.
Just like Resident Evil gameplay, we killed it with:
48M total organic views
8M engagements
530K subscribers
1,100 UGC posts
17% engagement rate
When Resident Evil Village hit the shelves, it sold faster than its predecessor - its worldwide shipments surpassed 5M units!
