Why Candy Crush Soda Saga leaned in to Meta to reach new and old players
The Media Plan
Candy Crush Soda Saga, the sequel to the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga, celebrated its 10th anniversary in October and the brand has been looking to adjust its positioning to drive new audiences, particularly via social media.
To do so, it turned to social and content agency Eight&Four to help drive social engagement and app downloads.
“Three brand truths were evident,” said Chloe Singleton, Eight&Four’s channel director. “Soda is turning 10, they’ve relaunched their brand positioning and they’re often confused with their bigger sister game, Candy Crush Saga.”
Not only was Eight&Four tasked with developing an “exciting celebration” for the brand given its anniversary, “we needed to ensure it was relevant for existing and new audiences while pushing characterisation and in-game experiences as a reason to play”, Singleton explained.
Two channels for two segments
So Eight&Four designed a social media plan focused on “content matched to specific audiences”: both the “golden cohort” of existing Soda players (predominantly a female, aged 35-plus audience) and a potential new, younger group.
“For the golden cohort, our goal was to continue engaging them with ‘cosy gaming’ activations for those who had ‘lapsed’,” explained said. “For their new, younger audience, our goal was to recruit them with ‘community connection’ experiences.”
The paid and owned media campaign launched on Facebook and Instagram; Facebook was viewed as the golden cohort channel (“the Soda [Facebook] page is very established, with 5m fans from around the world”), whereas Instagram was viewed as the “growth” channel, where the game’s potential new audiences are.
Soda only recently created an account on Instagram, which the agency was also hoping to boost. Singleton added that future campaign roll-outs “could potentially see the launch of Soda on TikTok”.
Activations included the creation of branded augmented-reality filters, interactive story posts, promoted content and the use of micro-influencers.
According to Singleton, the goal was to use Soda‘s 10th anniversary to “drive brand visibility, push social engagement, increase positive sentiment and increase followers to our newly launched Instagram account”. KPIs considered span native paid metrics like impressions, unique reach and viewership, impact on follower counts and social engagement through comments or reactions.
Most importantly, to understand the campaign’s success, Eight&Four will be looking to measure the number of app reactivations and new downloads among its golden cohort and growth audiences across the entire 10th anniversary campaign period.
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