When a brand is lucky enough to partner with BTS - arguably the biggest pop sensation in the world - one might think the marketing would be as simple as showing their faces next to a product. But when DevSisters came to us with their Cookie Run: Kingdom x BTS partnership looking to accomplish record downloads through their highest profile partnership to date, we discovered that there’s a right way to BTS and a wrong way to BTS.
BTS and brand deals are a match made in marketing heaven with the group doing dozens a year, but the success of those partnerships aren’t necessarily guaranteed. Through our research we discovered that the BTS Army, their loyal and passionate fan base which sources say is over 90M strong worldwide, won’t simply flock to support whatever the group is endorsing. To win their support, brands need to speak to them in the right way - as a fellow fan and member of the community.
With this in mind, we set out to craft the perfect marriage between Cookie Run: Kingdom and BTS with one goal in mind - ignite fans of BTS Army and CRK via a true love letter to both fandoms that show that we aren’t simply putting the BTS boys on an ad. Instead, our piece needed to communicate how truly excited we were about this once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between two iconic South Korean brands.
Launching an extensive collaborative campaign between BTS and Cookie Run: Kingdom (CRK) required something really special. To cut through anticipatory chatter, amplify and drive further social buzz, and immerse the BTS fan army into the CRK community we developed and produced a truly epic launch trailer.
To achieve this, we created a custom, 3D animated trailer that blended cinematic content with exceptional storytelling that established the campaign narrative of BTS performing a concert in CRK during their Braver Together Tour. Since CRK had only done one custom animated trailer before, we knew that fans would be excited to see something new, especially one that incorporated the massively popular BTS into the narrative.
For our trailer, we showcased the game’s scale and featured familiar characters like Ginger Brave in a whole new light. We even reflected the villains’ skin update! But most important of all, we embedded dozens of BTS Easter eggs into the trailer to help seamlessly integrate both fandoms. Astute fans were surprised and delighted with things like like:
The trailer was immensely popular, earning over a thousand positive comments on YouTube and reaching over 7 million views in just two days! Fans were extremely excited to see the collaboration between BTS and CRK come to life and were thrilled to discover all the Easter eggs and insider details we incorporated into the trailer. The incredible art and animation we created from a fan-centric perspective proved to be immensely successful, helping increase game sales and growing fandoms for both BTS and CRK.
