By the end of May 2017, one game dominated the entire mobile gaming market in China. The game is call “King of Gory” which is essentially a mobile version of League of Legends or DOTA for those of your gamers out there.
KOG now has more than 200 million registered users and more than 70 million daily active users. In the first quarter of 2017, it made about 2 billion Yuan in gross revenue, an equivalent to the Weibo’s net revenue for the fiscal year of 2016. Users consumed 16.6 billion minutes of game time per month. The game reaches a penetration of 23.9 percent in the video game industry. In other words, 1.2 out of every 5 people who has the mobile game experience has played Kings of Glory. Because the word “glory” and “poison” has the similar pronunciation in Chinese and people are apt to be addicted to this game, Kings of Glory is also called “Poison for Dead”.
According to a report from SuperData, with the revenue in June reaching 150 million USD, Kings of Glory received the champion in the ranking list for the Revenue of Mobile Platform Game.
The game is so popular that many Chinese gamers are now obsessive with it. And because the word “glory” and “poison” has the similar pronunciation in Chinese, people in China are now calling the game “Poison for Dead” instead of Kings of Glory.
Chinese gamer plays the game so much that in July 2, 2017, Kings of Glory started limiting children under the age of 12 to one hour of play time per day and Children aged 12 to 18 to two hours game time per day.
Why Is King of Glory so Popular
Of course, there is no one definitive answer to this question.
A lot of different factors contribute to the success of Kings of Glory. First, Tencent was smart enough to take a working concept and turn it into a mobile version that is portable. Second, Tencent got in on the right time due to the rapid growth in demand for the 4G mobile network and the growth in Mobile E-Sport gaming.
But apart from good timing and turning a proven concept into a different medium, there was something else that contributed to the success of King of Glory and that is Live Streaming.
For your non-gamers out there, this may be hard to understand. Do people really watch other people play video game live?
The answer is… of course!
Twitch.tv which is the most popular video live streaming platform has build an entire business on gamers watching other gamers play video games live. It was sold to Amazon for 970 million in 2014.
In China similar live streaming platform also exist and due to the social aspect of King of Glory it would only be wise for Tencent to leverage of these platform as one of the mean method of marketing the game and here is how they did it…
Alignment with KOL
To really attract more gamers to play King of Glory, Tencent really made a huge effort to recruit verified live streamers at the early stage with various of live streaming platforms. But of course, part of the challenge of working with KOL live streamer is how do you get them to keep playing your game.
To solve this problem Tencent create an incentive system for live streamer to King of Glory. Basically, the more you stream the game the more rewards you will be able to receive. These rewords can be free game packs, or even cash payouts.
This reward system quickly grew in popularity amongst streamer. In fact, it was so popular that the 3 largest live streaming platforms Huya, Douyu, and Chushou all decided create their own reward system to attract more King of Glory streamers to stream on their platform. This led to a frenzy battle between all the live streaming platforms, poaching and competing to steal the most popular King of Glory streamers to stream on their platform.
As a result, Hai Shi who was an average King of Glory streamer become the top #1 streamer of Kings of Glory in as little as 6 months and earned an annual income more than 10 million Yuan.
This clever strategy of rewarding the streamer for both playing the game and streaming the created a symbiotic relationship between cultivating King of Glory live streamers and the growth of the game. More streamer will want to stream King of Glory because they see the success of other streamers and the more streamer’s stream King of Glory the more popular the game becomes.
eSports Events and Tournaments
With a bag filled with live streatmers now streaming King of Glory. Tencent decided to cooperate with live streaming platforms to launch professional King of Glory tournaments like KPL, TGA and QGC.
In the September 2016, Tencent held the first KPL tournament, with a bonus prize pool of 1.85 million Yuan, which larger than any prize pool of similar game tournaments at the time and by 2017, the total awards of KPL has increased to 2.2 million Yuan. On top of the prize pool the winning team will also gain right to drive home a brand-new BMW.
Apart from the official tournaments, Tencent also begin to host their own Kings of Glory events. For example, in 2016, Huya held an event called Huya Stars League that featured many well-known King of Glory teams. The event was extremely well received and was exposed to more than 10 million people all across China.
Unprecedented Portability for Streamers
Unlike the PC game Live which is confronted with a lot of restrictions of when and where you can stream. Mobile games can be broadcasted almost anywhere with a stable internet connection.
On top of that, the game because the game itself was highly addictive and playable, many popular mobile streamers who never played the game would naturally start stream and share contents about the game. For example, Dojiao a Weibo KOL with more than 500,000 followers shared a video on his Weibo titled “Play Kings of Glory with Foreign Friends” in June, 2017. And in as little as 5 months, this video has more than 6 million views.
The Live Streaming Revolution
Bill Gate said “Content is King” and just a little over a decade ago with the raise of the world wide web content has become abound. For the first time ever any one can Online Live Show is another major revolution for content productivity. The first content revolution took place more than a decade ago when UGC (User-Generated Content) has just emerged. At that time, online community like Sina Blog broke the monopoly position of web portals, sharing the market with web portals.
Nowadays, UGC has evolved from blog post to mobile video live. What’s more, the thriving development of mobile video live has broken the monopoly of video portals. 2016 can be said to be the first year of commercial application of online live broadcast. With the participation of celebrities, famous stars and brand companies, a huge capital poured into the live broadcast industry and a large number of mobile video live platforms has made great progress.
How Other Chinese Brands are Using Live Streaming
The user of live streaming or broadcasting in China as a way to promote and market your products or services is not limited to mobile gaming or gaming only. Many large brand’s in China has begun to explore live streaming as one of their marketing channels.
For example, in order to promote the 6.44-inch ultra-large screen phone (Xiaomi MAX), Xiaomi started a live broadcasting event on Bilibilitv called “Mi Max Super-durable Boring Standby Live”, just to show the battery life of the Mi MAX.
During this live streaming campaign, Mi Max spent 17 days and 21 hours on air, received more than 317 million comments, and 2,238 phones were given away as part of the contest. The show even had more than 10,000 viewers in the middle of the.
This campaign was proven to be a huge success for Xiaomi. The Xiomi Max smartphone gained a lot of exposure through this live show alone. Not only did Xiaomi’s popularity and brand awareness grew, but also the number of users at Bb increased. It is a win-win situation for both the company and the live streaming platform.
Another good example of using live streaming for marketing is Durex in China. Durex started a Live show called “Durex Hundred People Sex Live” as a hoax, since the actually show reflects nothing of the title of the show. But regardless, people enjoyed the show and watch it as entertainment.
As you can see using live streaming as a form of marketing is becoming more and more popular in China
How to Use Live Streaming To Promote Your Brand in China
Is Live Streaming Right For Your Brand?
If you’re serious about adopting live streaming as part of your marketing in China then the first thing any brand should do is to evaluate whether live streaming is suitable for your products or services.
According to Tencent APP ranking list the majority of Live Streaming App users are male under the age of 30. To be more specific, 66.8% of the users using live platforms are male and only 33.2% are female. 42.7% of the users are under the age of 19 and 40.4% are between the age of 20 to 29.
And this is apparent if we just take a closer look at the type of contents these young viewers like to consume on these streaming platforms. 39.8% of the viewers said their favorite contents are video game related, followed by singing and chatting, then dancing, outdoor activities, science and technology, life, sports, and so on.
Live streaming is still in it’s infancy, the type of brand, product, and services that will be appealing is still pretty limited. As a brand considering live streaming as a medium of marketing, you should really carefully analysis your own product attribute and target market first.
For example, if your brand sells high-end luxury product such as high-end cars, real estate properties, or high end apparels. And you would like to get the attention of high incoming individual then live streaming may not be the best choice of marketing for you.
It will be very difficult for you to find channels or streamers that are going to have the attention of the audience that are capable of purchasing your products or services. Even if the streaming platform has the right channels or streamer for brand you’ll still run into a problem of visibility.
In order to improve the user’s experience, most live streaming apps will usually only feature the most popular streamers upon opening up their app. This makes it very difficult for you to draw enough attention to your brand unless you corporate with a famous KOL streamer.
However, that said, live streaming is still young and it’s still growing. Maybe in 3 to 5 years more and more people will start viewing contents through live streaming platforms that are going to be the right target audience for your brand.
Choosing the Right Platform
Currently the live streaming platforms are really divided into two categories. First type of live streaming platform focusses on video games and eSports for example Douyu and Huya. The second type of streaming platform focus more on the KOL or individuals and live sports broadcasting (Huajiao and Yingke).
The first type of platform is usually going to be suitable for brands that are targeting male users who are under the age of 30. If you’re looking to promote video game products, video game related product or services, or product that is relevant to that age group and audience then you’ll find a lot of success on these live streaming platforms.
The second type of platform houses more individuals and they are usually visually appealing. You must be very careful when choosing to market your brands on these types of platforms. While a broader array of products may be appealing to the audiences of these platform you must also take into account the reputation of the platform it self.
Not all live streaming platforms in China are created equal. For example, Douyu and the other live streaming platforms we’ve mentioned in the article so far are highly reputable live streaming platforms, they have enough audiences that they no longer need to use trick or eye-catching streamers to draw traffic and attention to their platforms.
On the flip side, many newly emerging live streaming platforms will rely on attention grabbing streamers, and cheap trickery to attract more viewers to their platforms. This causes two problems for a brand marketing on these platforms.
One, often time these platforms will allow cam girls to stream overly sexual contents just to attract more viewers to the platform, and as a brand do you really want your brand to be associated with that? Probably not…
But most importantly, since these platforms are using low quality contents to attract viewers, often these viewers will either not take these platforms seriously to purchase your products or they simply won’t have the money for it anyway.
Choosing the Right Streamers
At the end of the day one of the most important factor to succeeding with live streaming is not the platform, but the streamer KOLs you work with. I’m sure you already know this, but of course as with many things in life this is easier say than done.
Due to the growing popularity of live streaming, many live streaming platforms are no battling each other to recruit the best streamers to stream on their platform. As a result, the price of working with the right streamer for you brand campaign has also gone off the roft.
These popular streamers are often what most brand want to work with because they have a strong ability to advertise and sell your product in a very short period of time but they’re expensive to work with. On top of that, these streamers also have a very limited reach in terms of their audience and influence. This is because most streamer will usually domain one specific category or channel and gain a lot of influence in that area but none in any other areas.
Comparatively, on certain popular live streaming platforms you’ll from time to time see very famous Chinese celebrities, movie stars, and pop stars who are also living streaming to increase their own “popularity and celebrity status” through live broadcast. And because their celebrity status they will usually have a broader influence and appeal to a wider audience.
For example, in 2016, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Technology, personally promoted Xiaomi’s new drone to the public in the form of live broadcast. The show was about an hour long, he was charming, funny, and personally answered all the crazy questions from the viewers.
With more than 1 million viewers, this broadcast was a success. The show allowed Lei Jun build a strong connection with all the viewers and saved millions in marketing & advertisement dollars for Xiaomi.
Lastly, it is worth to mention that certain live streaming shows such as talk shows, reality style shows or any other variety shows are also extremely popular amongst viewers and a great opportunity for brands to gain exposures through advertisements.
There are way too much that can be covered here on finding and attracting KOLs or live Streamers. If you’re interested in learning more about find and working with KOLs in China have a look at our: The Definitive Guide to KOL Marketing in China Part2: Where & Compensation
Plan Your Contents
Having top to cooperate with top notch streamers is certainly a great asset to running a successful live streaming campaign, but the content you are going to produce during these live broadcasting is also critically important.
And, if your brand is seriously thinking of attracting more customers using live streaming, then you’ll need to consider the following questions:
- Are the live streaming contents congruent with your brand image?
- Is your content interesting, entertaining, fun, or engaging, most importantly is it going to keep the attention of the viewers all the way till the end?
- What kind of emotion do you want your viewers to feel, or what kind of experience do you want your viewers to experience during the live show?
Of course, to be truly successful with live streaming, your brand should have a long-term content plan for live streaming. But of course, producing long fresh, interesting, and engaging contents over and over again can be a real challenge for most brands.
On top of that recently Chinese authorities has really setup their supervision on live streaming platforms. Making sure only legitimate, quality, and health contents are being broadcast to the viewers from these platforms. As a brand you should never attempt to create content just to grab attention of the viewers and risking being penalized by the Chinese authorities.
In the west live streaming platform such as Snapchat, Instagram stories, and Facebook live are already becoming one of the best way for brands to market their product or services and as the same time connect with their audiences. In China, live streaming is still in its infancy, but growing rapid and in many way even faster and more popular. For now using live streaming as a medium of marketing may not be suitable for all industry or brands, but as live streaming become more as the standard of entertainment for the general public, brands will feel remorse to miss this opportunity.
