Issue #112 - Candy Crush on TikTok

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Welcome to Good TikTok Creative!

We are Simon Andrews and Anthony McGuire, two people who have been working in marketing, advertising, and media for decades.

Find Simon and Anthony on Twitter.

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TikTok Case Study = Candy Crush

Simon’s Take:

It’s very likely you have downloaded the cult mobile game Candy Crush at some time. It has had over 1 Billion downloads, so sits forgotten at the back of the Home Screen.

It’s very unlikely you have ever paid them for the candy that lets you miss the annoying holds that feature so often. Very few people do pay and these whales are obviously highly valued. 

Fun fact - answering a government committee the CEO of King ( the studio behind Candy Crush) explained that one user spent £750 on candy in one day. The background was the user was a regular player and used a bonus to take advantage of a promotion to buy candy that would last her a year.

To celebrate 10 years King have turned to TikTok to celebrate and have an interesting campaign using a TikTok effect - which converts sounds made by users into candy and creates a candy song.

The ads and organic posts feature Asian talent, specifically the Korean group Maytree - suggesting the campaign emanates from Korea perhaps? They have used a few influencers and ran Top View ads, using a range of hashtags 

I guess the intention is to increase salience of a well known game and hope that translates into more usage — reminding people that they enjoyed the game and get them playing again.

Looking at the low views on organic posts the campaign has yet to take off. Is the problem that the candy song just isn’t fun? There is so much compelling content on TikTok activity has to spark quickly of it risks being overlooked.

Anthony’s Take:

Candy Crush is one of the most successful mobile games of all time, measuring both downloads and revenue. However, is Candy Crush relevant today? While it seems that Candy Crush peaked in 2015 with 327 Million Users and $1.3 Billion in revenue, in 2021 the app had 255 Million users and generated $1.2 Billion in revenue. So clearly, Candy Crush is still a massive app.

In this campaign, Candy Crush creates a theme around music, giving people an opportunity to create sounds using a custom Candy Crush filter. People are encouraged to turn on a filter that has Candy Crush candies pop out of the screen when they open their mouth. I’m not sure how the exact mechanic works, but each candy seems to provide a different sound effect.

So we see different creators having fun experimenting with this new sound and trying to create songs. It’s a cute little challenge that was probably aimed at the whole ‘musical’ theme that’s fairly unique to TikTok. The #candycrush10 hashtag has received 5 Billion views and looks to be fairly successful so far. This entire campaign is in commemoration of Candy Crush’s 10 Year Anniversary, so there are not many other clear call-to-actions like ‘download the app’ or ‘go buy some candies.’

Maybe the campaign is purely to create a fun challenge to drive awareness around Candy Crush’s 10th Anniversary, which would indirectly make more people download the app? I’m not entirely sure it’s fair to say that this campaign is memorable. I’m a bit confused about the positioning - is this for musicians? What benefit do I get from creating these sounds? - but overall it captures attention.

Regardless, Candy Crush has achieved billions of video views through this campaign, which might be enough to consider this a success.

When I think about mobile gaming companies, my first thought goes to direct response advertising on Facebook and Instagram, which has been one of the main growth engines for mobile games. In this case, perhaps Candy Crush is looking to TikTok as a tool to drive mass reach and brand awareness. And maybe in the future, we can see Candy Crush experimenting with TikTok to drive more conversions.

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