The Sims FreePlay, Part One
The art of
Immersion
The science of
Conversion
When I joined EA Mobile in early 2011, I was an associate project manger in its Creative Services division. When I left the company three years later, I was a senior product marketing manager supporting its highest-grossing core games.
Between those career arcs, my success managing the creation of lifecycle marketing for mobile and social games led to me becoming CS’s first Content Producer. This role was an outgrowth of ground-breaking campaigns for game launches and updates that generated stellar KPIs.
The campaigns that helped earn me the first of two EA promotions were in support of updates to The Sims Freeplay mobile game.
The relationship I forged with the game studio matured to the point that I was given free reign to concept and produce worldwide marketing campaigns in 12 languages for content-rich game updates.
I had recently read WIRED editor Frank Rose’s book “The Art of Immersion,” about how the pyrotechnic collision of technology and storytelling are continually reshaping entertainment. The book’s diverse cast of disruptors included James Camron, the creators of Lost, Trent Reznor and, as fate would have it, The Sims’ father Will Wright.
The art
Under my guidance, creatives in Los Angeles and Romania had been iterating for several months on episodic game marketing campaigns with narratives and tactics that stitched together disparate content drops into a cohesive storyline with depth befitting of the gameplay experience it was promoting.
These outputs scratched the surface of Rose’s formula for the future of interactive marketing, one brimming with non-linear narratives native to the internet, capable of bridging and manipulating myriad forms of media, actively encouraging consumer participation, and embracing narrative transformations linked to user-generated content and, yes, storylines.
A quote from Rose’s account of The Sims was etched in the back of my mind:
“Instead of playing by someone else’s script, you got to write your own.”
The first script that inspired me to rewrite EA’s mobile marketing playbook was The Sims FreePlay’s Toddlers update in May 2012.
The science
I was by no means starting from scratch.
As a newly-designated content producer, I had established content calendars for early free-to-play mobile games like Theme Park that planned out everything from content updates to flash sales.
The Sims FreePlay’s fluid meta-story and content additions — and the player goals and challenges they spurred — required high levels of planning and coordination to ensure cohesion across in-app, web, broadcast, email, and — increasingly — social channels. Telemetry data from the game and KPIs from its paid advertising and cross-promotional campaigns were also evaluated.
From a metrics standpoint, the “love” update coinciding with Valentine’s Day followed by the “Marriage & Babies” update had both been big. The game’s product managers had even bigger expectations for Sim tots.
So, I doubled down on creative, orchestrating a campaign split into two phases.
In Phase One, players in English-speaking territories were presented with interstitial ads that hinted at the update and seamlessly linked them to the game’s Facebook page, where they were able to view a :15 teaser trailer on YouTube and return back to the game. A Push Notification also reinforced this message.
In Phase Two, localized interstitials, Push Notifications, and In-app Notifications simultaneously informed players: “It’s Almost Toddler Time!" They were again driven to Facebook, where it was confirmed that toddlers were, in fact, on the way.
The results
Let’s just say Headquarters took notice.
The update generated $2.2M in in-app-purchase revenue, nearly double what the Valentine's Day Update earned three months prior.
The in-app interstitials for the entire campaign saw an average CTR of 8.3% (compared to the then industry average of 0.5%).
The Phase One campaign generated 11,083 new Facebook likes – 83 times the then average – and 11,243 views in 3 days
The Phase Two campaign netted 6,016 new likes in 48 hours…
and boasted a record-setting virility rate of 6.14% – at a time when most posts averaged slightly over 0.5%.
The impact
The seed-amplification model became a springboard for innovation a month later with the ‘Social’ update marketing campaign.