Cat-alyzing engagement
The Sims FreePlay’s Social update hijinks and impacts
When I joined EA Mobile in 2011, I couldn't have imagined that within a year, a marketing campaign I spearheaded for The Sims FreePlay would become a watershed moment that rewrote the company’s freemium game marketing playbook.
The May 2012 Toddlers update campaign revealed how strategic, data-driven storytelling can achieve stellar marketing outcomes across digital platforms.
A month later, the “Social” update elevated the approach, demonstrating how omni-channel marketing — synchronized creative and messaging across all touch points — can establish a unified brand experience and amplify campaign impact.
The update introduced new cooperative gameplay features: a “party boat” requiring Facebook Connect for social rewards, and a leaderboard to spur competition; plus two pièces de résistance — a nightclub and Sim cats.* This content offered vast storytelling potential, which I sought to maximize through a well-orchestrated campaign that unfolded in synchronized phases.
Here’s my account of the origin and orchestration of the campaign — and its impacts — during a 2018 appearance on The Connected Marketing Show.
Defining characteristics
A strategy shift
At its core, the campaign sought to treat the update with the same “all-cylinders” approach as a game launch: refreshing submission creative and messaging tactics on app stores **, and carrying that new visual and voice through to in-app, social, broadcast and email channels.
The tease-amplify approach of the Toddlers update was applied to greater effect. The campaign unfurled as if the Social update was an episodic TV premiere, with carefully-staged content reveals that built anticipation and encouraged player participation.
Invigorating interludes
Each campaign beat was designed to keep players invested over time, just as a TV show’s producers do between episodes of a new season.
With several “wow” factors at play, it was especially important to keep designers and writers laser-focused on aspects that, data suggested, would spur engagement and retention, drivers of monetization.
They became the heroes of content production efforts shifting into overdrive.
Immersive storytelling
A Push Notification asked players:
“Who’s ready to party with friends? Get a sneak peek of our newest update…”
As soon as players launched the app, an In-app Notification encouraged them to tap over to the game’s Facebook page to view a YouTube teaser trailer about the “socially inspiring” update. Dynamic loading screens and banner ads with nightclub visuals provided the same calls to action. The game’s six Sim cat varieties were the closing act of the teaser trailer.
Tease, then satisfy
The carefully choreographed media bursts across interconnected digital channels transformed the update teasers into a narrative experience that heightened community excitement.
And then the update campaign — with the tagline “Party On!” — simultaneously announced across all touch points that it was time for players to “hit the nightclub” and join their Sims FreePlay-ing friends on a Party Boat…or “hang out with these party animals”, the Sim cats.
Let players in on the fun
Sim cat fun was just beginning.
At the tail end of the update trailer, players were encouraged to visit Facebook to view a third update trailer devoted to the feline friends. Twitter broadcast the same message.
Meanwhile, Push Notifications promoting Sim cats were triggered, as were in-app notifications and loading screens that also linked to Facebook.
As the update narrative focused on raising Sim cats, the marketing campaign leaned deep into meme culture and user-generated content, something the CS content writers had been angling to incorporate into marketing for a while.
Here’s an account from one of them.
Players were invited to compete in a daily “LOL cat” meme contest featuring any of the Sim cats — premium in-app purchase items — photographed from within the came and captioned.
Each day, one lucky winner’s meme was broadcast in-game and on social media.
The results
The Social update campaign maximized the potential of game content through a cohesive narrative that bridged the gameplay experience with its marketing.
By allowing players’ imaginations to run wild and rewarding them for participating in a contest showcasing their creativity, it drove peak engagement and turned players into brand ambassadors.
The results were nothing short of spectacular. New benchmarks for marketing success had been set.
Within weeks, nearly 60,000 virtual cats were purchased in the game, including the ultra high-end Robocat for $80. That worked out to nearly $700K spent on Sim cats.
The June 13th Social update YouTube teaser trailer promoted in the game and on social media reached over 100K and generated 2.5K likes on Facebook. The update trailer a week later, in which the cats were the last act, spread like wildfire to Facebook and Twitter.
Notable KPIs
- $2M+ in revenue gained, with weekly earnings rising to a record $368K
- 27% growth in In-App Purchases with $105K more in weekly revenue generated than previous updates
- Top-25 Grossing rank on iOS in the US, the UK and Australia
- 12% Increase in Daily Active Users, peaking at 1.03M players by late June
- 54K Facebook Likes in 2 weeks — a company record; plus 411K trailer views
- 87% Increase in Facebook login usage plus a 45% expansion of social reach
The impact
The update’s staged campaigns demonstrated that episodic, live-service marketing could rival the results of game launches themselves.
After the update, I collaborated with EA’s business development leads to pitch these content updates to Apple and Google as events deserving of platform support. The Sims FreePlay was the cause célèbre of EA games that had retina-maximizing graphics and immersive gameplay redefining what’s possible for freemium mobile games, along with omni-channel marketing campaigns that leveraged device technology to tell episodic game stories in an engaging and cohesive manner.
Both Apple and Google responded by re-featuring The Sims FreePlay’s content updates, further elevating their visibility and impact.
Other top-grossing mobile freemium games, like The Simpsons: Tapped Out, also began successfully showcasing their continuous flows of new content as a means to drive engagement, retention and monetization to great effect.
In may next role leading consumer marketing strategy for FY14 mobile and social titles representing $130M in revenue, I continued to socialize Sims FreePlay lessons to game teams and marketing managers.
The key takeaways being: with each game update, new narratives emerge, offering players an increasingly deep experience, with goals and challenges of mounting sophistication. And, when these update stories are unraveled in an engaging and cohesive manner, players can respond in droves, moving the needle in profound and often unexpected ways.
* To access the party boat, players had to log in with Facebook Connect. The more friends they added, the more rewards (grind and premium currency) they earned. There was also an invite prompt and a social leaderboard feature through which friends competed based on their game level, the number of Sims they have and their town’s value.
** The approach treated game updates not as mere content drops but as opportunities to produce evolving narratives that deepen player engagement and transform how players interact with games. An important expression of that were the game’s icon, screenshots and videos submitted to app stores. Refreshing them and incorporating them into marketing campaigns helped maintain player interest and prevent the game from feeling ‘stale’.