University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Communication plan for City King

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Communication plan for City King

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Content COMMUNICATION PLAN FOR CITY KING by Shuze Chen A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS) December 2012 Copyright 2012 Shuze Chen 08 Fall ii Table of Contents List of Tables .........................................................................................................iv Abstract ................................................................................................................ v Chapter One: Background .................................................................................... 1 1. About Funton ........................................................................................... 1 2. About City King ........................................................................................ 2 Chapter Two: Business Goal ................................................................................ 4 1. Direct income ........................................................................................... 4 2. Indirect income ......................................................................................... 5 Chapter Three: Statement of Problem and Opportunity ....................................... 7 1. Problems .................................................................................................. 7 2. Opportunity .............................................................................................. 7 1. Problems .................................................................................................. 8 2. Opportunities ............................................................................................ 9 Chapter Four: Situation Analysis (SWOTS) ........................................................ 10 1. Strengths ................................................................................................ 10 2. Weaknesses .......................................................................................... 12 3. Opportunities .......................................................................................... 13 4. Threats ................................................................................................... 14 1. Strengths ................................................................................................ 15 2. Weaknesses .......................................................................................... 17 3. Opportunities .......................................................................................... 18 4. Threats ................................................................................................... 19 5. Strategic Implications ............................................................................. 21 Chapter Five: Communications Goals ................................................................ 22 Chapter Six: Objectives ...................................................................................... 23 iii Chapter Seven: Key Audiences .......................................................................... 25 1. IPhone game players aged 16-25 .......................................................... 25 2. IPhone app review sites ......................................................................... 25 3. Chinese government funding managers ................................................ 26 Chapter Eight: Key Messages ............................................................................ 27 1. For iPhone game players ....................................................................... 27 2. For review sites ...................................................................................... 27 3. For investors .......................................................................................... 27 Chapter Nine: Strategies .................................................................................... 29 1. Do search engine optimization. .............................................................. 29 2. Cooperate with big publishers. ............................................................... 30 3. Organize real-life activities. .................................................................... 30 4. Maximize the influence of SNS platforms. .............................................. 31 5. Utilize the SNS feature to enhance interaction. ...................................... 32 6. Improve the game design to increase the viscosity of City King. ........... 32 1. Join local industrial associations and events. ......................................... 33 2. Utilize multi channels to educate the investors. ..................................... 33 Chapter Ten: Tactics ........................................................................................... 35 1. Tactics of search engine optimization and packaging ............................ 35 2. Tactics of cooperation with big publishers .............................................. 36 3. Tactics of increasing the exposure and addictiveness of CK .................. 38 4. Tactics for outreach and generating positive media coverage ................ 44 5. Tactics for emphasizing the unique location-based innovation ............... 47 Chapter Eleven: Timeline ................................................................................... 49 Chapter Twelve: Budget ..................................................................................... 51 Chapter Thirteen: Evaluation .............................................................................. 54 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 55 iv List of Tables Table 1: City King Communication Campaign Timeline ...................................... 53 Table 2: City King Communication Campaign Budget 1 ..................................... 54 Table 3: City King Communication Campaign Budget 2 ..................................... 56 Table 4: City King Communication Campaign Budget 3 ..................................... 57 Table 5: City King Communication Campaign Budget 4 ..................................... 57 Table 6: City King Communication Campaign Budget 5 ..................................... 58 v Abstract This thesis is a practical communication plan for City King, an iOS mobile game developed by an individual mobile gaming studio Funton. More specifically, it planned a detailed promotional campaign for the launch of City King based on the Strategic Planning Model. The purpose of this campaign is to provide Funton an effective guideline to follow in order to achieve the business success strategically. The first part of the thesis (from Background to SWOT Analysis) discusses the environment of competition that Funton is in; the second part (from Communication Goals to Tactics) develops a practical campaign based on strategic concerns; the last part (Timeline, Budget and Evaluation) completes the promotional campaign with more details. Generally, the whole campaign will be focused on the following two strategies: highlight the innovative GPS features to attract more players; attend or organize real-life events to increase Funton’s reputation in order to attract more investors’ attention. 1 Chapter One: Background This thesis is a practical communication plan for the launch campaign of Funton’s iOS gaming app City King, which will be released to Apple App Store on Sept. 1st. The duration of the communication plan is one week before September (Aug. 27 th ) to Sept. 23rd, lasting four weeks. 1. About Funton Funton is a mobile gaming company based in San Jose, California. It was founded by a group of young and passionate Chinese gaming professionals in May 2010. All the founders are graduate students majoring in Computer Science at the University of Southern California or Carnegie Mellon University. The Funton team consists of six full-time employees and two contractor designers. Funton’s goal is to bring “pure gaming pleasure” to players all over the globe. Funton aspires to connect players with the great fun of its revolutionary Interactive-Battle innovations. As an online entertainment provider with Chinese background, Funton is also dedicated to indulging players in the brilliant and mysterious ancient Oriental culture. 2 Currently, Funton serves as a core committee member of the Southern California Chinese Startup Companies Association (SCSCA). 2. About City King City King (CK) is Funton’s first product. It is an iOS (The operating system developed by Apple) social game and will be launched on Sept. 1st. From the perspective of game categories, it is an LBS (Location-Based Services. E.g. Foursquare) Role-Playing Game. CK is a so-called “freemium” game so that everyone can download it from the App Store and play without any charge. Its business model relies on In-App-Purchase (IAP) and in-game advertising to make a profit. In CK, players can see a virtual game map generated from the real map around their current locations. In the game, the buildings around players are all occupied by monsters from the “parallel universe.” Players will need to check in the buildings and fight monsters to gain “experience” and “reputation.” Players may also invite their Facebook friends to team up. CK’s system will automatically generate a leading board that shows top players’ rankings. The player with highest reputation in Los Angeles area will be 3 titled as “Lord of Los Angeles,” which will be shown on all players’ screens within the same area. 4 Chapter Two: Business Goal Since City King is its first product, Funton’s primary business goal is to obtain income by means of City King to feed business operations and future development. The income comes from two different channels: 1. Direct income: generate sales of City King In the mobile gaming industry, a company’s income mainly relies on downloads. For the pre-paid games, each download will bring them a certain amount of money. As for the freemium ones, more downloads means that there will be more customers who may watch the in-game advertising and make in-app purchases. In order to increase the downloads, Funton needs to enhance the visibility of CK. The application market now is entirely a buyers’ market: there are thousands of similar products. Customers do not need to do detailed research or comparison since a large number of the applications are free to use. In this case, customers 5 will tend to search for the applications that have left impressions on their minds, instead of randomly trying new ones. Thus, Funton needs to enhance the visibility of CK and leave a good impression for potential players to generate more downloads and revenue. 2. Indirect income: attract investment, especially the Chinese government funding As a startup company, external investment and funding will help Funton build a more solid foundation for future development. During the campaign, Funton will try to seek as much investment as possible. A special funding resource is the Chinese government. Recently, the central government of China demanded that local governments accelerate the development of the Internet and cultural industry. The National Development Bank announced that, during the 12th Five-year Plan, China will distribute $30 billion to support the development of cultural industry [The People Daily]. As more and more hi-tech or cultural industry campuses are under construction in China, the local governments will distribute more resources to support the development of related companies. Funton, as an Internet-based company focusing on games, is not only hi-tech but also involved in the cultural industry. What’s more, 6 compared to other investment, the Chinese government funding has some innate superiorities: it is low or even free of interest; and the Chinese government does not require any repayment. 7 Chapter Three: Statement of Problem and Opportunity From the perspective of making a profit: 1. Problems The major challenge that CK is facing now is the intense competition. Apple’s open developer policy results in that anybody being able to get a developer account at a relatively low price ($99) and upload unlimited apps to the App Store. After five years’ growth (2007-2012), the App Store is now saturated with similar products. Currently there are 578,716 active apps in the App Store, and 100,779 (17.26%) of them are games [148Apps.biz]. Compared to giant companies that can afford spending millions of dollars on promotion, it is extremely hard for startups to get attention in this crowded market. 2. Opportunity CK’s opportunity comes from the growing needs of social and LBS apps. In the Internet industry, social networking and LBS have been the two hottest topics for a long period. The amount of users of LBS applications has grown to 77 million within the last three years. 8 However, the disadvantage of LBS and SNS is becoming more and more obvious: the interaction between user and application is monotonous. In these two areas, 93% content created and shared are text, pictures and videos [VentureData.org]. Users are willing to get something fresh from the applications, while they are exactly CK offers. From the perspective of attracting investments: 1. Problems The major problem that hinders Funton with the investors is that the new company lack well established reputation. As a newcomer to the industry, Funton does not have previous works or projects that could provel its developing capacity. Also, Funton’s first produc,t CK hasn’t even been released. So Funton does not have much convincing data to tell the company’s profitability. In this case, Funton needs to find credible endorsement that could convince the investors that it is a fast-growing and promising company with competitive products. 9 2. Opportunities The Chinese policies have brought a great opportunity to Funton. Other than the reasons listed in Business Goals (Chinese government decides to promote hi-tech and cultural industries), Funton could also benefit from some other Chinese policies. Firstly, for the purpose of preventing brain drain, Chinese governments are devoting more resources to attract Chinese overseas students to return to the Mainland. Secondly, in order to lessen the pressure of job-hunting for graduating students, the Chinese government has launched a series of supporting policies for startup companies founded by students. Established by Chinese overseas graduating students, Funton could benefit greatly from various government policies. 10 Chapter Four: Situation Analysis (SWOTS) Based on the consideration of generating profit: 1. Strengths The major strength of CK is that the game is well developed and also has the potential to be an even better game. This strength could be elaborated from the following aspects. a) Unique Innovations CK is the first iOS game that integrates a comprehensive real-world map. Players can see the map around their locations in the game. The reality feeling increases the fun of the game. With the help of the real-world map, CK could automatically generate a leading board made up of players’ neighbors, friends and classmates, since they may be in the same area. Compared to other games’ leading board occupied by hundreds of strangers’ names, CK could connect players and the people they really like to play with. The Facebook Sidekick system is another innovation. It provides the players with a totally different way of collaborating and a new achievement 11 system that could encourage the players to devote more to the game to make their characters stronger and more appealing for potential partners. Other CK innovations include an intensive non-stop combat system, a huge console-game level inventory and a various achievement system. b) High Level Visual and Audio Performance A large part of the budget of the CK project is spent on the art performance. Funton invited an award-winning Italian artist, Andrea Confrencesco, to create the concept design of characters, scenes and monsters; the visualization outsource of CK, Shanghai DY Games, is an experienced visualization outsource that has served a series of Chinese online games; and, City King also has Gravity Music, famous for its contribution to the world-wide popular iOS game Battle Heart, as its audio outsource. . c) Future Adaptability CK is developed based on a unified developing platform Unity, which allows developers to do quick changes, which could be reflected in newer versions more promptly. Compared to common games, it is easier and more economical for CK to make future changes. Thus, CK could respond to customers’ feedback more quickly. 12 2. Weaknesses a) Unprofessional Game Design Though CK is integrated with mature innovative technologies and visual/audio performance from experienced outsources, the game itself is designed by entry-level game developers. While they have the creativity for new ideas, their designs of gameplay and in-app purchase are immature due to their lack of experience. The unripe design may result in the imbalance of gameplay, which might dampen the players’ passion, ultimately leading to the decrease in the number of players. b) Lack of Compatibility So far, CK only supports iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and the New iPad. What’s worse, it could merely display Romanic Linguistics. The lack of compatibility will hold back a large amount of players using iPhone 3GS or older models and those from Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc.). 13 3. Opportunities a) Growing needs for social games In the last financial quarter, the amount of iPhone users increased by 20.34 million, which was 142% more than the same period of last year. So far, Apple has sold out 250 million iOS devices. The downloads from App Store have reached 18,000 million times, and has increased by 61% in 2011 compared to 2010 [AppChina]. A significant sign showing the fever of social games is Draw Something. Launched in February 2012, the game generated 50 million downloads worldwide in 35 days. The developer of Draw Something, OMG Pop, is finally purchased by the social games giant Zynga at the price of 180 million dollars. The story of Draw Something indicates that the mobile internet market is still thirsty for well-developed products. In this situation, it may be a good opportunity for CK to be recognized and loved by the players and the industry. b) Recent Fervor for Mobile Games In the early June, the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was held in Los Angeles. The event attracted 199 gaming-related exhibitors and 45,700 14 visitors. In this year’s E3, mobile games have become a big trend. Mobile game publishers accounted for about 43% of all the exhibitors [Games.com]. Even the giant console game publishers like Blizzard and MicroSoft have also announced their plans for mobile game development. Among the 18 latest products announced by Square Enix, a world-famous console game publisher, nine are mobile games. Furthermore, in June, Apple released its latest operating system, iOS6. The launch event attracted over 600 media outlets from all over the world. The recent events have generated a plethora of mobile games, which may bring more visibility for the whole industry. 4. Threats a) Intensive competition in the US market As mentioned in III-1: Statement of Problems, there have been over 100,000 games in the App Store. The US game apps market is a highly developed one, being dominated by some giant companies like Zynga, Glu, Gameloft, Riot and Halfbrick. The dominator Zynga occupies 38% of the whole social games market share [Joe Osborne, 2011]. The US game apps market is now a red ocean where it is difficult for startups to survive. 15 b) Copycats Compared to other kinds of software, mobile games belong to the category with low or even no technology barriers. It is easy for other companies to plagiarize CK’s innovations and launch similar products. Almost every popular mobile game has one or more clones. In the App Store we could easily find Vegetable Ninja (Fruit Ninja), Rage Birds (Angry Birds) and Temple Jump (Temple Run). The copycats may steal a great amount of players from the original products and significantly lower users’ satisfaction. From the perspective of attracting investments: 1. Strengths a) Strong Team To the investors, especially the government funding in China, Funton has a strong team: Funton has built up a competitive development team with 13 members, all having Master’s Degree from top universities in the US. The project manager of CK has served more than six years in world-famous companies IBM and Huawei, and is experienced in development and project 16 management. Other team members come from Interactive Media of USC (Best video game major in the US) and Entertainment and Technology Center of CMU (Best computer science major in the US). They’ve all been involved in the development of the well-known games League of Legends and Microsoft Kinect. The team members’ solid professional backgrounds and practical experience will increase the investors’ confidence in Funton. b) Relatively Small Investment Compared to other Internet companies, Funton requires a relatively small amount of investment capital. From the perspective of products, the difficulty of mobile applications is much lower than PC or console applications; on the other hand, Funton keeps a small team of seven members. While maintaining high efficiency, the small team scale also saves a lot of unnecessary human resource costs. The two factors determine that investors could see an obvious outcome with a limited investment, which decreases risk for investors. c) Government Relations Back to when they were pursuing the bachelor’s degree in China, some of Funton’s founders began to have some personal connections with local governments. Funton’s CTO Jeffrey Bian has worked for several national 17 R&D projects and is highly valued by local governors. Marketing Director Stella Ju has done extensive research on local governments’ support for college students’ self-employed business. During the previous communication and collaboration with local governments, Funton has built up positive government relations. 2. Weaknesses a) Unfamiliar with the Chinese market While Funton was developing CK in the US, the Chinese mobile gaming market has already changed significantly. The downloads from the Chinese App Store have increased from 25% of the US App Store to 45%. And from Nov.18, 2011 when Apple began to allow users to pay with RMB, the number of downloads from Chinese App Store has doubled [Distimo]. It is the fastest-growing market in the whole world. There have been a lot of new challenges and situations with which Funton developers have had to become familiar. 18 b) Lack of reputation and credibility As mentioned above, Funton lacks a reputation. Funton does not have any profit statistics or balance sheet that could prove its capacity and profitability. Furthermore, Funton does not have sufficient endorsement. In another word, Funton is lacked of credibility to convince investors. c) Instability Funton faces a common problem with many other startups. Compared to big companies’ attractive offers, treatment provided by Funton could not secure the stability of the team. The instability of employees increases the difficulty of remaining highly efficient in the development phase. First, core members left the team, which directly decreased productivity of the team. Secondly, it takes extra time and money to train the newcomers to catch up the work left by his or her predecessor. 3. Opportunities a) Qualified for the investment standards To the investors, especially the Chinese governors, Funton is a perfect match with their standards. Generally, the Chinese government funding would like to invest in the following areas: 19  The Internet/high-tech innovations  Cultural industry  Overseas high-level professionals’ business in mainland China  Startups founded by Chinese graduating students Funton meets all the requirements: First, as an Internet company, Funton has its particular technology innovations. The Cloud Map and Funton Massive Storage technology both own patents rights. Second, as a gaming studio, Funton produces a special cultural product: games. Funton dedicates to spread the Chinese culture via the platform of games. Also, Funton is founded by a group of high-level Chinese overseas professionals who just graduated. So the Chinese government’s investment policies have brought a precious opportunity to Funton. 4. Threats a) Immature Chinese market The Chinese market is still immature compared to those of other countries. Its disadvantages are reflected in the following aspects: 20  Policy changes The opportunities listed above are all based on current policies, which also have a significant influence on the Chinese market. However, Chinese government policies are full of instability. Once the policies change, the opportunities for Funton might transform into huge risks.  Piracy Chinese smartphone users do not want to pay for the untouchable applications. Though China has the second largest population of iPhone users, App Store’s sales in China merely makes up 2% of its total revenue. Just 4% Chinese users would like to pay for the apps. Another 47% users only download free apps, while the other 49% have cracked their iPhones and are using all kinds of pirated versions [ComputerWorld]. Chinese government does not have strong and effective measures to control piracy, which has made it extremely difficult for Chinese developers to make profits.  Vicious competition Some big companies like Tencent and Renren often copy innovative ideas from small studios without any rewards. What’s more, the big companies sometimes spend a lot of budget in doing “paid downloads”: to rent thousands of Apple accounts to increase the downloads of their own 21 apps for higher App Store rankings. These ruthless competitors squeezed the living space of smaller and younger companies. 5. Strategic Implications Based on the discussions above, we note the following strategic implications for Funton:  implications for increasing downloads: Since the downloads are significantly influenced by visibility, Funton should employ combined strategies to bring CK to public’s eyes as much as they could; meanwhile, Funton should focus on CK’s unique features, highlight the innovations and position the product as a brand-new gaming experience, in order to differentiate CK from thousands of similar competitors.  Implications for attracting investments: Lack of credibility is the major weakness of Funton. Funton should find some solid statistics or endorsements that could express the capacity of the team. 22 Chapter Five: Communications Goals Based on Funton’s business goals, its communication goals are detailed as following: 1. Increase the visibility of Funton and CK. 2. Convince the players that CK is a must-try gaming experience. 3. Secure investors, especially the local governments, by convincing them that Funton is a profitable and potential team that is worth investing. 23 Chapter Six: Objectives 1. Get CK ranked in Top 100 free games of App Store and recommended by at least three major reviewing sites in the first two weeks after launch. The Top 100 is an important ranking to all the iOS applications: it is the max ranking that could appear in App Store. In other words, only the apps ranked from 1 to 100 could be seen by millions of users in App Store, anyone behind 100 is hard to be seen. Because App Store is the primary source for app searching and downloading, the downloads of Top 100 apps are always several times more than the others. The Top 100 goal and the review sites’ recommendations goal are complementary: being listed in Top 100 will attract the attention of major review sites, while the recommendations from review sites could increase players’ interest in the game and finally result in the increase of downloads and ranking. 2. Increase the CK downloads to 150,000 in the first month. According to the official statistics of App Store, the average first-month downloads amount of Top 100 apps is 122,000. Based on the number, 150,000 is a reasonable objective for City King. On the other side, in order to 24 get sufficient advertisement-clicking and in-app purchase revenue, 150,000 is also a necessary objective. The downloads could be achieved mainly through the following three ways: online advertisement; readers of big review sites and gaming bloggers; real-life promotional activities. 3. Generate 20 positive media stories for Funton. Positive media coverage could bring several benefits: first, it could attract more players to try the game; second, it could enhance Funton’s reputation in gaming industry; last but not least, it could bring the investors more confidence to partner with Funton. Funton’s PR team will pitch different media for coverage. Ideally, most coverage will focus on the popularity of City King, analyzing the factors that lead to the success of the product. The others will tell more about Funton’s team and their startup story, covering more deeply about the team’s passionate, efficiency, creativity and vision. 25 Chapter Seven: Key Audiences 1. IPhone game players aged 16-25 In order to generate a great amount of downloads, iPhone game players should be the first priority target audience for Funton. Among all the age groups, those between 16 and 22 are the most likely to be interested. On the one hand, this age group contains a large amount of players. According to a third-party institute Flurry’s research, almost one-thirds (31.8%) of iPhone game players belong to the age group [Flurry]. On the other hand, 43% “core players” of iPhone games belong to this age group. Commonly, the heavy players play iPhone games for (more than) two hours each day. They spend an average amount of $12 on iPhone games every month [Ayalew 2011]. 2. IPhone app review sites The review sites have a huge influence on users’ download choices. Big review sites like TouchArcade and 148Apps could attract millions of members and thousands of daily traffic. An application got featured by some major review sites could see multiple expansions in thedownloads number. Additionally, the 26 recommendations from the big sites could be viewed as a solid proof of the company’s capacity and popularity. The professional reviews could convince the investors that Funton is a promising company and has the ability to produce profitable products. 3. Chinese government funding managers Among all the investors, Funton should focus on the government funding managers as their key audience. Different from common investors in the mobile internet industry, a large part of the government funding managers are not experts in internet or gaming. The managers could hardly understand the technical specifications of the products. However, they are concerned about team composition, company reputation and the success rate of products. 27 Chapter Eight: Key Messages 1. For iPhone game players Getting bored with birds and ninjas? City King is something you’ve NEVER seen before! This game will bring you a BRAND NEW location-based gaming experience. Just login and claim your favorite places, defend your turf and become the king of your city! 2. For review sites Funton and its product City King is bringing a fresh approach to the industry! They’ve done a creative job of integrating the technology innovations like Cloud Map, Virtual Reality Environments and addicting SNS elements into a fun little game! Try it now to see how they connect players with their friends and the virtual world. 3. For investors Funton is definitely a company worth investing in. Funton has a very efficient team formation, great productivity and clear future plans. Their current product 28 has received lots of positive feedback from both the industry and the players. The team has already shown the potential of becoming the next Internet hero. 29 Chapter Nine: Strategies Strategies for generating downloads: 1. Do search engine optimization and make attractive packaging for CK. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means to optimize the key words so that the product could get higher ranking in search engine results. It could increase the possibility to be seen and downloaded by the players. Packaging here refers to the products’ introduction pages in the App Store, including icon, screenshots, game description and sometimes trailers. Packaging is quite important since it leaves the first impression on players’ minds. Especially for free games, players do not need to be concerned about whether the game is worth 99 cents or not; if the packaging is appealing, they will probably download the game. According to a recent survey, 65% players would like to download and try a free game if they thought “the icon looks nice.” They make the decision at the first glance, even without looking at the screen shots [TouchArcade]. 30 2. Cooperate with big publishers to cover more supported area and devices. In the gaming area, besides the developers, there are also third-party big publishers who publish and distribute services for the indie developers. Some of the publishers have shown interest after reviewing the introductory document for City King. Through cooperation with the publishers, Funton could get professional communication suggestions and make use of their mature distribution channels. Another advantage of cooperating with publishers is that, the publishers have technology accumulations that could help the naturalization of City King to other platforms other than iOS faster. 3. Organize real-life activities to highlight the uniqueness of City King. In the current mobile gaming market, most competitors are similar to each other, mostly copying the ideas of the hottest games. We’ve seen Angry Bees and Rage Birds after Angry Birds, and we have Vegi Ninja and Fruit Slicer after Fruit Ninja’s great success. 31 Different from the copycats, City King has its unique game content and novel gaming modes. The location-based map system, which integrated the real world with the virtual one, is the strongest selling point of City King. Funton should highlight the feature to attract more attention. In games, what players can get are only virtual rewards. Funton could host a series of real-life events and competitions to encourage the players with real rewards; besides, the innovative game competitions are great news topics that could attract media coverage. Also, periodical competitions or raffles could keep players stay in the game. 4. Maximize the influence of SNS platforms. SNS platforms are effective channels to reach the target audience. According to a recent survey, 35.2% SNS users are aged from 16-25 [Hargittai 2008], which matches the core players of City King. What’s more, City King features the interaction between the game and SNS platforms. Via the SNS sites, potential players could find the innovations and highlighted features of City King directly. 32 5. Utilize the SNS features of CK to enhance the interaction among players in game. City King features a series of SNS elements, which could help the players find and play with their friends. Funton should highlight the SNS features and make full use of them. Funton could give rewards to the players who successfully attract some potential players to the game. 6. Improve the game design to increase the viscosity of City King. According to Apple, the average playtime of an iOS game is 40 minutes, from download to deletion. By improving the game design, Funton could attract the players to come back and play the game for a while every day. Thus, it could increase the possibility of more advertisement exposure and more in-app purchase. Besides, a game with strong viscosity will get the players’ word-of-mouth more easily. 33 Strategies for attracting investments: 1. Join local industrial associations and paticipate in events to build up connections and visibility. As for the gaming industry, according to GameInsider, there are now 670 registered indie game developing studios in southern California alone; also, there are several times more Chinese startups now than the past few years. Funton should proactively seek for collaboration with these companies or participate in the related events to build up connections and get advice from its peers. Meanwhile, Funton could also get recognized by the industry. 2. Utilize multi channels to inform the investors more of the industry and Funton itself. The biggest problem between Funton and the Chinese investors is distance. First, the Chinese investors mainly focus on traditional markets. Mobile gaming is a new area for them, which translates to high uncertainty. Second, the distance between the US and China hinders the investors from getting a comprehensive and deep understanding of Funton’s team and business. 34 Funton will need to use multiple channels to convince the investors that both the industry and the company are promising and worth investing. 35 Chapter Ten: Tactics 1. Tactics of search engine optimization and packaging a) Polish the icon design and screenshots. The importance of packaging has been discussed above. It is quite necessary to have a professional designer polish the icon and screenshots. Based upon the analysis of icons of 200 Top Grossing games, here are some common rules for successful icons:  Keep the icon simple. Most of the successful icons use pure color as backgrounds. The major part of the icons is always one representative character or item in the game, like Tiny Wings, OMG! Pirates and Field Gunners.  Use high saturated colors. The high saturated colors make the icon bright and lively, bringing a feeling of relaxing and amusing. b) Launch online promotional videos. Funton will produce two promotional videos for CK.  Trailer. The trailer is an integration of animation and real game content, like an animation movie featuring the major characters in CK. 36 This trailer will express the worldview of CK, inform players of the storyline and display the brilliant visual effects.  Hands-on review. A famous game review blogger, Crazy Mike, will be invited to give the players an introduction of CK. He will experience the innovative systems in the game, check in buildings and fight the monsters. Crazy Mike will also give his own thoughts and feelings about CK. The whole process will be recorded as a hands-on review video. The videos will be put on YouTube, Funton’s website and SNS platforms. The videos could give the audience a direct impression of the game. 2. Tactics of cooperation with big publishers Among the several publishers who have shown interest in City King, Funton should consider cooperating with the following publishers: Glu Mobile (US market), Renren Games (Chinese market) and Adwhirl. First, the three publishers are all relatively newly-established. Compared to the older ones like Zynga, these have fewer games ready, which means that they will pay more attention and spend more resources refining and promoting City King. Second, though they do not have a large tier of games on hand, the three 37 publishers are all experienced in promotions. They all have games that have been successfully ranked. Each of the three publishers has distinctive expertise: a) Glu Mobile is a leading global developer and publisher of Social Mobile games for smartphones and tablet devices. It has popular products like Contract Killer and Blood & Glory, which are always listed in the top charts. However, it only has nine games now so that they still need more games to complete their portfolio. Besides, Glu has an expertise in Action social games. Different from simulation business games of Zynga, most of Glu’s games feature intensive battles, which perfectly match the highlight of CK. b) Based on Renren.com (the largest SNS provider in China), Renren Games is currently the dominator in Chinese mobile game industry, with a user population of 80 million. It covers multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, HTML5 and Symbian. Meanwhile, Renren Games has several top games like Iron General in Chinese App Store. Besides the large user population and rich promotion experience, Renren Games could also help the transformation of CK to be compatible with web, Android and Symbian platforms. 38 c) Adwhirl is currently the biggest mutual advertising platform in mobile Internet area. To cooperate with Adwhirl, Funton will embed a mutual advertising bar in CK. The ad bar will periodically show advertisements of other Adwhirl member companies’ apps. As a reward, CK’s advertisement will also be shown in other ad bars. Through cooperation with Adwhirl, CK will have chance to be seen by millions of Adwhirl-member-app users. With the help of publishers, Funton could accelerate the naturalization of City King on other platforms like Android. Furthermore, as a member of the publishers’ teams, Funton could share the player base of the publishers’ and directly reach a larger amount of players. 3. Tactics of increasing the exposure and addictiveness of CK a) Media buying Part of Funton’s budget will be allocated to run advertisements on other websites and apps from the launch date of City King. The advertisements will last one week. Funton will focus on the following three advertisement platforms: 39  148 Apps. It is the biggest iPhone game review site with an average daily flow rate of 59,940. 148 Apps is also the primary information source of other iPhone media outlets. Funton will buy the homepage background site to launch the advertisement, which means that during the week, the original background of 148 Apps will be replaced with City King’s promotion page.  Tapjoy. Tapjoy is the mobile advertisement platform provided by Google. It buys ad spot from thousands of iOS games and apps and automatically fills them with banner advertisements. Tapjoy now covers 700 million portable devices [Tencent Technology Channel]. Besides, Tapjoy features a pay-per-action business model, in which the developers will only need to pay when their ads got clicked and their products got downloaded. So currently Tapjoy is the most efficient and accurate ad platform in mobile gaming industry. Funton will buy 20 thousand downloads from Tapjoy. b) SNS promotion The tactics for SNS promotions aim at increasing the visibility of CK and improving the interaction between Funton and players. Based on different 40 website contents, our SNS accounts have different positioning and purposes. The official website and players’ community (forum) is used for announcing the formal news about Funton and CK, including the release of latest versions, official instructions and media coverage. CK’s Facebook account is more player-friendly. It allows more users to discuss and upload their own thoughts, feelings and achievements. Also, it undertakes the role of organizing SNS and real-life promotional events. The Twitter account does prompt communication with players. It could release the latest news at the very first time. Besides, it could build relations with industry media and players through retweets and Q&As. The detailed operations are as follow: 1) Daily updates.  Post two tweets related to the topic of “gaming” every day.  Do daily Q&As with players.  Use Twitter account to proactively reply and retweet professional gaming organizations’ and media’s tweets. 41 2) Daily mission. Daily Mission has three types, Quick Daily Mission, Normal Daily Mission and Challenge Daily Mission.  Quick Daily Mission can be completed by playing just one game.  Normal Daily Mission can be completed by playing for about six minutes.  Challenge Daily Mission can be completed by performing certain skills. Each day, three DMs will be generated for players, one from each category. Unfinished DMs will be reset every day before new missions are generated. If players retreat or fail in the battle, nothing will contribute toward the fulfillment of DMs. 3) Periodic reveals.  Release a concept picture of characters, sceneries and monsters every three days.  Release a series of introduction posts of CK’s innovative systems every week. 42 4) Special events. The special events will be held in the following ways:  Raffles. FB and Twitter followers could share or retweet the assigned FB post or tweet. Funton will hold a raffle among the players every week and award prizes.  Quizzes. Funton will announce a series of interesting questions about CK on FB and Twitter. Gifts will be given away to the lucky ones among the followers with right answers.  Competitions. Funton will organize concept design competitions and slogan copywriting competitions on FB and Twitter. The attendees who have most “likes” or retweets will automatically become the winners. The pictures and slogans will be used in CK’s promotions. Winners could get credit and gifts. c) In-game events 1) Offer time-limited discounted virtual items periodically. Every weekday, Funton could put one expensive but powerful virtual item on sale. The discount could be big, but the sale will only last for one day. The time-limited promotion system, while 43 increasing the sales of virtual items, could also attract core players to come back periodically for the sale. 2) Give rewards to encourage players to have more interactions in game. City King could reward the existing players with virtual items for inviting friends to the game. For each new player whom a current player has invited, City King will reward both sides 50 coins in game ($0.99). The coins could be used to buy some secret costumes and weapons that could not be found in store. In order to get the powerful virtual items for free, the current players may invite more players to the game. City King will also reward the players whom formed battle teams with special items that come in pairs. A team of two male players could get a pair of Brotherhood Swords; female team could get Phoenix Costumes; a team formed by a couple could get the Infinite Love Rings. By emphasizing the importance of team work and players’ interaction, the current players will help City King attract more potential players. 44 4. Tactics for outreach and generating positive media coverage a) Material preparation A large part of iPhone users rely on review sites’ recommendations to decide what to download. Funton should send review invitations to the famous reviewers and sites. Once the reviews are posted online, Funton could expect a sharp increase of CK’s downloads. Together with the review invitation, it is also necessary to send an information kit for the reviewers to have a general knowledge of the game and its highlighted features. The information kit should include:  Pitch letter;  A copy of the game;  An invitation to the CK launch event (only for the local reviewers);  An overview of CK;  A Funton factsheet;  CK-themed souvenirs;  CK trailers and test-play videos. 45 b) CK Launch party. Two weeks after the launch of City King, Funton will host a grand launch party at the Hilton Hotel to celebrate the launch of CK. The guests will include the professionals in gaming industry, local elected officials that care about creating job opportunities, Chinese Commercial Counselors, local startup associations and media outlets. Before the event, some of Funton staff will be dressed in the costumes of City King characters to take photos with guests. Demo devices will also be provided on-site for the guests to experience the game. During the event, Funton’s CEO Nathen will address about the story of Funton. He would also announce the progress (downloads, rankings and player feedbacks) that City King has achieved, with a champagne toast followed. After that, local Chinese elected officials will go on stage to present their certificates of congratulatory. After the event, Funton staffs will conduct interviews with media. c) Other real-life events As the co-founder of Southern California Startup Companies Association, Funton will proactively attend the social events and activities hosted by SCSCA. 46 The association will invite angel investors to give lectures and organize investment conferences. The big events could create more social influence. SCSCA will have two kinds of activities:  Regular startup company saloos. Funton will periodically invite angel investors to give lectures to the small companies. The companies could also have chance to present their projects to real professionals and get their advices. Now two famous angel investors Ling Daihong and Phil Xu have accepted SCSCA’s invitation, and their lectures are under preparation.  Special events. The first special event will be a launch party. SCSCA will invite Chinese commercial counselor, angel investors, local elected officials, local media, local Chinese business heroes and Chinese Scholars and Students Associations to celebrate the launch together. Other special events in the plan will include investment conference. It is difficult for single startup companies to get the attention of big investors. But when small companies get together, there might be enough innovative ideas that will attract the big investors. 47 5. Tactics for emphasizing the unique location-based innovation a) Player competitions As a LBS social game, the integration of real world locations and buildings is a highlighted innovation. Based on this feature, Funton will host a series of player competitions.  The starting event of player competitions will be “King of Funton” on Sept.8th. Funton’s headquarters building will be marked as a different color on the map. Players who find the building and successfully check could get gifts from Funton. The reason to put the event on Sept.8 th is that after one week’s promotion, there would have been a large amount of players that are willing to play the game and attend the real-life events.  Treasure Hunter. CK will automatically generate a bunch of “Treasure Buildings” on map. They may be popular sites or areas that are difficult to reach. Players could check in and challenge the sites. If the challenge succeeds, the player could unlock a virtual achievement and a real gift.  State Kings. In the original game, the leading board is generated based on ZIP code. In order to satisfy the ambitious hard core players, Funton will organize “County King” and “State King” competitions bi-weekly. 48 Every weekend, Funton will send invitations to the players who are currently the city kings. They will be gathered together and have the chance to challenge each other. The final winner will be titled as County King. State King is selected from the county kings through the same way. b) Cooperate with local companies and vendors The Treasure Hunter competition offers Funton a lot of opportunities to cooperate with local companies. At first stage, City King will especially focus on the local café and restaurants. For example, Funton will pitch Cheesecake Factory to help them promote their latest blueberry cheesecake. In the game, Funton will set local Cheesecake Factory restaurants as “Treasure Sites” in CK. It will attract players to go to the local Cheesecake Factory restaurants and check-in. After they pass the challenge, the CK system will reward them a free coupon of Blueberry Cheesecake. Both Funton and the partner restaurants will be benefited from this cooperation. 49 Chapter Eleven: Timeline The CK communication campaign will last one month (four weeks), from the beginning till the end of September. In the timeline, there are a two important time spots:  Week 1 (Sept.1st): The official launch date of CK.  Week 3 (Sept. 15th): The launch party of CK. The events on timeline can be divided into three categories base on their durations:  Continuous activities will keep ongoing throughout the whole campaign, including SNS reveals, previews and interactive communications.  Periodically events are held bi-weekly, including SNS quizzes, raffles and competitions; Treasure Hunter and County King competitions.  Besides, there are several special events: the launch party of Southern California Startup Companies Association, the special launch event of CK “Treasure Hunter – Occupy Funton”, and the launch party of CK. 50 City King Communication Campaign Timeline Week1 (Aug.27th) Week2 (Sept. 3rd) Week3 (Sept.10th) Week4 (Sept.17th) Sept. 1st Sept.15th Legend: Sept.1st Official launch of City King Sept.15th Celebration launch party of City King Pre-launch reveals on SNS, including concept arts, characters, game systems and innovations Design the App Store packaging of City King, including icon, screenshots and description Design the information kit of City King, including game introduction, Funton factsheets and demo videos Launch advertisements in 148 Apps.com and Tapjoy Send the info kit to review sites; send the info kit and launch party invitations to local media outlets Special event: King of Funton City King real-life events: Treasure Hunters and raffles City King in-game events: State King competitions and quizzes Periodically in-game virtual items discounted sales Table 1: City King Communication Campaign Timeline 51 Chapter Twelve: Budget A large part of the communication campaign budget will be spent on human power. City King will have a professional PR team, including one Senior Account Manager, two Account Executives and one SNS specialist conduct the whole communication campaign. Table 2: City King Communication Campaign Budget 1 Before the official launch of City King in the App Store, Funton will hire a contractor artist to polish the packaging of the game, including the icon design, the screenshots and the production of two demo videos (one trailer, one hands-on review video). Throughout the whole campaign, Funton is going to send out 100 media kits to pitch the review sites and media outlets. The information kit includes press releases (60 for English sites and 40 for Chinese media), factsheets and a DVD copy of the game. The budget is showed as following: City King Communication Campaign Budget 1 -- Human Power Cost Category Title Quantity Hourly Salary Hours Per Week Weeks Sub Total Labor Cost Senior Account Manager 1 $150 4 12 $7,200 Account Executive 2 $30 8 12 $5,760 SNS Specialist 1 $15 20 12 $3,600 Transportation $1,200 Food $1,000 Total $18,760 52 Table 3: City King Communication Campaign Budget 2 Another major cost will be the launch celebration party of City King. Funton estimates 50 guests at the event. The budget for the event also includes the rental for the ball room, equipment and temporary staff. Table 4: City King Communication Campaign Budget 3 City King Communication Campaign Budget 2 -- Packaging and Information Kit Category Item Price Amount Sub Total Packaging Icon design $200 1 $200 Screenshot Polish $35 5 $175 Trailer production $800 1 $800 Hands-on review production $159 1 $159 Information Kit Press Release-English $0.75 60 $45 Press Release-Chinese $0.75 40 $30 Invitation Card $2 100 $200 Funton Factsheet $0.75 100 $75 Copy of City King $1.5 100 $150 Total $1,834 City King Communication Campaign Budget 3 -- Event Cost Category Item Price Quantity Sub Total Rental Hilton Hotel ball room $600 1 $400 Projector and AV equipment $400 1 $400 Food and drink Softdrink $10 50 $500 Snacks $8 50 $400 Entrée Meal $34 50 $1,700 Decorations Banners $80 2 $160 GG character costume $135 2 $270 Guests Sign-in Boards $120 1 $120 Backdrop $150 1 $150 Other City King Souvenir Flashdisk $10 50 $500 Temporary Staffs $50 3 $150 Total $4,750 53 Another major cost is the prizes for the in-game and real-life competitions. Funton needs appealing prizes to arouse and maintain the players’ passion. Table 5: City King Communication Campaign Budget 4 As for the advertisement, the Background advertisement spot of 148 Apps will cost $1,750 each day, and the Tapjoy advertisement campaign will cost $0.4 for each download action. Table 6: City King Communication Campaign Budget 5 The total budget of the City King communication campaign will come up to $47,008. City King Communication Campaign Budget 4 -- Competition Prizes Category Item Price Quantity Sub Total Quizzes GG poster $3 100 $300 Raffles GG iPhone cases $5 50 $250 Treasure Hunter $50 Apple App Store Gift Card $45 5 $225 State King $100 Apple App Store Gift Card $90 5 $450 Guardians of Funton iPod Touch 4th gen 8GB $189 1 $189 Total $1,414 City King Communication Campaign Budget 5 -- Advertisement Category Item Price Quantity Sub Total 148 Apps Background Advertisement $1,750 7 $12,250 Tapjoy Pay-per-action Advertisement $0.4 20,000 $8,000 Total $20,250 54 Chapter Thirteen: Evaluation  For the sales objectives (listed in Top 100 and increase 150,000 downloads), Funton will trace the statistics offered by Apple every day. The statistics will record the details of each download, including the time and source link (game review forums, Youtube trailers or advertising bar in other games).  The media coverage objective is tracked through the press release distribution services. Both Business Wire and Gaming Wire do offer free media clipping that records media coverage that has been generated.  The Funton marketing department will be responsible for the follow-up of other online coverage. Based on the search engine statistics, Funton could get a comprehensive knowledge about the visibility of CK. 55 Bibliography “2011 Full Year Publication.” Distimo. 21 December 2011. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://www.distimo.com/blog/2011_12_distimo-releases-full-year-2011-pu blication> “About Us.” Funtongames.com. N.d. 10 October 2011. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://funtongames.com/aboutus> “App Store Downloads to Reach 18 Billion.” AppChina. 13 December 2011. Web. 15 May 2012. < http://de.appchina.com/news/app-store-mac-app-store> “App Store Metrics.” 148Apps.biz. 18 March 2012. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics> Armano, David. “Brand Interactions Are the Future.” Advertising Age. 22 April 2008. Web. 18 April 2012. <http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=126579> Ayalew, Romel. “Consumer Behavior in Apple ’s App Store. ” Uppsala University. 2011. Print. “Brief Timeline of the Internet.” Webopedia. 24 June 2010. Web. 11 May 2012. <http://webopedia.com/quick_ref/timeline.asp> “Daily Report: the DAU of Zynga Mobile Games Reaches 9.9 Million.” GamerBoom. 5 November 2011. Web. 18 May 2012. <http://gamerboom.com/archives/40811> “The DTZ Experiment: How Important is an App’s Name and Icon.” TouchArcade. 13 August 2009. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=21909> 56 Fan, Y. “To Propel the Development of Cultural Industrial Park Rationally.” The People Daily. 5 April 2012. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/49157/49165/17578622.html> “A few things you may be interested in Zynga.” Zynga. 20 September 2011. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://zynga.com/about> Gladwell, M. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Ed. 2002. Print. The Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-31696-2 Goard, L. “E3 2012: Social and Mobile Games Play the Silent Giant at This Year's Show.” Games.com. 4 June 2012. Web. 22 June 2012. <http://blog.games.com/2012/06/04/e3-2012-social-and-mobile-games-pla y-the-silent-giant-at-this-y> Hargittai,E. “Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol 13. 2008. Print. 22 June 2012 “IPhone Apps Usage Statistics.” Flurry. 31 July 2011. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://www.flurry.com/stats.html> Kan, M. “Apple App Store Downloads in China Triple But Developer Revenues Lag.” ComputerWorld. 21 June 2012. Web. 28 June 2012. <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228315/Apple_App_Store_dow nloads_in_China_triple_but_developer_revenues_lag> Lane, K. and Kotler, P. Marketing Management. Ed. 2011. Print. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-132-10292-7 Osborne, J. “Zynga Dominates Social Games Market With 38 Percent Share.” Games.com. 16 May 2011. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://blog.games.com/2011/05/16/zynga-social-games-market-38-perce nt-share> 57 Peterson, Steve. “Four Types of Social-Game Players.” IndustryGamers. 14 January 2012. Web. 18 May 2012. <http://gamerboom.com/archives/45621> Ries, Al and Trout, J. Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind. Ed. 2000. Print. McGraw-Hill Companies. ISBN 0-071-37358-6 “Tapjoy: the Next Mobile Internet Giant.” Tencent. 2 August 2012. Web. 10 August 2012. <http://tech.qq.com/a/20120802/000063.htm> Ye, J. “Embarrassing LBS: Entrepreneurs Get Together The Business Model Is Not Clear.” VentureData.org. 12 August 2011. Web. 18 May 2012. <http://www.venturedata.org/?i216158_Embarrassing-LBS:-entrepreneurs- get-together-the-business-model-is-not-clear>

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Asset Metadata

Creator Chen, Shuze (author)

Core Title Communication plan for City King

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 10/10/2012

Defense Date 10/10/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag app,Chinese market,mobile game,OAI-PMH Harvest,promotion,strategic planning model

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wang, Jian ""Jay"" (committee chair), Floto, Jennifer D. (committee member), Fong, Mei (committee member)

Creator Email kesar1989@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-104173

Unique identifier UC11289362

Identifier usctheses-c3-104173 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ChenShuze-1244.pdf

Dmrecord 104173

Document Type Thesis

Rights Chen, Shuze

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA