Intergalactic Campaigns & Greece
Another month passes, and time progresses steadily into the next season. While earth is enjoying the fruits of fall, we venture off into space with a couple of intergalactic campaigns for star-faring titles. Luckily you won’t need a spacesuit for this one, as we’ll discuss it all in this month’s “so what has Black Soup been up to”.
(We do not take any responsibility for bad puns in this newsletter)
Planet Crafter: Planet Humble DLC - Miju Games
Campaign timeframe: October 10th
After a great 1.0 launch campaign for The Planet Crafter, we were very happy to be entrusted with the influencer outreach of its Planet Humble DLC as well. As with any follow-up campaign, you always have a decision to make - which creators will you reactivate, and which new creators will you add to the campaign. Thus media planning journeyed the horizon to a balanced outcome, with only one problem; a LOT of creators have played the game (and why wouldn’t they - it’s stunning)! Truly suffering from success.
The challenge of choosing creators wasn’t the only task at hand, as Planet Crafter is an amazing co-op experience that we wanted to showcase in our outreach as well. Hence, coordinating group play sessions was vital. There really was no question as to whom we should include; LordMinion777 & Foxtrot44, together with Jpw03, Entoan and PatrckStatic are all veteran astronauts and have made plenty of missions to Planet Prime already. Hence we were super happy to have this group present Planet Humble’s new challenges.
In contrast, while cosmonaut Sips has been an experienced crafter of planets, much of the rest of the Yogscast itself has not ventured beyond our own atmosphere yet. In this, we saw the perfect opportunity to introduce them to both the fun and dangers of Planet Crafter.
But of course that’s not all. A further sponsoring of several solo streamers in multiple languages resulted in 6,8 million minutes of sponsored watchtime, and 31,000 accumulated concurrent viewership on Twitch. On top of this, several dedicated videos from the likes of Drae and Z1 Gaming, and a TikTok sponsorship with nearly half a million views allowed Planet Humble to re-enter straight through the game-o-sphere into the eyes of many existing fans and newcomers alike. Houston, we don’t have a problem, for our organic creator relations team stacked a big thruster boost of 29 additional creators on top (at a 25% response rate), culminating in a global total Earned Media Value of over €110,000!
One small step for man, one leap for mankind, and one heck of a jump around the earth for a DLC launch. We humbly thank Miju Games and Adrien Briatta for involving us with the DLC’s campaign again, and are looking forward to our next spacewalk with them!
Starfield: Shattered Space DLC - Bethesda (DE)
Campaign timeframe: September 30th - October 6th
Like Mars and Venus, the campaign for Shattered Space - the new Starfield DLC - might seem very similar. But don’t let it fool you! Under the surface, they couldn’t be more different. And not just because these are two completely different types of game with two completely different audiences. The main difference is that Black Soup’s Shattered Space promotion was exclusively for DACH creators and audiences (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). Similar to the actual dish, your Black Soup experience is whatever you make of it, and Bethesda wanted to make sure the DACH region got a good taste of what they have to offer.
And so this became a focused outreach to the top creators in the German-speaking gaming sphere. Specializing our outreach in specific regions like (but not limited to) Germany or France is something we’ve continuously done for years, leading to us knowing very quickly who to reach out to. With the pre-existing knowledge that the DLC was going to be very focused on story beats, with the ominous House of Va’ruun being put in the spotlight, our strategy for creating a selection was aimed at those who can turn single-player experiences into memorable moments of content. Creators like KeysJore, Bonjwa and Kartoffel König formed a core of the gaming audiences, which was then filled in by amazing focused streamers like Alex0s, AresLPs, Katazuri.
While our focus was on existing players of Starfield, we saw value in including at least several new faces to cover the game. In FragNart and froschmaedchen we found great first experiences in both a creator and an audience, and really enjoyed their coverage.
And what did all this result in? For starters, our 10 Twitch streamers managed to bring in an accumulated concurrent viewership of over 11,000, with some streamers performing close to double our expected CCV. While YouTube performance ended up being less strong then we originally thought, partially due to a lesser focus on YouTube content, the total views managed to reach our estimations of 25k views within the first week, mainly thanks to KeysJore through his stunning showcase of the DLC. This campaign also wasn’t shy to expand into TikTok territory.
We love working within specific regions, and the Shattered Space campaign was no exception. It reached past, present and future players into the game and the DLC, and while global campaigns are of course very rewarding, a focused outreach for a single geo is always an exciting challenge that we are happy to take on. Congratulations on the launch, Bethesda!
Black Soup goes Crete
While we’d like to present ourselves as a cohesive unit from the heart of Berlin, the truth is that a lot of us work remotely throughout Europe. For this reason, Black Soup likes to go on a little workation every once in a while. The Greek island of Crete served as our temporary Black Soup HQ, where besides excellent food and great weather, we treated ourselves to some much-needed workshops and sharing of knowledge. But the most important part of all is that it gave us space to meet, bond, and talk. Even though we end up spending most of our time in our inboxes and spreadsheets, we must not forget that we work in a creative medium where personalities drive it forward, and forging a healthy team culture allows us to do the same with our clients, contacts, and colleagues. Apes together strong!
With the spooky season behind us, it is officially time to start ordering Spiced Pumpkin Latte, as we need the caffeine for all the cool things we’re gearing up for in November. And we'll share a little secret… that can include you! Do you have a game that is in need of strategic influencer outreach? Get in touch with us.
Eitherway, thanks again for reading this rocket-fueled newsletter, and we’ll see you again in December.
Stay soupy!
- Black Soup’s newsletter monkeys
