文 / 手游那点事 Sam
Lately, I've felt like I'm being "surrounded" by all kinds of food and beverage collaborations.
Occasionally, if you want to drink a cup of milk tea or order foreign fast food on the hour during the holidays, open the order applet, and a game IP will always pop up from time to time. You can see "Glory of Kings" in McDonald's, and buy the "Against the Cold" package at KFC, even if you watch the second tour alone, it is very lively: here "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" (hereinafter referred to as "Star Railway") links tea Baidao, and that "Ark of Tomorrow" links Nayuki's tea. If you don't have enough, there's Back to the Future: 1999 and Pizza Hut......
You see, it takes a lot of effort to list the cases in the last month alone. A little further, such as "Love of Light and Night", "Baijing Corridor", "Book of Undetermined Events", etc., have almost filled the schedules of these catering brands, and it seems that there are few linkages in hand, and they can't keep up with the trend of the market.
The problem is that game-linked catering is nothing new in itself. Around 2015, or even earlier, it was already quite a conventional marketing tactic to use offline catering FMCG stores as a publicity and distribution scenario. It stands to reason that players should be no stranger to this, and most outsiders are just watching the fun. In today's convenient and developed online channels, the efficiency of reaching users in this way is not necessarily higher than simply and rudely smashing the purchase volume.
But in the hands of manufacturers such as Tencent, miHoYo, and Eagle Corner, the seemingly outdated "old methods" not only have more new tricks, but also seem to be becoming more and more "fragrant".
01
Catering linkage, more and more "flowers"
As mentioned earlier, the game IP has had a mature and fixed model for catering linkage a long time ago. For example, setting up a theme store, customizing material peripherals, launching package items, and inviting Coser platforms are basically indispensable "standard" items.
For example, during the testing of Lineage 2: Blood Pact in 2016, Snail Games partnered with McDonald's. In addition to opening 10 themed restaurants nationwide, it also combined catering and game selling points with the slogan of "Original Paradise" to build momentum for the launch of the national server in advance.
Another example is the early linkage between "Fantasy Journey to the West" and Pizza Hut, which revolves around the "Dream Theme Store". NetEase has laid a large number of customized decorations offline, and at the same time, with the e-sports events held by the game, the theme store is used as a space for players to watch the game, and then forms a closed loop of traffic inside and outside the product.
In the early days of game catering linkage, most of them followed this model, focusing on a "brand exposure". To put it simply, it is to create memory points for IP through straightforward information transmission and aiming at life scenarios, which is equivalent to short-term centralized offline advertising.
But as we all know, since the second-game manufacturers are also eyeing this "battlefield", the situation has begun to change a little.
The difference is not in the purpose, but in the "form". And "Genshin Impact" linked to KFC became the original source of the trend.
To this day, many people still can't figure out why this linkage is so popular. After all, from the perspective of the process, its essence is actually to buy packages and send peripherals, which is generally no different from common linkage. But the "joint code" that miHoYo came up with unexpectedly made a qualitative change in the whole event - that's right, it is the phrase "meet in another world, enjoy the deliciousness".
Why offline ordering has become a "social death scene" can get out of the circle, we will try to expand it later. In short, after that, it seems that it has become some kind of old rule to have a "ceremony" before taking the merchandise from the clerk: including the follow-up of "Genshin Impact" and Pizza Hut's "The Wind Rises, Come at the Appointment", "Star Rail" linked to Tea Baidao's "Tea Rhyme Rises from Xianzhou", "Baijing Corridor" and Domino's "Baijing Corridor, Jingshen Full Score", are all similar examples.
Obviously, no matter how high your concentration of the game is, when it comes to offline, you can only choose one of the limited peripherals and psychological baggage. Of course, there are occasionally more "benevolent" manufacturers, such as "Back to the Future: 1999", which allows players to shout "May the pizza be with us" in English, which is at least less noticeable and somewhat less shameful.
What can I say，直接拿下。
Just letting players shout slogans is not the most "flowery" to play. For example, in the linkage between "Star Rail" and KFC last year, in addition to launching the "Pam Delicious Bucket" and giving away laser tickets, miHoYo also connected a whole series of "ruthless work": let Pam introduce the content of the linkage, invite character voice actors such as March 7 and Danheng to sing the "Crazy Thursday Song", and release "Star Dome Railway teaches you to cook food with 0 basics" through the official account...... It doesn't matter if you can't learn, just shout "help me, KFC grandpa" and you'll get everything you want.
Coupled with offline advertising covering other scenarios and KOL cooperation and publicity, miHoYo obviously attaches great importance to this event, rather than simply "borrowing the field" from partners. When the originally commonplace catering linkage has reached this scale and investment, it may be time to re-examine how much heat benefits it can bring to manufacturers.
02
Do it every year, fire every year?
Whenever the game IP and catering brands are linked, the following scenarios will probably occur: waiting on the order interface two minutes in advance, when the time comes, it is still crowded by the speed of light, and finally it is time to pay, but the optional date prompts that all the appointments are full; As for wanting to get the peripherals offline for the first time, there is a high probability that you must be mentally prepared to be submerged in the sea of people and even stay up late to queue up.
In the eyes of outsiders, this kind of "fanaticism" may be a little incomprehensible - the money of the second yuan is really so easy to make, and it can be popular with whichever one you link? Or, are those gifts really so important, or is there any special meaning that is worth the time and energy that so many people have to spend more than the surface value to desperately obtain?
For players who participate in person, they will probably give different subjective reasons. But from a business point of view, these phenomena actually only lead to the same answer, that is, manufacturers not only have a very clear positioning for the food and beverage linkage, but also know what players want to see and gain in the linkage, so that people can continue to "buy" and devote their enthusiasm to it as a matter of course.
Let's start with "Genshin Impact" and KFC. Regular readers may remember that my colleague also spent the night outside the Guangzhou theme store all night, documenting the scene with video and text. At three or four o'clock in the morning, hundreds of people lined up on the streets just to get the 90 badges a day. Even if you can't grab it, take home as much as you can with the theme bucket, or anything that has elements of Genshin Impact.
The word "limited" can certainly constitute a lot of motivation. But players are willing to row for a pair of badges at night, more because "Genshin Impact" is the first offline linkage, which has become an "outlet" for them to vent their emotions. Whether it's queuing up all night, going out of Cos to a restaurant, or shouting "meet in another world, enjoy the delicious food", when players are in an environment where their peers gather, some so-called "social death" behaviors are also given the added meaning of proving "cooking power".
As for the peripherals that you put a lot of effort to get, it is a commemorative certificate of "personal participation". Compared with the visible "value" benefits, leaving memories through them, or gaining recognition in the circle, is often something that more players value.
But in the final analysis, only these players in the circle can get, and there are even some inexplicable things in the eyes of passers-by, why do they make the linkage so outrageous?
In my opinion, another major reason for excluding the phenomenal popularity and player base of Genshin Impact itself is that when the form of linkage changes (queuing, slogan), the core of the experience is no longer limited to the "display" of information, but the "interaction" between players and the linkage party. In addition, most of the second-game players are willing to express themselves and have strong Internet attributes, so it is easy to derive a series of memes and secondary creations, covering the atmosphere of the event to most of the IP audience and even other pan-user circles, so that they can have cognition and interest.
[B station @ is not のの]
In this way, the role of the player is not only "consumer", but also has actually become a part of the "publicity", spreading the community atmosphere through the catering linkage.
So after "Genshin Impact", more second-game manufacturers began to add interactive ways such as shouting slogans and doing tasks for catering linkage. At the same time, in order for players to be able to "let go of their baggage" and be willing to participate and share, how to "shape the atmosphere" has become an increasingly important part.
For example, some time ago, "Ark of Tomorrow" linked Nai Xue's tea, and a staff training manual of more than ten pages was circulated, from the customer code name (doctor) to the operator code name were listed as a "must-remember" item. According to offline feedback, the specifications and standards, including the BGM placed in the theme store and the placement of the order label, are also quite detailed, and the actual experience has been praised by many players.
The linkage between "Love of Light and Night" and Hey Tea is based on the theme of White Day. Players can get the "badge" by being in the same frame as the character through the card peripherals, and interact with them through self-stamping. Being able to break the "fourth wall" and bring love offline naturally provides an additional attraction for players to participate in the linkage.
So you see, although the catering linkage seems to be done every year and popular every year, if you really want to achieve the ideal effect, it is actually quite a test of the manufacturer's ideas and creativity. On the surface, it is a code, but how to actually "match the airwaves" with the player is the most important thing.
03
It's not just "1+1"
In the past, we watched game manufacturers engage in catering linkage, mostly in the form of "flash mobs", using the popularity of cross-border brands to create a wave of concentrated exposure for IP. But at present, it seems that this "1+1" model of finding a well-known brand and engaging in a short-term co-branding seems to have changed a lot with the popularity of "Game X Catering".
The first is the change in the duration of the linkage. If you actually observe several co-branded activities, you can find that the cooperation between second-tour products and catering brands does not seem to deliberately create a "limited-time" concept. Even if the custom peripherals have been distributed, the linkage package with IP elements will continue to be available for sale, often for several months. This shows that the game linkage catering is not only a "wave of streams", but can still contribute stable positive income to both sides of the linkage in the long run.
Because of this, some cross-border brands will even establish long-term and stable cooperative relations with each other, making linkage a "routine operation". For example, Genshin Impact, Heytea, and Pizza Hut have already launched two phases of collaboration, and the role of "Kanban" is also a bit exquisite: Amber and Eula (Pizza Hut Phase 1) of Mondstadt, Yelan and Ningguang (Pizza Hut Phase 2) of Liyue, Ganyu and Shenhe (Hey Tea Phase 2), and Inazuma's Kamisato Siblings (Hey Tea Phase 1), highlighting a rain and dew evenly wet.
When the cooperation enters a stable state, it will even be like a "version update" of the game IP offline. Favorite characters have the opportunity to appear in crossover crossovers, and to some extent, it will also help players spontaneously look forward to the "next time".
All in all, in the hands of second-game manufacturers, catering linkage is becoming a marketing position that cannot be ignored. If you think about it carefully, as long as the quality of the event does not fall behind, it is actually a "best of all three" thing - the restaurant has a new customer flow, the game IP has gained user stickiness and brand communication, and players are also happy to see their favorite character images offline, and by the way, they can get limited peripherals......
In this way, it seems to be really "fragrant".