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Experiential marketing in review: Kola studios

Guest blog by Unnie Wamala: Business development at Kola Studios

 

Matatu is a mobile game based on the popular Ugandan game played with a pack of cards. Available on Android and iOS, Matatu has enjoyed the Number 1 slot as the Top Free Game on the Google Play Store for over a year. With over 40,000 downloads and growing exponentially with 75% within Uganda, currently Matatu has a retention rate of over 50%, with over 100,000 games being played daily. Having been fully commercialised as an advertisement platform and attracting advertisers like Orange Uganda, we sought to further launch the game as a brand engagement platform. Brands looking to interact with their end users would be able to engage with their consumers in a fun way while at the same time promoting their products and services on the game.

 

We started experimenting with experiential marketing in August 2013 with the objective of experimenting to observe the effect on our downloads, retention rates and advertiser sign ons.

The Matatuthon experiment:

The first test run into experiential marketing was the Matatuthon with Airtel, with over 200 gamers playing and competing in one room. We didn’t see a big spike in downloads, just a slight one from 100 daily downloads to ~110. Our retentions rates improved though, and our number of games played daily increased by almost 5,000 on that day, from ~40,000. The biggest win however was for brand visibility, especially for our advertisers, who now became confortable dealing with us, because they’d heard of us before.

 

The Orange expo experiment:

The Orange expo followed with the Matatu stand enjoying a huge amount of traffic and we found an increased appreciation of gamers, new and old, interacting with the makers of the game. The orange expo was a much bigger win in terms of new downloads, as we had ~50% new installs compared to other days in the same period.

It has also been beneficial as we get direct feedback from the gamers on their game experience, the hiccups and new features they would like to see. This feedback has gone into our new version of the game, to be released soon.

 

Matatu Nights at Legends experiment

This April, we started the Matatu Nights at Legends. The idea behind these nights is to make the mobile game come alive with our gamers and to increase game downloads and game-plays. As always with our offline events, we are usually experimenting and watching the metrics to adjust our strategy. The Legends nights are currently leaning more to conversion of advertisers, as most of the turn up already has the game. As an advertising platform, we aim at increased fun and interactivity, sales and retention of revellers for Legends Bar and Restaurant. At the night, we have revellers play the old school physical card game in competition with the winners and losers being 'rewarded' for their participation. We then move on to the 'New School' mobile game, with people competing for the most points with the mobile app on their mobile phones. The winner gets a prize from our sponsors. We have since had Heineken become part of the night.

We have found that social media and digital marketing still needs to be complemented with other forms of media with a clear call-to-action and incentives for gamers to respond.

Over many offline events however, we’ve observed increased engagement on the days of Matatu nights, slowly going down by Monday, and then jumping back up on Tuesday. We have almost 30% more engagement during the events. The number of new player growth is also impressive (week over week, not just each night considered separately) with 50% more new users per day. As far as proof of concept goes, Matatu is great for brand engagement. We are gaining great insight into our consumer preferences and behaviour that will translate into great improvement of our product, Matatu.

 

What can you do to help?

Come and be part of the Matatu Night at Legends Sportsbar (the Old Rugby Club, Lugogo) every Thursday starting at 7.00pm to 9.00pm.

Download the game on the android app store

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matatu.common

Want to immortalise games currently being forgotten? Join us

http://kolastudios.com/category/careers/

 

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