The app marketplace is crowded with game releases. With so much competition, success often comes depends on more than just gameplay. Marketing often makes between fading into obscurity and breaking through the noise.

For gaming apps, clever, bold and sometimes quirky campaigns can have the best results. These approaches not only drive downloads, but also build communities of fans who buy into the culture surrounding the game. For mobile gamers, whether like to bet online or explore other genres of gaming, marketing is often a powerful factor in their choice to hit the download button.

In this blog post, we explore gaming apps that have had memorable and successful marketing campaigns. Many of these achieved viral success and strong revenue thanks to their promotional strategy.

Candy Crush Saga

First up is the puzzle game, Candy Crush Saga. First launched in 2012 by developers King, this game was one of the first smartphone titles to achieve viral fame. It was heavily integrated into the social media platform Facebook.

Players could share their achievements, ask their friends for lives and promote their scores directly on their Facebook feed. This idea of peer-to-peer marketing was genius, as it kept the game in constant view of audiences on social platforms.

At the game’s peak, it had more that 93 million daily active players and earned billions in revenue. The key takeaway from this game’s success is the importance of making it easy for players to share progress, both socially and via word-of-mouth.

Pokémon GO

Another highly profitable gaming app is Pokémon GO. Released in 2016, this game quickly took the world by storm thanks to its combination of powerful nostalgia and state-of-the art technology.

The developers wowed audiences by introducing the idea of catching Pokémon in the real world using augmented reality. They showed trailers in locations with significant foot traffic, including New York’s Central Park and the Sydney Opera House in Australia, helping to spark curiosity around the world.

Ads weren’t the only way the game was promoted. Social media quickly became flooded with images and videos of players swarming at real world locations. This created a snowball effect, as others did not want to miss out on the action. Within just one month, the game had been downloaded more than 100 million times.

The success of this game exemplifies how combining nostalgia with new technology can help to create a cultural movement and generate significant attention.

Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans from Supercell was popular right from launch. However, its Super Bowl commercial in 2015 took it to another level. The promotion featured the actor Liam Neeson and was a parody of his tough guy persona, with him vowing revenge after losing a match.

This ad was funny, memorable and perfectly captured the competitive spirit of the game. This ad was very expensive to run, but was watched more than 100 million times on YouTube and led to a clear spike in game downloads.

Supercell invested heavily in creative marketing and celebrity endorsements to help keep the game in the spotlight globally.

Angry Birds

Angry Birds was just a simple puzzle game upon its launch in 2009. However, its creative marketing campaign soon turned it into the worldwide brand we know today. The team behind it focused on simplicity and accessibility, while ensuring there were continuous updates and themed versions to keep it relevant.

Popular themes included Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Rio. The brand behind it, Rovio, branched out from app store promotions and eventually introduced merchandise. This included everything from soft toys to clothing items.

This campaign made Angry Birds recognizable outside of the gaming community. It now appears regularly in mainstream media and many partnerships have been developed. Five years after its initial release, the Angry Birds brand had made more than $1 billion dollars in revenue.

Subway Surfers

Sunway Surfers hasn’t achieved the same level of virality as Angry Birds but had equally clever marketing behind it. The creators of the game partnered with gaming influencers on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. The vibrant graphics of this game, with its bright colors, catchy soundtrack and smooth gameplay were a content creators dream and made it highly shareable.

Their marketing campaigns featured a world tour narrative, releasing new themes based on global cities each month. This helped to keep the game fresh and support marketing efforts, as players shared new updates online.

Subway Surfers eventually achieved the title of the most downloaded mobile game of the decade in 2020, with over 2.7 billion downloads.

Ultimately, the world of mobile gaming is highly competitive, but these marketing campaigns show that with the right strategy, a gaming app can quickly go from being relatively unknown to worldwide fame.