Kirill Lunkov, the marketing creative producer at Azur Games, explains in the company’s blog how to create successful hyper-casual game creativity and what to pay attention to.

I’ve loved games since I was a kid, but I didn’t think those gaming and marketing skills would be handy in game design. I used to manage the digital marketing and social media department. Experience in promoting commercial projects, working with video content and analytics, and visual experience helped me become a creative producer in the game industry.

Kirill Lunkov, marketing creative producer at Azur Games

Today at Azur Games, Kirill is responsible for the creative strategy of 20 hyper-casual projects. These are games at the active scale and high-value stage. For each title, the company reviews competitors, studies trends, tests hypotheses for advertising campaigns and analyzes the results.

Side note: TapNation tips for improving CPI.

Every creative producer at Azur Games has an additional area of responsibility. Kirill is responsible for playable advertising. Playables enhance existing top spots and seriously add value, which means the project earns more. Recently, playable ads have been performing well as standalone creatives, so the company is strengthening this area.

Next, let’s look at four tips from Kirill that will make ad creative better:

  • Visibility. Play mobile games and watch ads. It sounds obvious, but it’s an effective way to get a visual experience and develop an aggregate understanding of popular trends. Just catching the most common types of creatives from different companies is enough to get you started;
  • Competitor analysis. Study the approaches and creative strategies of competitors who have similar products. Use services such as App Magic, data.ai, Sensor Tower and Facebook Ads Library — these platforms allow you to view other companies’ creatives. Compile the top 5 competitors, figure out the trajectories they’re following, and use similar techniques in your creatives;
  • Search for ideas. It’s important to think globally and use non-game content that potential users like. Anything works: major franchises, movies, TV series, animation, any famous characters and images, or even sounds from TikTok;
  • Experiments. There are creative ideas that work often — a funny voiceover or intro. But try unusual, sometimes even crazy, hypotheses that you firmly believe in, even if they’re not trending. For example, one of Azur Games’ top creatives for War of Rafts was with a location that was stylized like the movie «Tron» — with neon, cyber platforms and sound effects.

A good announcement evokes emotion and catches players’ attention from the first seconds. Don’t be afraid to embellish the project or add some craziness to the story. The main thing is to keep the game’s basic mechanics and not to mislead completely.

Kirill Lunkov, marketing creative producer at Azur Games

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