Image source: K/DA Fandom Wiki
While K-pop is hitting its all-time popularity now, how it spread began in the mid-1990s and 2000s in what many call the “Hallyu Wave.” However, in those early days, Korean culture was mainly contained within Asia.
That all changed when Psy’s “Gangnam Style” hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100, with the music video gaining 3 billion views on YouTube. The Hallyu Wave exploded in the West, and the rest is history.
Meanwhile, in Santa Monica, California, a game studio called Riot Games was experimenting with music and skins for their game, League of Legends. Using various genres and tracks to introduce their new champions and skins, it was only a matter of time before K-pop entered their discography.
Thus, K/DA was born.
While K/DA wasn’t Riot’s first foray into making a music-based group (that honor goes to Pentakill), the video game industry changed forever with their introduction and subsequent explosion into the mainstream.
So, what can you learn from Riot Games on how to do marketing for the gaming industry and how they handled K/DA? Turn to how K-pop marketing works!
Here are the reasons why K/DA is one of the greatest marketing strategies in video game history and the lessons you can apply to your campaigns.
K/DA’s Inception
K/DA is ultimately a skin line for League of Legends, and to understand how Riot’s marketing works, you first need to understand their philosophy on skins.
Skins are cosmetics that change how a champion (i.e. a playable character) looks in the game. They can come with sound effects (SFX) and visual effects (VFX). Depending on the skin, they could also have different voice lines.
Ultimately, the main drivers for Riot creating skins are a champion’s popularity and/or they coincide with any new releases or other media. However, they will also include one or two champions that don’t fully fill these factors, to further fill out the roster or to give some love to an otherwise unpopular pick.
Interviews with Sebastien Najand (composer), Janelle Jimenez (K/DA skins lead designer), and Toa Dunn (head of Riot Music) state that the idea behind the project had been brewing for five years, and they finally pitched it in 2017.
The champions they chose for the K/DA skin line mainly followed the studio’s philosophy and the familiar roles within a typical K-pop group:
- Ahri (voiced by Miyeon of (G)I-DLE) – leader and vocalist
- Akali (voiced by Soyeon of (G)I-DLE) – main rapper
- Kai’Sa (voiced by Jaira Burns) – main dancer
- Evelynn (voiced by Madison Beer) – vocalist and visual
Now that the developers had their champions and their positions in the group, all that was left was a name. Borrowing from how other K-pop groups styled their names, such as (G)I-DLE and 2NE1, they formed K/DA, which was from “Kills, Deaths, and Assists,” a metric that tracked how well a player was doing during a game.
With the name and champions in their lineup, it was time for the group to debut.
Coming at You Live: The Debut
While fictional music groups weren’t a new thing, what was unorthodox with K/DA was their debut and promotion.
They made their first official performance during the 2018 World Championships opening ceremony on Nov 3, performing in Augmented Reality (AR) alongside the artists who provided their vocals.
Having the characters and their voices performing beside each other was relatively new ground, with Riot taking full advantage of AR technology. The studio released the music video for their single, POP/STARS, only a few minutes after the live performance.
That performance and the music video served to excite players for the upcoming skins, with the official trailer of the cosmetics launching on Nov 5, 2018, two days after the music video.
Though it was made mainly for the League of Legends fanbase, POP/STARS and K/DA eventually broke through the mainstream, with the music video sitting at 599 million views at the time of writing and breaking through that year’s Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales at the top spot!
In line with other K-pop groups, Riot Games released the official choreography video, currently sitting on 15 million views. Searching “POP/STARS dance cover” on YouTube yields dozens of different groups doing their rendition of the song, further underscoring its popularity.
While Riot Games never released the sales number for the skins, they did state in a developer blog that K/DA is one of the most popular skin lines.
In 2020, once again, K/DA took the world by storm. ALL OUT hit the number 1 spot on Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums and was 5th on Billboard’s World Albums.
Proving that their success wasn’t just lightning in a bottle, other companies soon began to jump on the bandwagon.
You Know I Got It: The Impact of K/DA
Source: Blizzard Entertainment
Since K/DA’s debut and comeback, gaming marketing has seen significant changes, with many other companies in the industry seeing the benefits that leaning into K-pop’s popularity can give them and beginning to follow suit.
Some of the most notable collaborations are:
- PUBG x Blackpink
- Electronic Arts Korea x Hwasa (Sims 4)
- Activision Blizzard x Le Sserafim (Overwatch 2)
Riot didn’t rest on their laurels either, and two other groups made their debuts on the Worlds stage – True Damage in 2019 and Heartsteel in 2023. They also released a third album and an online concert for their first virtual group, Pentakill, in 2021.
5 Marketing Lessons We Can Learn From K/DA
So, what lessons can marketers learn from one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the video game industry? Here are the tips you can use for your own PC, console, or mobile game marketing strategy:
1. Find the balance between local and international
If you’re trying to market to a global audience, it’s best to find ways to bridge your customer base from your home country and those internationally.
Having K/DA debut during the 2018 World Championships was an excellent move on Riot’s part because South Korea was the birthplace of K-pop. They also further drew in the country’s crowd by partnering with Soyeon and Miyeon to voice Akali and Ahri.
Aside from the fact that international players got to watch their favorite players during the event, the draw for English-speaking players was Jaira Burns and Madison Beer. The hype generated by the World Championships exposed many people to K/DA – around 99.6 million.
2. Have an original take on existing ideas
Fictional bands have been around for years before K/DA or K-pop became global sensations. However, having a fresh take on an already existing idea can attract audiences.
One of the standout things regarding K/DA is that Riot Games is, first and foremost, a video game studio. Music was something they did to promote and market their games. A gaming company creating a K-pop group to sell in-game cosmetics and committing to the bit with a music video, choreography, and collaborating with real artists in the industry was bound to get attention.
It’s also crucial to note that K/DA’s concept isn’t new either – Blackpink, Red Velvet, and 2NE1 have all done a “badass” or “girl crush” theme. However, what was fresh for K/DA was that the developers reframed all existing characters in a video game into the typical roles of a K-pop group.
For instance, in the game, Evelynn is an alluring demon that lures her prey through seduction. In K/DA, she’s a sultry diva who demands perfection from everyone and herself. Quite the flip of the script, and it provided fans with a new take on her character.
3. Collaborate with other groups and companies
Source: Just Dance
How do you expand your reach and tap into another audience? Collaborating with others! While K/DA saw success through League of Legends and K-pop fans, Riot Games saw the opportunity to attract more fans by partnering with other companies.
For instance, Ubisoft released POP/STARS, More, and Drum Go Dum as songs for their game Just Dance. Beat Saber also featured POP/STARS in their game, showing Madison Beer in their promotional video.
4. Engage with your community
Source: K/DA Official Twitter
In the age of social media, audiences want to be able to relate and talk to their idols or even the companies they buy from. Many K-pop groups and members have pages to show behind-the-scenes content and promote their music.
Riot did this for K/DA comeback by creating their official X and Instagram pages. Like all other K-pop groups, they even gave their fans their official fandom name – BLADES.
Riot further leaned into engagement by posting videos of each member thanking their fans when they released the concept videos for their solo songs. Each short video has their respective artist tweeting as themselves, immersing audiences even more.
5. Provide other types of content
Source: K/DA Official Twitter
K-pop groups aren’t just about releasing songs – you want your audience hooked on all the members, whether they be fictional or not. One of the ways to sell your brand is to get people to relate to you, and you can do that by providing other forms of content.
For instance, aside from the CGI thank you and official choreography videos, Riot Games
also released a webtoon series called Harmonies, with each issue following each member (and Seraphine) during the recording of the EP.
Fans reading the comics could get to know each character better, further humanizing them and making them more relatable.
K/DA also has an official fan club website, where people can read more information about the members and download official wallpapers. They even have music files, 3D models, character art, and more for creating K/DA content!
Riot didn’t stop at just the in-game skins. They also have K/DA merchandise, which ranges from figures to apparel, and, of course, an official K/DA lightstick!
The Future?
Now that there’s a trend of K-pop groups and other companies collaborating, especially within the video game industry, there is no doubt that many will jump in and keep it going for years to come.
Many people look forward to what music performance Riot Games cooks up every year for their World Championships – it is good marketing for the event and for whatever skin line they will be releasing for the year.
Take the lessons learned from how Riot handled K/DA and use them to put a spin on your marketing campaigns. If you need help, there’s no better partner than Spiralytics.
As a digital marketing agency with over ten years of experience, we can give you and your company effective marketing solutions to bring your target audience to you. Our collaborative process keeps you in the loop, and you can trust us to help your business grow.
Contact us today for more information.
