WoWifying the World

How do you turn around negative community sentiment when they’re at rock bottom?

This was the problem we faced in early 2022. Shadowlands was one of the worst received expansions for World of Warcraft and our community was angry. I was tasked with creating a new internal organic social media team and turning around sentiment as we approached the launch of our next expansion: Dragonflight.

So we approached our over-arching strategy with a few baseline tactics:

#1: We’re in the trenches with you

Create content that echoes what players are doing in-game. Show them that we are playing and experiencing the game alongside them. Quickly react with content that is the talk of the community.

#2: WoWified Memes

Lean into internet culture by re-creating memes and trends with the spin of our game world Azeroth. Utilize our in-game capture expertise to craft visuals that are uniquely World of Warcraft.

#3: Timely Trends

Hop on trends quickly and always through our lens of the game.

#4: Embrace vertical video

Craft vertical video content across platforms that utilize trending formats, bring Azeroth into the real world, or expand in-game storytelling.

Results

Our efforts did not go unrewarded. By utilizing these tactics we have maintained steady growth across platforms and sentiment on our social channels has skyrocketed from the lows in early 2022. And the community regularly let’s us know.

  • Audience positivity increased, including a 2x follower retention rate on X over previous years.

  • Conversation extended outside of our social channels, with media pickup for posts (USAToday, Gamerant, PCGamesN), and regular reposts of our content to Reddit.

A few top posts:

  • Our Morning Routine trend popped off across all o&o platforms, with 10.35M views and an average 10.2% engagement rate.

  • Our post about the Death of the Duolingo Owl generated over 717k impressions and nearly 33k engagements, one of our most successful tweets since Aug 2019.

  • Admin reveal trend on X had 774% more engagements and 1052% more retweets over the median for the platform.

  • Our Willy Wonka reactive post had 446% more impressions and 1005% more engagements on X over the median for the platform.

  • Pepe Silvia meme drove exceptional engagement on X, earning 429% more total engagements and 778% more retweets than the median for the platform.

Social Team Credits

  • Creative Direction: Justin Marcus

  • Designers: HB Straw, Eric Matos, Lorraine Pham, Brian H Kim, Katie Patnode, Jay Friedman, Ryan Arcaini, Luke Seaboch

  • Copywriters: Heath Milo, Daniel White

  • Producers: Kristen Massie, Martin McDonagh

  • Marketing Partners: Britain Taylor, Jessica Downey

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