Royal Kingdom: Is Celebrity Marketing a Viable Strategy?

In today's episode, Nick and Michael are talking mobile games, specifically Dream Games and Royal Kingdom. Michael has seen their ads everywhere recently, with big names like Lebron James and Kevin Hart promoting the game. So - is this a good strategy? Will paying thousands or millions for celebrity endorsements bring a return? And just how did this Turkish developer get to the point of $5billion valuation? We break it all down in this episode!

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Transcript

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Royal Kingdom a mobile game more recently I've seen specific ads, LeBron James. probably like one of the biggest athletes like in the world. Jimmy Fallon like Kevin Hart. just yesterday guys from Modern Family. where are these guys getting this money from they must be making a full. Originally 55 million monthly active users Is it coming from the cash flow that's in the bank? Is it using investors money? Are they taking a massive punt on going right. Let's spend 100 million on celebrity endorsement. we've got to get everybody back in two years time. all of their investors got bought out at a valuation of around 5 billion. is it a good marketing strategy? are they going to get ROI from paying LeBron James hundreds of thousands or whatever to do it? Don't know. You just don't know really hard to speculate because you'd never know the back end of a business. would they be better off just getting influencer type actors, then spend all that money on just push it out to the right people is the celebrity going to get you or me to do it? it's they paid him half £1 million for LeBron James. Yeah. They've got to make the half £1 million go somewhere now. now need a media budget. There's so many loops and hoops you've got to jump through, you go into the App Store? tens of thousands of games. What makes one stand out? just a phone game free viewing game as well. you could get a thousand people to download it in day, but none of them could spend any money. It's unbelievable isn't it. He. Welcome back to the market, everybody. I'm sitting in the driver's. Michael is Michael is driving, which means that James isn't here. But Nick is here today. I'm here. Don't worry, guys, welcome here. We can keep this on. We can get us on track. Not as the doctor. I'm not as a doctor today. I didn't bring my doctors, I haven't been. What happened? The clinic I've got. Do I carry on being the doctor or not? And I'll tell you why, Michael. Because my socials aren't picking up. It's really weird. It's really annoying because the podcast has so many listeners, doesn't it? I don't sign up for it, but it has. It's a successful podcast. It's still like number 1 or 2 on for Facebook. You know, if it was 1 or 2 for marketing, I probably won't be, but it is what it is. But if you type in Facebook into those platforms, my Pop My Little podcast comes up and it's it still gets views, it still gets listens and it's still great revenue into the into the agency which is brilliant. Can I get my socials working? Can I f I have no idea like James up. Maybe they don't like face. Maybe they don't. That's the maybe they don't like when it's when it's like not doing well. You end up like try never know what's going on. But they like you said, we have that one the other day which went to 50,000. But the irony is every the ones that go high on the views are the ones that we're not talking about marketing or we're talking about some weird element of Mark, like we've the three that we've had the biggest so far. It's like holy rocks, which was a few weeks ago. And then we had to about HMRC. Yeah. Yeah. And where you would, you would complain about them doing it with your son. And then James's complained about them not following up. Right. Okay. So if I'm wearing my, if, if I'm wearing my doctor's cloak when I go in and if I, if someone puts into the 30 minute session and they're interested in me helping them with their ads, it seems to be if I'm wearing my cloak, it it creates a little bit of humor at the beginning. Like they're why are you dressed like a doctor? Because it's the ads clinic, blah blah. But then when I seem to do it, I have, videos on my socials. I don't know if people are just thinking, why are you dressed as a doctor? Because I don't know the context. Yeah, I get what you mean. So to me, coming across it might be seen as a bit weird. So I'm testing out a different way. Let's do some things I haven't got. I'm not dressed it. Plus we were also doing the podcast. My podcast now is being filmed. We just filmed it and we filmed three episodes. Yeah, let's see how that seems to work for other people. I'm saying in a podcast room rather than sitting in an office at home. So I don't know. Got to say, I've got break the algorithm, the algorithms got to get across. You just cough on to one, go to key guy. That's the thing. You don't know what the issue is. You never know what to fix. No, it's just like I know, I know, I'm sitting slightly. They won't say this in audience because I'm looking at the camera. Should be okay. But I'm sitting here like this and it's because I'm sort of like, my seat's really high. I was at two. I've got my feet resting on a on a thing. So it's make me set an angle. But yeah. So how is Michael? All right. Good. Yeah. It's been a bit quiet. Rupert, we're waiting on the new update, which should be in the next few days. Hopefully. I've heard it's coming. It was supposed to be tomorrow, but I think it's going to be next heard. It's going to be very sexy. From what I've seen, it looks really good. Yeah. James is doing a lot of testing, which doesn't look very fun. He was showing me earlier what he has to do, and it's just like he has. I think he has 165 comments or something from different accounts that are using Rupert, and he basically has to put them into this website thing that generates a response. And if he's happy with the response, that's good. But he has to be happy with all 165. And if it's wrong, then he has to go in, tweak something in the algorithm, and then start them all again for me, before I say article stuff. And I was like, so if 164 right, but one's wrong and he's like, yeah, we have to just start again. I'm like, wow. So he could get 159. Yeah, 160 is completely wrong. And then I got all of them again and he doesn't really know what he's doing. He said not me putting words in his mouth. He said yeah. He doesn't fully understand it. So there's loads of different parameters. He has to change the stuff that happens in the background. Unbelievable. Yeah, I don't understand anything to do with development and all that sort of stuff, but clever people do. Thankfully, the ones we wouldn't have brought up. Absolutely. So what we can talk him about today then? Well, I came to, do it. Well, I've, I've had like a topic. It's not really been a topic. It started off as me thinking about it for when we were talking about the ads we've seen, but I've seen it so much now. And because it's just me and you, I thought we might try and go that right. So Royal Kingdom is a mobile game app, but it's a bridge. They are a bridge. Are you just saying the Italian because you see this ad? Well, I've seen lots of ads, but more recently I've seen specific ads, but they've become very big. As I was doing some digging into them while we were sitting here. But I've seen their ads a lot. They used to do these ads where like, there'd be people in the street and they'd be like, go it, you know, like, you see influencer videos where they go some with a microphone and go, oh, what are you listening to? And they'd be like, I can't talk to you now. I'm trying to save the king. And then that's all you tried to, they would cut to the gameplay. If you've ever seen the ads of like, A Little King, and he's like, either war is coming down and then we'll there's like love. Yes, I think so. Yeah. That basically. But it's evolved now. So more recently, the one that I saw a couple of weeks ago was, an ad for them with LeBron James. So they have had I'll just put it on here. We'll put it up on the podcast for everybody. But I don't know if you know anything about LeBron James apart from that. He's a basketball player. But there's like an ongoing sort of meme with him that he's always carrying books. Right. And like every single game, like they'll play multiple times a week and they'll have a different book that he's like reading, but he's always very near the start. So people are thinking he's not actually reading these books. He's actually just posing with them, basically. But Royal Kingdom did an ad with LeBron James basically playing off that, being like actually behind the book. He's on his phone and he's playing Royal King. So they've done an ad with LeBron James, which is probably like one of the biggest athletes like in the world. Probably they've had the last one they did, they had Jimmy Fallon like Kevin Hart. I've seen that. Yes, I know there's I've seen the Jimmy Fallon and yeah, just yesterday I saw another one. They had the two guys from Modern Family. Yeah. There's like a gay couple on my family. So they've done that for all Kingdom as well. So after seeing all of these, I was like, where are these guys getting this money from to? I love it. I know they work with all of these, big people, so they must be making a full. Originally I was just going to be like saying, hey, is this, working with these big celebrities, is it sort of viable as an actual, like, marketing tactic, or would there be a better place to spend the money somewhere else? But I'll be doing some digging while we were sitting here. So dream games who make Royal Kingdom Turkish company founded in 2019. So in 2021 they launched Royal Match, which was their original game. And since 2023, Royal Match has been among the top ten largest mobile games by monthly revenue globally. So it's still got 55 million monthly active users on Royal Match, 55 million active users. And I guess you're basically active. Yeah, I guess you're born free. It's a free game, but you're buying it is obviously things. Yeah, there's things in there. And then November 2024 they launched Royal Kingdom, which is what these ads are for. And after soft launch in April 2023, they've already made$20 million in revenue off in May, since 2023. So since April 2023, when they soft launch in 20 million, 20 million in revenue, just on Royal Kingdom, I, do you know what? I reckon it's got to be more than that. Well, this this is just what I found. But yeah, they've done like TV ads. They've had ones in the UK with like, Simon Cowen and all these big people. They're going to jeez, they're going to be said also that Edwin Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Disney Animation Studios, joined them in 2023 as a strategic advisor. So I found some things from 2022 which said, in 2022 that raised 255 million, $2.75 billion valuation, on which apparently it doubled in six months. But, looked at another thing while I was waiting, and just last last week, they've all of their investors got bought out by CVC, at a valuation of around 5 billion. Wow. So they're not. So yeah, CVC bought out all of their partners to be sole equity partner at a valuation of 5 billion. So some serious dough there. But think about it. You think about like 55 million people using active users a month. That's on the original game. So this is the different game to even though you're on the original game. Right. Let's say let's call it it in. You're in you're buying stuff in the game. Let's say they spent let's say each one of those spends a pound a month, which we know it's not going to be. Yeah, a pound is 55 million a month. Yeah. And the likelihood is that's going to be some space in there. You're spending a lot more than I. Oh yeah. Because I think I think they work on a basis that for every, you know, ten people who don't buy anything, there'll be people who buy stuff to cover the cost of one of those ones. Isn't it mad how games, online games just been around for so long and then something like that, because there's another one that I'm the I get. I reckon I could open my phone now and be served with this bridge game where you, they're on a, they're on a bridge and baddies are coming forward. Is it where they have to go through the different light panels and some of them like some of them are like times one, some might and they always going backwards. If they just go sideways, they always play it really badly. And it makes you be like, why did I not, like, just play the game correctly? I don't know if it's on TikTok. Yeah, there's loads of different games like that, but I might be TikTok. I see it on. Yeah, there's, there's probably loads of different but or but if if you ever download any of those games none of them are ever like that. Like that is, that will be say even with the royal kingdom ones like they're I think in 2024, they said they were being done for like false advertising because I looked into it recently, all of these mobile games will use a totally different game to promote it. And then when you download it, it's a completely nother type of game. Really. Oh completely different. Yeah. Well, the way they'll get around it is like that bridge thing. They'll that'll be in the game and you'll probably play that level once every like say ten hours of playing another game so they can be like, oh, it is actually in the game. But yeah, yeah, I looked it up. And I think the reason why is that, like they've worked out that that sort of game works, getting people in from an advertising perspective. But same as a movie though, isn't it? Yeah, but there's nothing in that game they can really monetize because it's just a running up a bridge thing. Whereas they've worked out other games to monetize. So they pull you in with that one thing. Yeah, they ship all the money out. Like when you know, you know, you're going to, you know, you're about to watch a bad film or, you know, it's a bad film when the advert goes on for so long. Yeah. So do you like the whole film? You know, like, if you've got, like, Mission Impossible to come out, it's like three seconds of Tom cruise jumping out of a plane. Mission impossible to come into cinemas next year. Yeah, everyone's going to go watch this set out, right. But you know, other ones where it's got like some murder or some horror movie where it's just like every single good bit of that film. The advert goes on for four minutes on YouTube or something. It's every good bit. It's like, I don't know if I need to see that. You told me the plot, you told me everything about it. It's the same sort of thing, isn't it? It's just like, that's just trying to get in the door. It's going to be a really bad film. Yeah, but I suppose with seeing all of the, like, big influencers and celebrities thing, I was sort of thinking like, do you think this is like, obviously there a point now where they're so big they can afford to get these big people in, but I just don't invest the money. Is is it a good is it a good marketing strategy? Like, are they going to get ROI from paying LeBron James however hundreds of thousands or whatever to do it? Don't know. You just don't know a a they've got a load of money and is that come from their cash flow for all we know. How many how much I don't know how much revenue is in the game. Probably a lot. Is it coming from the cash flow that's in the bank? Is it using investors money? Are they taking a massive punt on going right. Let's spend 100 million on celebrity endorsement. And we've got to get everybody back in two years time. Suddenly another game. It comes out and it takes over. You just don't know. But I think it's really hard to speculate because you'd never know the back end of a business. Yeah, because I was going to say you don't know how much they've paid. I mean, you can guess the fact that they've done like 4 or 5 ads with big celebrities in a short amount of time is that they're not. It's going to be some LeBron James and Simon Cowell. Yeah, it's not a couple of grand. Is that I mean oh yeah. You want it on a computer game advert. That and that advert you should have little problem jam. That was going on a while wasn't it. Yeah it was shot like properly a short advert. Oh yeah. Some serious money in that and Modern Family I know, I know it as big as LeBron. But they're acting like they're in an episode of Modern Family. Yeah, but playing a game. Very clever, very good. I suppose it's just like is because from my perspective, I think if it costs you that much to do it, would they be better off just getting an actor who really? No, not like a known actor, but just one of these, like influencer type actors, like we get for brands and stuff and just get them who really know how to sell it and then spend all that money on just push it out to the right people rather than, yeah, I don't know enough about the game market. I've been sucked into downloading a game before because I saw the game so much that I got it, and then I was just like, this is rubbish, Ben. Like what you said, I don't play game. I'm not a gamer, so I don't, I don't really get get that world. But could you not just spend more money on I mean, where you know the answer producing a great ROI? Why do you not just do loads more ads? Yeah. So what? We don't really know. Rather than getting a celebrity because obviously people are seeing them and a lot of people are talking about like, how did they get so-and-so to do an ad for whatever, but just a bit like, but is the celebrity going to get you or me to do it? If I saw those with a modern family, good, would I mentally go, Well, they're actually playing like a little bit of endorsement goes into my little brand, a little bit of that brand, like, maybe I'll give this a go. I don't know, I'm not. Or is it like that? It's sort of because these celebrities are talked about. It's a bit more legit. It's not about these, like, scam type thing. You know, the I mean, the clever ones are born change with this book. I mean that's very clever. Yeah. They've played off multiple different. Yeah. That's clever. Some clever marketing there too. No I think with all this sort of stuff, it's, it's the above. You know, where I come from, a direct marketing background. So everything that everything that I've done to do with marketing is I, I'm able to see the conversions and the KPIs. Like if I can't see those conversion, I like it pull out, I hate it. Whereas this is this is like, let's get these big people, let's put adverts out on all these things. I guess they're going to do it in a way that someone clicks that ad. It's been UTM or where it takes them. I mean, they've got to be pretty clever about it to go. We're just, you know, it's actually simple stuff, but it's just how how they're able to do it. Are those ads set up for conversions or are they set up as awareness campaigns? We just don't know. Yeah. So how much money is being spent on that? Because they've still got to run the ads after they've got the once the video has been made, they've then got to spend the stupid amount of money on the ads because it's such a massive it's they paid him half £1 million for LeBron James. Yeah. They've got to make the half £1 million go somewhere now. No. But then I now need a media budget. Yeah. As well as what they spend on like the influence of people. Yeah I don't know because we've, we've done stuff with influencers and I don't know if you still do stuff with influencers. I don't really, but it's not been the best as it. Yeah. Like it's, it's kind of it's a lot of work is and it's a and and it's LeBron James though. Yeah. But I just mean from like a wider influence thing I suppose it's like the final product is often good but it's all the like. Preamble and it's getting them to sign off. And then it's like, who owns the deed? You own the assets. Do they own the assets? Can they do stuff with it? Can you? It's yeah, it's a lot. I can't even imagine doing it with a big celebrity because there's obviously going to be so many they could agree to do it. And then once that adds made the cabinet. Oh, I don't want that. I'd sign this or I don't want it being represented like this or whatever it might be. There's so many loops and hoops you've got to jump through, whereas if you just, you know, found some actor and just got them to sell the app, it would probably be lot easier. But they've got they've got some clever people behind the that a to even a to even get a game to become that popular one. Whichever game is they've done. Like it starts off with a guy or girl or team who understand how to make computer games that bit. That bit is hard enough. Sure, yeah. Just making a game that works with online. Absolutely. Are you go into the App Store? Yeah. 100 thousands, tens of thousands of games. What makes one stand out? Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And then to even get to the point where they've that those games have become so successful, they do an investment round like you've just described and then they that investment round, all the money that producing is able to get those kind of celebrities. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable isn't it. Yeah. What. I've just a phone game like it's a free viewing game as well. Free for you know, even pushing people to something where, you know, like, hey, if 10% click this, you're going to get enormous amount of money. In a way, Michael, I kind of, I suppose maybe it's my age and where I've come from for consoles, I kind of, I kind of understand the process more for someone who's, like, we're in Leamington Spa, so I've been on this thing where we're in Leamington Spa. Being this where this will be filmed from our offices are, etc., just over there. I didn't know if you know this, but just over the corner around the corner, Leamington is like Silicon Valley for. Yeah, yeah. Ubisoft here. Yeah, yeah it's massive. I have like a game dev night here. It's because it's because when I was, when I was in 20 years ago, more 30 years ago, a company was set up called Codemasters just outside Leamington. And they turned it up. They turned into a big A big, gaming company. And then what's obviously happened is people have left Codemasters and they've all gone off and sacked different time game companies like this one, which you had no idea it you know where the potato guy do you know when you walk up the high street and there's a every day there's potato jack potatoes done. Oh, okay. Just next, next to that above there's a floor and it's loads of shops underneath that whole floor. Is that a game income. It's like 400 people in that built making games. You got one across the way. Lamborghinis in the car park. Yeah. There's one that is one even here. Like yeah massive. So this is a bit of a hub. The Leamington Spa is a bit of a hub for it now. Forza, which is made by a company over the way literally across the park. I do know this because when my son went to school in his class, his dad was the MD of that gaming company, and they were owned by Microsoft. I think they've been bought up by Microsoft. That's why I know about they created Forza. So I remember walking past there and they had all the cars there, and they did the open day for for the launch. And they got all the Lamborghinis all up there. I did a bit of a thing like that. I kind of get that because you're talking about a console, like they've done the deal with PlayStation. They're creating a game the company like PlayStations already out, and they're going to do huge television adverts, YouTube, whatever. I get that to me, it's like a business. It's like we're already established business and we are going to do a huge promotion on a new game. It's going to come out and everyone's gonna drive Lamborghinis around on the games, and you know that everyone who goes and buys that game, if they see it's going to pay £40 or what I kind of get, I kind of get the whole model around that. Yeah, I don't this is this is different isn't it. This is you're spending so much up front to then get you could get a thousand people to download it in a day, but none of them could spend any money. Well, you've launched an app, you've launched a gaming app to go into an app store where there's already tens of thousands of games and try your best in what do you have a way to get to the top? So you're the number one game for the week. I don't even know where all that starts or even how you even get to that. I mean, it's brilliant without any, but it would have started off without any money. Like everyone, you start off without any money, let's say went out for radio the investment. But I don't know. They would have done it though obviously not struggling as it is now. But yeah, it's such a weird, it's such a different thing because every I can't really think of any other product really, where it's like you're spending all this money for people to download a thing for free. It's like a sort of when you're pushing people to download a newsletter or something, you're hoping that off that newsletter, they then do something else. But it's like downloading a free. You could download that free app, play it for ten years and never spend anything on it. Could. So so yeah, they're going to they've got you as a user but they've not got you as a pro. I bet you can't do certain things in that without having to. I suppose you seen ads which they're then getting paid to service. Well you know, be like you can't get past a level unless you buy tokens to get you more weapons to kill. Yeah. I think I think most of the stuff, it's like you can do it for free, but it's like just takes a lot longer because I think legally they have to make it so they can't force you to pay. But it's more like, hey, you want to sit here, tap in something for four hours? Or do you just want to spend 99 pay and get further? Yeah. And then like, it will be like, oh, the first time you buy, it's not in on pay, but now it's one, you know and it'll, you know, it's, it's a bit per transfers but fair play to them. Let's do it. Yeah. But I'll be interested to see what they do going forward. Because I mean if they're valued at 5 billion already and they're doing all these ads, it's just it it's just stuff like this you want to know, like how much they've spent, how what what their marketing spend even looks like to afford horrendous. It'd be horrendous, won't it. Yeah. Mad. Yeah. So I've seen those pop up a lot. So I just originally I was just going to mention it in and ads and be like that's we like type thing but well don't bring it to the podcast. Yeah I've seen them a lot and. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm going to pay attention to that. I think they've just I mean what when I say it. Yeah I think they've just opened up a, thing over here as well, like a studio in London or something as well. I think they were still based out of Turkey. I bet you I see their ads now. Now that we spoke about and spoken about about to play out. Yeah. No. Later, if it comes up later, I'll text you. Yeah. So that is do you have any ads you want to talk about? No that's okay I haven't, but this whole thing we've really been talking about and so yeah, I don't think I've seen any ads. I'm sure I have. I see as all the time, you know, I haven't I haven't really been seen a lot. I saw these and then I'll, I've been screen record I would say I think yeah I would say gaming ads are the ones I'm saying all the time. I don't know why, because I'm not a gamer. I'm like the completely wrong person. To say that I'm completely the wrong person said, that's the thing. I suppose we'd like people like celebrities like that. It's like, I don't really know who they're targeting. If you've got like LeBron James, it's going to be like younger people, but then like adults are watching basketball and then it's like people are going to see it and know sort of obviously they've looked at all of their celebrities and been like these, we're picking specific ones like the Modern Family people, Kevin Hart, like we're picking people maybe from different bits to cover a range of people or something. But yeah, obviously they said they've got some guy from Disney as a strategic person, so I think he knows what he's doing. But yeah, now it's those intro I never I never didn't know half the stuff about it until I looked into it before we came. But it's good. Yeah. So that is another podcast. Yeah. Thank you everyone for listening. And, we'll see you next time. We just be about winning. Hopefully. Yeah, but thanks, guys. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to the podcast. Make sure to drop a like and a comment to let us know your thoughts. 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