Genshin Impact: Traditional TV Advertising Campaign For a Non-traditional Game Promotion in Russia

Background

The gaming industry has long established itself as one of the largest and most intriguing advertisers. This prominence is driven by substantial budgets that publishers are willing to allocate for game promotion to capture the attention of vast audiences and differentiate themselves in an oversaturated market. Consequently, gaming brands often embrace risk and are eager to experiment with innovative advertising strategies.

Goal

RMAA has been collaborating with Genshin Impact in Russia since 2021. Our joint efforts encompass a variety of advertising activities aimed at attracting new users to the game and reminding existing players about upcoming releases. In this particular instance, the client chose to experiment with TV advertising to enhance brand presence in Russia. This decision was fully justified given Genshin Impact's status as a globally popular game among gamers.

If this was a new brand, TV advertising might not have been as effective. Additionally, in Russia, the combination of ‘TV advertising + game’ is quite uncommon, as publishers typically allocate their main budgets to ‘effective digital’ channels.

Solution

Since RMAA has a strong reputation in the market due to its reliable relationships with leading sales houses in Russia and the CIS, including media holdings, TV channels, outdoor advertising operators, and many others, we were able to quickly provide the client with the best offers for the airtime purchase. Incidentally, Genshin Impact had no specific preferences and fully trusted our experience.

The main difficulty arose at the very beginning of the project. It was the choice of TV channels to promote Genshin Impact. On a broader scale, it was a question of whether to prioritize regional or national television while keeping the cost per 1,000 impressions low and maintaining a high affinity index. Two key parameters formed the foundation of the TV strategy.

• Analysis of search queries in Yandex Wordstat for the keywords "anime", "Japan", "computer games", and "mobile games". This helped identify the top regions in Russia where audiences showed the highest interest in anime-style games.
• Search for TV channels based on the selected cities, as well as the main characteristics of the audience. In this case, we focused on viewers aged 12–30. At this stage, it became clear that regional television was of less interest to us compared to national channels.

In the end, the promotion strategy for the client included the national TV channels 2x2, TNT 4, and STS Love, as well as the thematic channel Fan. The campaign also included regional airtime on STS Love in Moscow. The commercials were provided to the channels in two versions of 15 and 30 seconds in length, which allowed the creative to be adapted to each time slot.

The second stage of preparing the Genshin Impact TV campaign focused on handling documentation. In Russia, this process applies to all advertising and is governed by specific formatting rules. Naturally, this task can be challenging for international brands trying to operate independently in foreign regions without expert support. As such, Genshin Impact fully relied on our expertise, and we met all their expectations.

Typically, the list of required documents for TV advertising starts with the transfer of copyright from the client to the broadcasting TV channel. This applies to the video content, music, and logos of other brands if they appear in the commercial. In our case, this included links to platforms where the game is available—AppStore, Epic Games Store, and Windows. Additional agreements for copyright transfer had to be prepared for these platforms. Next came the process of classifying the advertisement to assign an age rating to the commercial. Genshin Impact was categorized as a ‘computer game’ suitable for ‘children aged 12 and older (12+)’. Once this step was complete, the commercial was launched on air.

Results

For 16 days, the Genshin Impact TV campaign was broadcast on four Russian national channels—2x2, TNT 4, STS Love, and the thematic channel FAN—as well as on the regional version of STS Love in Moscow. In total, the TV commercial reached 17.69 million contacts within the target audience. These impressive results were achieved thanks to an effective airtime placement strategy. The commercial was predominantly shown during the most popular series, cartoons, and shows on the selected channels (e.g., Comedy Club, the Kitchen, SpongeBob SquarePants, Daddy's Daughters, and others).

The client was highly satisfied with our prompt and effective work in promoting their brand in Russia. Following this project, Genshin Impact began approaching RMAA with more unconventional requests, enabling us to combine efficiency and creativity in promotions and to test entirely atypical strategies for the gaming industry.