Promoting Genshin Impact on Russian YouTube When It Seemed the Entire Russian Gaming Audience Had Already Been Reached
How to run an advertising campaign on a tight timeline.
Background
Genshin Impact has repeatedly asked us for help in promoting game releases to the Russian-speaking audience. We received the first request from the client in November 2021. After that, our cooperation with Genshin Impact became regular.
Goal
The client set us the task of promoting the game through collaborations with Russian YouTube bloggers. But there was a slight nuance. Since each release of Genshin Impact was 1–1.5 months apart, we had to find influencers and agree on collaborations with them in a very short period of time.
It was something of a challenge for RMAA, as each release came with different technical specifications from the client, and his expectations of the list of suitable bloggers also differed.
Solution
Before we discuss what we did for the client, let's talk briefly about the global promotion of Genshin Impact. According to the BuzzGuru platform, Genshin Impact made it into the top 10 brands of 2022 that spent the largest budgets on YouTube promotion — $12.1 million, to be precise. The number of advertising mentions reached 1,516, and non-advertising mentions from YouTube bloggers of various formats and scales came in at a similar number (1,332).
When our cooperation with RMAA began, the client already had collaborations with the leading Russian YouTube influencers on his list — not just 2–3 channels, but almost all of the top bloggers in Russia and the CIS. Despite Genshin Impact's rather "aggressive and impetuous" approach to YouTube buying, we managed to figure out how to impress a client who was already hard to surprise.
Over the entire period of our cooperation with Genshin Impact, we realized about 20 collaborations with YouTube bloggers within this project. That was achievable thanks to our systematic work with the RMAA blogger database, which we constantly update while keeping an eye on new "faces" in the Russian internet space.
Each time a new version of the game was released, the client asked for bloggers from different segments: PC and mobile games, cartoon and movie reviews, musicians, talk shows, and even car tuning.
For example, Dalbek — a popular critic of cartoons and movies on Russian YouTube — talked about Genshin Impact. To be more precise, not only the blogger himself but also the characters of the cartoon Encanto. In the video's plot, the main character Isabela has visions of scenes from the game but doesn't understand why, and Dolores (another cartoon character) steps out of frame to secretly tell the channel's author about the new Genshin Impact release. Dalbek then covers his own adventures inside the Genshin world in vivid color and with plenty of humor.
At the beginning of the project, we tried to offer solutions confined to the client's requests. Then we expanded our search to attractive YouTube influencers whose content didn't seem to be connected with the game at all — at least at first glance. In practice, the collaborations turned out to be quite atypical for both us and the client. At the same time, they were no lower in views or user engagement than videos on other, more on-topic channels.
Here is how it actually turned out.
Campaign 1: Right on Target — Collaborations with Gamers
One of the most successful collaborations for the client was with bloggers from the gaming segment. We offered different channels in terms of style and number of subscribers — Minecraft content, streams, PC games. In a word, everything related to gaming.
Gamer FixEye (10.2M subscribers) talked about the new features of the Genshin Impact release, making a smooth transition from the channel's main content to the game in a Minecraft-style format.
On the Dem (476K subscribers) channel, the release overview was presented by the channel's main characters, Bogdan and Sasha. They described in detail how viewers can create their own fairy-tale world in Genshin Impact, and mentioned that the game is available on all PCs and mobile devices for free.
A similar trend of reviewing fairy-tale worlds was picked up by MyNeosha (1.36M subscribers) in his video. The gamer showed subscribers his world created inside Genshin and introduced a new character from the latest release.
Gamer and streamer Velya (5.48M subscribers) published an extended five-minute review of Genshin Impact. He did it during a live dialogue with his colleague, gamer Roma Greez, so the advertising block was organically integrated into the main plot of the video.
Users appreciated Velya's detailed approach to the release. One viewer wrote a positive review of Genshin Impact in the video's comments, adding that if he hadn't been familiar with the game before, he would have downloaded it after the video.
The release of Genshin Impact also came up during a lively video discussion on streamer Yerox (1.89M subscribers)'s channel.
As a result, the videos from all these gamers collected a large number of views and achieved strong user engagement.
Campaign 2: Popular Bloggers for Bigger Reach
To increase the campaign's reach, we couldn't skip the popular entertainment YouTube channels. Their main advantage is a large and diverse audience.
One of them was the channel of young star Viki Show (11.2M subscribers), whose content is aimed at younger viewers. The blogger seamlessly integrated the Genshin review into her video vlog, where she shares her lively everyday life, room tours, travels, and other fun adventures.
Special attention should be paid to the collaboration with the Frost (9.45M subscribers) channel — a former gamer and now a star of Russian YouTube. The channel's creator, Yuri Mashtakov, approached the game review in a specific way. In his video, he played out a scene where two characters discuss the new release.
A minimum of shots from the game itself (unusual for the client's integrations) and a maximum of release discussion in the dialogue of the channel's characters drew a strong reaction in the comments. 580 likes on the mention of Genshin Impact is a nice bonus on top of the large number of views.
Collaborations with popular multi-million-subscriber YouTube channels allowed us to expand the campaign's audience. But it wasn't enough for us — we wanted something more extraordinary for the client, especially after the video on the Frost channel.
Campaign 3: Out of the Box — Unconventional Ppinion Leaders
At our own risk, we decided to move a bit away from the client's initial brief and search for interesting bloggers with unusual content.
As it turned out, there are superstars among them with multi-million audiences — for example, SlivkiShow (20.4M subscribers), which occupies 6th place in the Russian YouTube ranking.
The channel's content is difficult to categorize into any one genre or format: it combines scientific facts, life hacks, humor, and experiments, all in a single piece of content.
The video featuring the Genshin Impact review was dedicated to the Canadian Army's dry packs and the question of whether you can survive one day in the woods with them. At first glance, the game's promotion and the subject matter were completely mismatched. However, the author didn't see this as a problem. The landscapes where the video was shot served as the connecting point and were smoothly replaced by the scenery of the Genshin world. The result: +1 successful collaboration for the client.
We also offered the client another bold idea — a collaboration with KREOSAN (5.47M subscribers), whose content is similarly difficult to describe in one phrase. In addition to various experiments, the channel's characters are constantly traveling and getting into wild situations. The game review landed at the moment the channel released their video about Thailand. Spoiler: no one was hurt, the heroes returned home, and the Genshin release fit perfectly into the dynamic video.
The experiments didn't end there. We arranged a collaboration with a niche travel blogger, Vitalik Ignatyuk (2.71M subscribers). Vitalik's content is dedicated not just to traveling, but to various wilderness survival challenges. In one of his videos, the blogger found himself on a deserted island, where he decided to build a hut from whatever was on hand. Between his work, Vitalik enjoys the views of wildlife, reminiscing about the beautiful graphics of Genshin Impact.
The game's release was also covered straight from Chernobyl, in a collaboration with blogger Vlad Reznov (1.76M subscribers), who shoots content in this remote but famous and mysterious area. Vlad admitted to subscribers that between hiking, exploring the area, and filming, he plays Genshin Impact — so he was happy to discuss and showcase the game's release while in the bunker.
Thanks to such "extreme" collaborations, we were able to reach a new audience for the client. We weren't tasked with going beyond the brief, but as experts, we realized from the beginning that working "strictly according to the brief" is not enough — especially if the client is a world celebrity in the gaming industry.
Results
Over nearly a year of joint work, we delivered the day-to-day promotion of Genshin Impact's new releases.
The total number of views that the videos above collected reached more than 15 million, with user engagement on the video content at the 30–40% level.
The largest viewer count for a client collaboration was on the SlivkiShow channel — 4.6 million views. This was significant for us because SlivkiShow didn't initially fit the client's request; it was an unconventional choice we offered alongside the other YouTube influencers.
YouTube channels dedicated to gaming turned out to have the highest user engagement: MyNeosha reached 44% and Dem — 47%. That was exactly the point, as these bloggers have a higher share of potential users for the client.
In addition to the KPIs that we fulfilled — or rather exceeded by 20–30% — we established ourselves as an agency ready to deliver interesting solutions on a tight timeline. That's why the client came back to us more than once, and not only with the task of finding influencers. But we'll talk about that in another case study.
