The Campaign

In the game of Onmyoji, everyone must draw cards but not everyone has the good fortune to get the card “Shinigami”, a rare character. It is considered to be such great luck to get one SSR, the highest level of the Shikigami card. Such fortune is called “Ouqi” among Chinese players and after the success of Onmyoji, “Ouqi” has become an exclusive term in this game. Therefore, our creative idea was “Come to KFC to get your Ouqi (good luck)” making KFC a gathering place of Onmyoji players. Those who bought the combo meal would receive a flash card, leading them to win lucky draws in the game. Meanwhile, Onmyoji developed an exclusive “KFC Boss” which only shows up when users play the game in KFC offline restaurants. Consumers could invite other players to challenge the “KFC Boss” together, then KFC would get more players therefore driving product sales.

Creative Execution

•Ouqi Meal Box with Flashcards: The Ouqi Meal Box was available in all KFC restaurants nationwide. Consumers who purchased the Ouqi Meal Box could receive limited edition flashcards to receive chances to call out the Shikigami in AR mode. •An exclusive game in KFC offline restaurants: With the game’s LBS (Location Based Service) technology, the locations of KFC restaurants would show on the map of Onmyoji. Only by entering KFC restaurants, could the players enter the exclusive game instance to challenge the KFC Boss for rare items. •Onmyoji themed restaurants: We had 8 Onmyoji themed restaurants with various activities. Additionally, we also had cosplay and game livestreaming to keep capturing the attention of young consumers. •Players’ UGC: KFC invited the famous player bloggers to create illustrations and videos under the concept of Ouqi, covering them on both KFC and Onmyoji‘s official social accounts, ACG communities and video sites like Bilibili.tv.

During the campaign period, the players continued to voluntarily spread KFC’s campaign information in the Onmyoji game message board in order to assemble a team to beat the “KFC Boss” in KFC restaurants. The videos and cartoons generated by players were also widely shared in ACG communities, video websites and various social media platforms. • On the first day of the campaign, the KFC themed restaurants were packed with a large number of players. It even led to customers having to wait for more than one hour to buy the Ouqi Meal Box in a themed restaurant in Guangzhou. • 3 million Onmyoji Meal Boxes were sold out in 9 days. • KFC’s exclusive Boss by LBS was challenged 12 million times in total. • Weibo topic views reached 100 million on the first day of the campaign.

KFC’s Onmyoji campaign perfectly brought the virtual world and reality together for Onmyoji players. The players would buy the Onmyoji Meal Box in order to receive a flashcard to win rare game items. They could also team up to play an exclusive game in KFC restaurants. Moreover, they could participate in various events in the KFC Onmyoji themed restaurants. In terms of the campaign promotion, we heavily leveraged social media in order to rally the fans to share their own contents in addition to Bought Media advertisement, such as online TV and Outdoor media.

Onmyoji has more than 200 million registered users and 10 million daily active users. The ratio of male to female users is 6:4. 55% of the users are aged 18-30, and 49% of them live in tier 1 and 2 cities. The user profile of Onmyoji is very similar to KFC’s primary target consumers. In terms of the communication strategy, we leveraged players’ enthusiasm for the game, and invited them to create and share contents that would be interesting to all Onmyoji players. They consisted of effects such as flashcards, videos, cartoons, their experiences in themed restaurants and off-line activities.