Clash of Clans - Clash from the Past (case study)

Released in 2012, Clash of Clans is one of the most popular mobile games in the world, with 300 million daily players and millions of subscribers to its YouTube channel. For our 10th Anniversary, we wanted this global community of fans to feel like the game they loved was as iconic a gaming franchise as Mario, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and the other video games that have shaped our culture and lives. Our goal was to create a campaign that went beyond celebrating 10 years, and instead re-engaged our fans in a way that reminded them how much they really love this game, and keep them invested for the future.

Strategy
Gamers hate traditional ads. But they crave content from Clash of Clans. Over the years, Clash of Clans has made animated shorts that give the characters in the game personality. For our 10th Anniversary, we wanted to go farther than ever before by creating something gamers crave but had never had for Clash—lore. We wanted to create an entire history of the game for our fans. But mobile games don’t often get the same credit as big console or PC games. We knew our lore had to make Clash feel as big and culturally relevant as other beloved franchises like Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda etc.

Idea
Instead of celebrating our 10th Anniversary, we celebrated a fake 40th Anniversary, pulling fans into an alternate universe where Clash had existed since 1982. But we didn’t want this to be a joke. We wanted our fans to truly feel that Clash was as important as those other iconic gaming franchises that had shaped their lives. That’s why every choice we made creatively was meant to add to the authenticity of our made-up story, so even our most diehard fans would wonder if there really had been 3 decades worth of Clash games they had never heard of. On the Internet, this questioning of history is called “The Mandela Effect,” where a mass of people collectively hallucinates an alternative history. We meticulously planned and executed the details needed to create a true Mandela Effect amongst the Clash of Clans fan community.

Execution
It all started with an entirely made-up 20-minute documentary. To make it as authentic as possible, we shot on 5 different era-specific cameras. We created commercials for fake products, fake interviews for fake morning shows, and even scenes from a fake movie. At the heart of it were 3 era-specific games—which we actually made for real. An 80s arcade platformer. A 90s racer. And a 2000s open-world RPG. The games were designed to look like the decade they were from, then reformatted for the Clash app and released to our 300 million daily players. On social, we deepened the story by staging a Reddit AMA with a fake founder from our documentary. We made an IMDB page and turned our social pages into trips down memory lane releasing fake commercials from our past. We partnered with Champion, Topps, and General Mills (an actual cereal available to purchase in stores).

Results
Without any media, the campaign became the #1 Trending video on YouTube, generating over 65 million views in total. Our Reddit AMA with a fake founder became the most Upvoted thread on Clash’s Reddit page. The cereal we made in partnership with General Mills sold out. Our special edition Garbage Pail Kids collectors cards are selling for $2000 on Ebay. And brand sentiment amongst Clash of Clans fans was the highest it had ever been.