Candy Crush Saga

As a car owner in Manhattan (without a garage), one of the annoyances I have to deal with is alternate side of the street parking.  It does give me the opportunity to listen the radio though (something I don't do very often anymore).  When I'm forced to move my car, I typically try to catch the Z100 phone tap.  This week, they aired a phone tap called Pay for Candy Crush that I think might be the best I've ever heard.

It may be particularly funny to me because I too am slightly addicted to the game.  Thinking about the game, how much I play, and how much others play got me thinking about what a brilliant app it is in terms of digital marketing.

For those of you that don't know much about Candy Crush Saga, the game is a seemingly never ending (truly a saga), multilevel game with episodes, which are essentially groups of levels.  To get from one level to the other, you must beat the previous level.  Each level has different challenges and requirements.  Users can only have a max of five lives accumulated and lives only replenish every half hour.  They can also ask friends to send them lives via Facebook.  To move from one episode to another, you have to to beat all the levels in the previous episode and either get 3 friends to send you a ticket to the next episode through Facebook or pay $0.99 (of course like any good business man trying to drive demand via addiction, the first two episodes are free).

In addition to that, there are other offers users can purchase.  Some of them have what I consider to be exorbitantly high price tags for the value they provide.   One time I was having trouble getting through a level that was timed and I received an offer to remove all time limits for $39.99!

I did not pay that amount (I'm proud to say I got through it on my own) but I think the marketing and strategy is genius.  The game is addictive to begin with and the only way to move forward is to pay or plaster other people's Facebook walls with requests, who will likely eventually play, pay themselves or spread the word as well.

Most of these ideas are nothing new, particularly as one-off tactics, but King, the maker of Candy Crush, seems to have found the right combination.

If I've peaked your interest, play at your own risk.  It is addictive.  If you don't believe me, ask the lady that was prank called by Z100.