Hearthstone user acquisition ads
Blizzard Entertainment | Hearthstone ● Creative Design & Content Live Ops Designer ● 2024
Attracting users is tantamount to throwing darts -- it's all about your aim.
Team Lead: Julie Kimura ● Producer: Dana Nuber
CD&C Design Team: Chhun Tang, Rachel Newman, Lisa Ou, Simon Park
Project Stakeholders: Marcella Ziccarelli, Hannah Goodman
CD&C Design Team: Chhun Tang, Rachel Newman, Lisa Ou, Simon Park
Project Stakeholders: Marcella Ziccarelli, Hannah Goodman
Part of working on the Creative Design & Content team is crafting some User Acquisition advertising during your downtime. Figuring out what players unfamiliar with your game, or even your genre, is what makes it a very challenging endeavor. Some of the best ads can target the wrong audience and backfire completely. As a designer though, it gives you the ability to experiment with different concepts to see what's clicking with users. Below are a few of the keywords / scenarios the marketing team was targeting with their ads and the concepts that I created for each.
Achievement
With this directive, we were targeting players who have downloaded the game, but may have given up early, as well those who have not played in quite some time. Ideally these ads would remind players of the fun moments found through playing casually.
For my first concept "Collection", I opted to showcase Hearthstone's in-game Collection manager with the simple premise of growing your collection. I created a few variants using different character artwork, as different ads perform better based on which character is represented.
Deckbuilding is a core feature of any card game and for many players, the joy of testing out mechanics and synergies between cards is the main driving force behind their playtime. This design used the shaman legendary card Al'akir to inspire the vortex of swirling shaman cards around the deck.
Probably the most straightforward approach to bringing back players was to remind them of the simple joy opening a new card pack could bring.
The final concept I had was "showcase", which displayed a range of card types and rarities from the Death Knight class. The premise was to win back lapsed players with cards they may not have discovered in the game at the time.
Mastery
For this directive, our team was to produce ads that focused on careful decision-making and planning, showing possible situations that could be achieved through mastery of the game. Additionally, one of the main features the marketing team wanted to include at the time was the use of mount cards.
For my first concept, I directly tackled the inclusion of mounts, using the games targeting reticle to quickly convey how the game (and mount cards) would work on your minion cards.
The second concept displayed the Kodo mount card artwork prominently but this time paired with a winning moment, implying the benefit of using a mount card in your games.
For the subject of mastery, careful strategic play can revolve around building a perfect combination of cards to destroy your opponent. In this design, I opted to show the Freeze Mage hand -- one of Hearthstone's iconic hands that the 10th anniversary card, Harth Stonebrew, would give you.
In a variation of the previous design, the team asked me to include a hand filled with legendary dragons, as the Game of Thrones spin-off show "House of Dragons" had just released, capitalizing on the current zeitgeist in entertainment.
IMMERSION
My contract at Blizzard ended just as I began working on the next User Acquisition concept -- Immersion. In my final week, I created a quick concept using the hero frame UI element from the game, and featured the Demonbane Illidan skin and several Demon Hunter cards.
