Clash of Clans and Clash Royale were partnering with Chess.com to tap into a new, but like-minded, fanbase. The partnership would culminate in an influencer event and in-game mash-ups, but there was an opportunity to use its launch to attract new players. The brief aimed to find an attention-grabbing way to appeal to chess fans and turn them into Clash fans. Our solution was to use chess puzzles - a popular chess practice technique – and turn their solutions into promo codes that could be redeemed inside Clash games.

In 2023, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale decided to tap into the chess craze by partnering with another mobile game: Chess.com. To launch the partnership and encourage new players to download Clash, we infiltrated the chess fanbase by using chess’s practice games and language. We created “Clash Puzzles” – chess puzzles with solutions (aka “notation codes”) that looked like chess moves but doubled as in-game promo codes.

To launch the Chess.com and Clash partnership, we conducted extensive research to identify key overlap tribes between Chess.com and Clash players, which included studying their behaviors and media preferences. Our launch activation used massive billboards in the world capital of public chess, New York City, to target chess lovers. Our billboards then took these chess-loving problem-solvers back into a world we learned is vital to them – technology.

Players scanned QR codes and solved puzzles using their correct notation code solutions, which now doubled as promo codes to earn Clash in-game rewards. Our CTA asked them to solve the puzzles – and after they did, we drove them directly to our mobile games – an unexpected destination that many of these players had not previously been.

We worked closely with Chess.com’s Grandmasters to create hundreds of unique chess puzzles of varying skill levels. We then ensured that each solution corresponded with promo codes within both Clash Royale and Clash of Clans that earned in-game rewards that matched the level of skill required to solve the puzzle. The harder the puzzle, the better the rewards.

This activation earned Clash a ton of attention, and it increased our games’ popularity.

As a result of the launch, 24 million puzzles were solved, 15% more Clash players re-engaged with our game, and 84% more games were played on Chess.com. But most importantly, by directly targeting chess fans and connecting Clash of Clans and Clash Royale to chess’s esteemed strategic reputation, we changed people’s perceptions of these games as merely mobile games to those of respected strategy games.