Company: Fiksu, Boston, MA
Entry Submitted By: InkHouse
Company Description: Founded in 2008, Fiksu is an award-winning, high-performance mobile app marketing platform that delivers quality users at scale. The Fiksu Platform combines centralized media buying from the world’s largest mobile advertising inventory with advanced optimization technology, to help app marketers deliver exceptional business results.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Mobile Marketing Campaign of the Year

Nomination Title: Plain Vanilla's Quizup App Campaign

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 525 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

In November 2013 mobile gaming studio, Plain Vanilla, introduced its newly developed game app, QuizUp – an app that allows users to challenge friends or strangers to quick seven-question rounds of trivia. Looking for cost effective solutions to accelerate its user growth, Plain Vanilla worked with Fiksu to specifically target users who had the highest propensity to invite friends and ultimately secured a critical mass of enthusiastic users. Through its work with Fiksu, QuizUp became the “fastest growing iPhone game in history.” (see attached Business Insider link)

Genesis

Through previous experience with its other apps, Plain Vanilla was well-aware of the immense challenges for game apps to go viral. Even if you have a really good game, success is not guaranteed. As the idea behind QuizUp became a reality, the team was determined to pair a good product with a great marketing plan. So, Plain Vanilla partnered with Fiksu to deliver the promotional power needed to succeed in the App Store.

Development

QuizUp built virality into their game: players can challenge friends through social sharing tools or through manual invitations. Fundamentally, QuizUp team knew that success lay in finding users with the highest propensity to invite their friends. To achieve this, QuizUp needed to acquire a critical mass of users to support the social mechanics. Together, Fiksu and Plain Vanilla created a launch plan squarely focused on this goal.

To start, using the Fiksu Platform, Fiksu immediately tested a wide range of creatives for both banners and videos. Working together, the two companies analyzed which messages and colors were the most effective. Because the app itself was so popular, serving up these high-performing creative ads activated an ongoing stream of new conversions.

Fiksu also tested a variety of advertising channels, finding video and interstitial traffic to be very efficient, with RTB also delivering very strong click-through rates. Consequently, Fiksu allocated a larger share of advertising spend to those sources.

Execution

Understanding the challenge to cost effectively acquire volumes of quality users, Plain Vanilla’s strategic marketing approach focused on getting its own users to spread the word through their friends’ networks. The primary tactic hinged upon continued testing and optimization, through a variety of creative and advertising channels using the Fiksu Platform. Over time, a larger share of budget was allocated to those channels that proved to be most effective, supporting the goals of maximizing ROI and driving user acquisition.

Results

Within a month of launch – thanks to its work with Fiksu – QuizUp attracted 5.5 million registered users who spent an average of 35 minutes a day playing, earning them that title as the “fastest growing iPhone game in history.” A key to that success was its 10 to 1 ratio of organic to paid installs – 10x the industry best – during their first week on the charts. QuizUp was also able to secure a CPI of $1 for non-incentivized traffic, well below the industry average. The real achievement for Plain Vanilla was keeping costs low at incredible scale: QuizUp hit 1 million users in eight days, 3.5 million in three weeks, and more than 10 million to-date.

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2. Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 125 words):

Thor Fridriksson, founder and CEO of Plain Vanilla Games, has intense focus and has created a hit product by surrounding himself with a highly successful team and thinking long-term: acquiring the best, most active users who will bring their product viral. Plain Vanilla recently raised $2.4 Million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners, Tencent, IDG ventures and BOLDStart Ventures. This Series A round follows a $1.2 Million Seed round in the summer of 2012, which totals $3.6 Million raised by Plain Vanilla within 12 months.

Plain Vanilla is developing QuizUp, the first multiplatform and real-time social trivia engine and has acquired more than a Million registered users worldwide. Thor graduated from Oxford University in 2009 with an MBA.