BRAWL STARS: BRINGING JOYFUL CHAOS TO TIK TOK

THE CHALLENGE

We wanted to work with the Supercell community managers to enable Brawl Stars to grow a presence and audience on TikTok authentically - and to bring the signature joyful chaos of the Brawl Stars universe to the platform. More importantly, we wanted our project to achieve an overall vision of creating a unique calling card by which Brawl Stars could become known in the broader TikTok culture.

THE MISSION

Staying true to both the Brawl Stars brand and the spirit of TikTok, we decided to lead with a trend-first, tongue-in-cheek, don’t-explain-just-entertain approach. The concept that unified our vision was that of ‘joyful chaos’: Waste and Supercell wanted to add this uniquely Brawl Stars flavour to all the trend-first creative ideas and content we developed in partnership together.

We went about creating the Brawl Stars’ TikTok calling card using a three-pronged approach:

I. Don’t explain, just entertain - If there's one rule for TikTok, this is it. Exposition and explanation are totally alien to the channel, so we put entertainment first.

II. Give the community what they want - We focused on delivering regular beats of trend-first creative and ideas focused on forming entertaining, meme-first content directly from the Brawl Stars world.

III. Signature style - In order to penetrate beyond the immediate Brawl Stars audience, Waste and Supercell  developed a content style that Brawl Stars could own and be known for in wider culture.

Here’s some of the crazy stuff we came up with.

WHO’S KNOCKING?

We noticed TikTokers had been using a transitioning trend to show who was knocking at their door! We felt this trend was a great way to introduce a new Brawler in a visual and unique way…

It was also a great opportunity to develop the Brawl Stars calling card by leaning on content that was joyfully chaotic in the Brawl signature style, while not forgetting the all-important use of community trends.

The plan was to tease the brand new Brawler ‘Sam’ arriving in the Brawl Stars Robot Factory season, taking the same approach as the transition trend, in order to excite the community and get people hyped up for the in-game launch.

Leveraging this trend drummed up lots of excitement and engagement amongst the community. Followers got titillated by getting a glimpse of Sam banging on the door just before the release date.

This post got Brawl Stars 2.4 million views, just under 200 thousand likes and just under 4.5 thousand comments. Of those we reached, 48% watched full video - not bad for a platform where scrolling happens at the speed of light.

TIME FLIES WITH SUPERCELL

Guess what - the Supercell jingle went viral on TikTok! Creators are using this sound to show themselves at different ages or in different years to see how their life has changed - with a final fun gag as their most recent milestone. Together, Waste and Supercell felt this trend was a great way to use original Supercell content while also showing how far the Brawl characters have come over the years.

In collaboration with the Brawl team, we agreed that this was another opportunity to be ‘joyfully chaotic’ - poking fun at the changes of Brawl Stars characters over the years. The context was to point at those community members who remember the very first versions of the characters back in 2017, asking them if they felt old yet? It was a great opportunity to take part in wider TikTok culture, but in a tongue in cheek way.

For this particular post, the plan was to showcase the evolution of Jessie since 2017, by flicking through skins from 2017 through to 2022 with the same animation.

This trend was a great way to hop onto a viral trend that was literally made for Brawl Stars, using a piece of Supercell original content. The sound was instantly recognisable with the community and the humorous yet slightly emotional context gave the community a moment to look at how far Jessie has come over the years and think about when they first started playing the game.

This post garnered 3.9 million views, with a reach of 3.1 million. As in the previous post, we had supreme retention: 42.3% watched full video. The community also felt compelled to engage with the post; they wrote just over 6 thousand comments and were generous with likes too: 323 thousand.

“Staying up to date with the latest trends on TikTok wouldn’t be possible without Waste’s help. Working with them always ensures the final video is engaging and fun!”

- Brawl Stars Community Team

IF U SEEK… EVE

Eve is the character that players either absolutely adore, or want to see burning somewhere really hot where the flames won’t die down for a long, long time. We played on this relatable, polarising insight and coupled it with cultural icon Britney Spears’ viral TikTok song: ‘I U Seek Amy.’

The result was a simple yet engaging video of Eve wreaking havoc - as per usual - in the Brawl Stars world, appropriately timed to the beats of the song. The result? 3.9 million views, over 300 thousand likes, and 6 thousand comments (most of them not too nice towards Eve - but what can you do).

TOXIC TRAITS AND BAKED GRENADES

Waste identified an emerging trend on TikTok - people were using Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ to share the toxic traits of different things in their lives (e.g. their golden retriever)…  So together with Supercell,  we thought why not use this trend to focus on one of the Brawl Stars characters' own toxic traits?!

Focusing on Piper, we mixed a beautiful Supercell animation of her and spliced it with gameplay shots, centred around her main toxic trait: the fact that she likes to bake... grenades. The video garnered 190 thousand views, 55 thousand likes, and over 1 thousand comments.

RUN, BYRON, RUN

This post was a simple idea with a simple execution. We wanted to use the classic TikTok ‘RUN’ track about running away after a crucial moment. Adapting it to the Brawl Stars universe, Waste synced it up with a community gameplay video of Byron taking away the opposing team’s win at the last second…

The beginning of the video shows the red team as if they’re about to win - then, Byron shoots, taking out Jessie and her gems before grabbing them and running. We then shared short, fast paced cuts of Byron and Emz RUNNING away with their gems before ending on a blue team win.

The video gained over 350 thousand views, prompted over 80 thousand likes, and just under 1 thousand comments. Boom.

WE DIDN’T STOP THERE

But of course - that’s not all. Over the course of last year working in collaboration with the Brawl Stars team, we developed 15 unique pieces of content, each inspired from our joyfully chaotic and meme-centric approach. Through drawing challenges, following trends like ‘Immediately No’, and developing other trend-fuelled hilarious inside jokes, we contributed to growing the Brawl Stars TikTok follower count.

Mission joyful chaos continues. 🔥