Honeyfruit
Riot Games
Issue 59 | June 2021
Agency
BBH Singapore
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Sascha Kuntze Creative Director Xander Lee Senior Copywriter Luke Somasundram Senior Art Director Nico Tangara Art Director Amos Lee
Production Team
Producer Joshua Tan Junior Creative Technologist Jiarong Sng Production Company Jack Morton Worldwide
Other Credits
Managing Director Sid Tuli Account Director Ausborn Lim Account Manager Priscilla Lim Strategy Director Alasdair Gray Content Strategist Faith Huang Executive Chef Massimo Pasquarelli
Date
November 2020
Background
League of Legends is a popular PC game that has been around for 12 years.
In 2020, when Riot Games released Wild Rift, the mobile version of the game, they wanted to reignite the imagination of gamers about the game they loved.
Existing fans needed to know there was still more to discover in League while mobile gamers needed to get a taste of its complex and exciting world.
Idea
Gamers were given a literal taste of the game that they couldn’t help gushing over.
Interest was stimulated by letting gamers actually eat an in-game power-up called Honeyfruit. A virtual magic fruit was created for the real world.
For context, this was like letting a Pac Man player eat Pac Man Cherries or a Super Mario fan eat a 1-up Mushroom.
In a category obsessed with cutting-edge digital graphics, players were involved through fantastic flavours and magic mouthfeel.
The world-class chef Massimo Pasquarelli gave Honeyfruit a complex taste by using molecular gastronomy techniques to seed the fruit with microbeads of flavour that exploded with different tastes with every bite.
Results
Honeyfruit earned 6.1 million social and media impressions within 2 weeks. Gamers created memes, unboxing videos, reactions videos, taste tests, comedic sketches and rap songs about Honeyfruit. 10,500 Honeyfruits were distributed to thousands of eager fans at the launch event.
The ratio of likes to dislikes was 13x better than the average game launch.
In addition, wrap-up videos amplified campaign reach because when gamers around the world saw Thai fans reacting to the taste, their desire to know more only fanned intrigue.
The success of Honeyfruit contributed to Wild Rift’s rise to the top of the App Store game charts.
Our Thoughts
On pages 38-39, Save One Person placed a magic stone in a game. Here’s Riot Games taking a magic fruit out. Apparently it tastes different every time you try it. Influencers were mailed a fluorescent green grapeylooking thing inside which were three balls of Honeyfruit for them to try and write about or taste on video. “It tastes of…leaf”, said one gamer. C’mon, don’t tell me you aren’t intrigued? And that’s the point. Because it’s such a cool idea, gamers will presume the game must be cool as well. Increasingly, advertising is the art of association.