We transformed St. Petersburg into the magical world of Penacony from the new Honkai: Star Rail expansion and threw a spectacular celebration for the game’s first anniversary.
To do this, we created an immersive 360° campaign: we deployed OOH advertising and guerrilla activations, developed a pair of interactive bots and a VK Mini App, ran influencer seeding and integrations, orchestrated collaborations with cosplayers and artists, hosted a press day with a large-scale show programme, and finally held a festival right in the heart of St. Petersburg that lasted a full 9 days. Over 9,000 fans of the game from all across Russia attended the event, and 97% rated the organisation positively.
The campaign, tied to the game’s first anniversary, needed to generate a major news hook with viral reach, immerse the target audience in the narrative, encourage players to return to the game, and overcome scepticism towards offline events following HoYo’s previous unsuccessful experience with a different title.
We kicked off with an offline quest powered by a Telegram bot. We blended online and offline into a single interactive experience and unfolded the narrative “St. Petersburg = Penacony”. OOH advertising on retro pillars was arranged for a viral effect. The immersive retro style and the unusual promotional format for a video game generated a viral buzz.
Next, we staged guerrilla activations with a trash-can mascot on the streets of St. Petersburg — this became a news hook for the media and a driver of UGC. The interactive mechanic: spot the mascot on the street and win a prize.
We developed a VK Mini App that tied the entire campaign together. The app featured a hidden-object game set within a 360° panorama of an in-game location, as well as classic mini-games in the Memory and Sokoban genres.
In the mini-games we built, each user could only play one session per calendar day, which ensured a high rate of return.
Every day, players searched for and collected various artefacts within the game; these were handed out randomly and could repeat. By integrating a functionality that allowed users to exchange artefacts with each other via their VK IDs, we stimulated community activity and the virality tied to it. All the game’s themed channels and community chats were flooded with topics offering trades and requests to “receive the missing artefact as a gift”.
Inside the app, we opened up an SMM mechanic for branding the covers of personal VK profiles. Each of the 350,000 users who used this feature became a living advertisement for the game on the VK platform, which has already generated over 30,000,000 organic impressions in total and continues to draw thousands of new users into the branded mini-app without any advertising spend. We essentially created an endless source of viral traffic and increased brand awareness.
Within the app itself, upon reaching a certain progression in artefact collection, users unlocked the ability to receive an electronic ticket to the anniversary festival. Anticipating high demand, we divided each of the 9 event days into numerous time slots and allowed users to choose a convenient date and time.
To manage attendance, we developed our own CRM system directly linked to the mini-app and its ticket-issuing functionality.
Before the event kicked off, we organised a vibrant press day for bloggers, content creators, and the media. A cabaret show, jazz, magic, and delicious dishes straight from Penacony were served up for bloggers, content creators, and the press.
The main event was the festival itself. We immersed the target audience in the setting, offered dozens of activities, gave away several tonnes of merch, sold even more, boosted brand loyalty and NPS for offline events, and racked up tens of thousands of UGC pieces and millions of viral impressions.
Ultimately, the campaign dramatically strengthened Honkai: Star Rail’s position in Russia. Russia established itself as the leading and key region for the brand’s business development, and we became the first to host a single-themed, non-esports video game event in the country with thousands of attendees.
