Post Mortem

➤ Spanish version.

This series of blog posts is part of the post-mortem on Mika and the Witch’s Mountain. Here is a link to the first part.

CAmpaign

Campaign strategy

The strategy had two key elements that needed to be aligned: 1) return on advertising spend (ROAS) and 2) average ticket.

The first because it literally shows how much the investment in advertising is multiplied; and the second because the more backers contribute on average, the more funding is potentially available.

The way the strategy was supposed to work was very simple, as the idea was to use ads to influence our target audience by highlighting the most suggestive rewards over the average ticket.

The results were very good as we achieved a ROAS of 230% and an average ticket of €42, reaching the goal in only 3 hours. After 24 hours, we achieved more than 200%.

As we can see, the growth was continuous throughout the 32 days of the campaign, reaching a maximum ROAS of 285% and an average ticket of €54, resulting in a 3.250% funded campaign.

Redesign and adjustment of the Stretch Goals

We knew from the beginning that the content in Mika and the Witch’s Mountain would be tight, and that we would only be able to add features thanks to the community and stretch goals.

Thus, the rationale for the stretch goal growth strategy was to incrementally unlock the features already identified in the scoping exercise as community rewards, while staying true to the original value proposition.

In this way, we gradually unlocked features such as the companion, the arcade mini-game (which is almost an alternate game mode), or the possibility to introduce puzzle dungeons.

All of these elements, while cohesive, were initially difficult to produce due to development costs, but are now possible thanks to the success of the campaign.

Rewards adjustment

The campaign’s initial reward scale was designed to highlight the value added by digital content.

However, once launched, campaigns are alive and their success depends on their creators’ ability to adapt: in our case, we decided to increase the variety and supply of physical items, introducing new rewards based on them.

Items such as the physical edition of the game or the colored figure are illustrative examples: although risky to produce (they require a minimum number of units and can generate cost overruns if they do not reach that level), the continued validation and growth of their backers guaranteed a minimum potential base.

These rewards came into play when we had already reached a high number of backers, and both have become two of the most popular rewards supported by the community.

We saw an opportunity to improve certain elements of the rewards as the campaign progressed: because of the benefit of producing more units (reducing costs), we realized that we could use that margin to increase the value of the item itself.

This is the case of the physical item 🎴 Exclusive Tarot Cards (physical) which, for the same price, went from containing 4 cards at the beginning to 8; then from 8 to 12; and finally from 12 to 15 cards.

These types of actions converge and reinforce the spirit of crowdfunding: the sum of community support puts product improvements within everyone’s reach.

In the original pre-campaign proposal, there were certain relatively high-priced rewards that included high-value items that needed to be limited in availability to preserve their exclusive value and maintain the integrity of the project due to their co-creative nature:

• 🌟 Custom Constellation.
• 🍄 Your own package in game.

Organic actions during the campaign

In addition to our advertising activities, we continue to keep the community in mind and propose a series of actions to increase its organic growth.

We used Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Redditto spread the word about the game and the Kickstarter campaign, and we used Discord, Steam, and Kickstarterto support backers (the latter through updates).

For the newsletters, we chose Mailchimp and targeted the Chibigcommunity from previous campaigns, national and international press, and content creators.

The campaign overlapped with the Steam Next Fest and we released a demo: it was the first time in the history of Chibig’s Kickstarter campaign. Nearly 25,000 profiles registered and played the demo during the festival, resulting in 20,289 new wishlists.

With Valentine’s Day in mind, we created two new Twitter accounts (one for Mika and one for Greff, her boss) and simulated a day of sending Valentine’s Day postcards.

We also organized an art contest on social networks, which is almost a tradition in Chibig’s Kickstarter campaigns, since a good part of their audience are artists of all kinds, and it is usually a well-received action. We received over 120 entries and selected 5 winners.

The contest rewarded the winners in several ways: they received a payment of €80, they received the reward consisting of the physical game and the colored figure, and finally, their work was included in both the digital art book and the washi tape stamp (their illustrations will appear on the stamps).

A Kickstarter within a Kickstarter

Seeing the success of the campaign, we decided to experiment and validate a high-risk physical reward: a collectible colored figure of the main character, Mika; and, in the process, creating a kind of “Kickstarter within a Kickstarter”.

To make it work, it was imperative to have a 3D printed prototype of the figure and test its viability based on its reception, as the original idea was to have a limited run and produce it in-house.

After showing the prototype, we saw how popular it was and had to come up with an alternative plan to outsource production.

Normally, this option would make the figures one of the most expensive rewards, but we had another goal in mind: the figure had to be affordable, so we tried to reduce the cost without compromising quality.

We contacted several manufacturers and began making calculations with more realistic data. The common answer was that the minimum run should be 1,000.

Therefore, ordering less than this amount was a risk because it would increase the cost; on the other hand, a larger order could significantly reduce the cost, making it easier for us to achieve our goal of making it affordable.

To address this, we came up with a fairly simple but effective strategy: we focused on rewards that included the figure, both in organic actions and in ads. As a result, more than 3,500 figures were acquired.

In conclusion, we were able to validate this new element and its associated rewards.