"The most collaborative game in the gaming industry, 'Egg Party,' is becoming a 'long-lasting hit.'"

In 2023, two brands undoubtedly occupied the top spot in the IP collaboration explosion. One is the "collaboration genius" Luckin Coffee. From collaborating with Maotai to create the first "wine-infused coffee" popular drink, to partnering with "Tom and Jerry" IP and taking over the entire social network... Various signs show that "achieving popular products through collaboration and innovation" has become a prominent feature and trend in the marketing innovation field in both domestic and international markets. In the gaming industry, there is also a rising "collaboration fanatic" called "Eggtart Party" under NTES-S (09999). In fact, throughout the industry, there has not been a party game with a phenomenon-level collaboration like "Eggtart Party" that continuously brings freshness to users and receives continuous attention from top brands, with the popularity of the IP continuously rising. While refreshing the market's perception of IP collaboration, they both continuously create new growth vitality. How did "Eggtart Party" and Luckin Coffee coincidentally dominate the consumer market? Their understanding of the emotions of the young consumer group has led to similar paths of success. As the most popular marketing method for brands nowadays, IP collaboration and cross-over collaborations are profoundly changing the consumer field and continuously building irreplaceable competitiveness for diverse brands. Among them, Luckin Coffee has gradually overcome the shadow of its history and achieved a turnaround from losses to profits through its "low-price strategy + fancy collaborations". In the gaming industry, "Eggtart Party" as the "number one player" in party games also understands the path to success like Luckin Coffee: public data shows that "Eggtart Party" collaborates once every 10 days on average, fully utilizing its social attributes of "everything can be an eggtart". It can be seen that in addition to the characteristics of the product itself and the rich user-generated content, the success of this game may also be attributed to its collaboration and marketing strategies. Looking at the numerous successful collaborations of "Eggtart Party," it attracted a large number of young users and gained their recommendations. Behind the craze lies a similar commercial logic to that of Luckin Coffee in creating "super popular products": Firstly, Eggtart Party and Luckin Coffee both have trendy attributes and are at the forefront of surfing, making them the social code of contemporary young people. In the current market of ever-changing consumer demands, the key to successful product innovation lies in "mindset innovation." Generation Z has become the emerging main force in the consumer market, possessing characteristics such as "defining categories clearly and building distinct differentiations." Developing new products based on the cognitive mindset of Generation Z has become the secret to expanding a big IP territory. Observing the numerous collaborations of "Eggtart Party" since its launch, it is similar to Luckin Coffee as both start from the consumption and lifestyle preferences of the current young generation. The reason why collaboration play works repeatedly undoubtedly lies in its strong relevance to current consumer demands. According to data from the "2022 China Brand Licensing Industry Development White Paper," consumers who purchase IP collaboration products are mainly concentrated in the 19-35 age group, with a focus on the young and middle-aged group, among which consumers aged 25-30 account for the majority, reaching 44.2%. Looking at the choices of IP, young consumers aged 18-25 have a relatively broad acceptance and selection of IP content, mainly focusing on domestic trends, animations, film and television, and other IPs. The 26-40-year-old middle-aged and young group are the main target audience for IPs such as culture, arts, and classic brands, with a higher consumption percentage. Collectibles and blind boxes have also become one of the most popular tracks in recent years. Therefore, "Eggtart Party" aimed at the core user group beloved by Generation Z from the very beginning, adopting the popular "blind box" approach. When shaping the image of the eggtart, it was designed with the concept of a "blind box" associated with skins. The game embeds a blind box machine, and players can use in-game currency to purchase blind boxes to obtain their favorite skins. This concept close to the trend culture allows users to experience the joy of opening blind boxes through their screens every time they obtain a skin, creating emotional value. Furthermore, although the mainstream gameplay is puzzle-based, strong social attributes may be the right way for "Eggtart Party". Currently, the user base of "Eggtart Party" is already very diverse. In the year and a half since its launch, the influx of a large number of young players has further boosted its popularity. These players are enthusiastic about sharing their gaming experiences on platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu. Meanwhile, the thriving UGC ecosystem is conducive to content iteration and creating unique and rich gaming experiences, enhancing user engagement and stickiness, and injecting continuous vitality into the game. The youthfulness and scale of the "Eggtart Party" player base undoubtedly lay a solid foundation for linking with other well-known brands. It is understood that on November 10th, "Eggtart Party" announced another heavyweight plan: "Eggtart Collaboration Family Plan." In this plan, IP collaborations were formed with "Sky: Children of the Light," KFC, Sanrio, China Post, etc., spanning the gaming, mass consumer, and big entertainment fields, further increasing the commercial value of the Eggtart IP. Secondly, their collaborations have unique insights and are able to select partners that align with their own brand image, achieving a 1+1 greater than 2 effect. Many market perspectives believe that the mutual support of collaborating IPs can achieve a 1+1>2 effect. However, in reality, business collaborations need to consider many external factors, and there have been cases where IP collaborations have failed or coolly received, resulting in the brand's efforts being only half effective. However, for Luckin Coffee, which is experienced in cross-border collaborations, this is not a difficult task. Taking the recent popular "Wine-infused Latte" as an example, the cross-border innovation of "wine + coffee, one cup after another" undoubtedly brought significant voice expansion to both collaborating parties. Luckin Coffee, based on high-quality innovative products targeting the young user group, gained additional points for the collaboration, expanded its user base, and continued to have a long-tail effect after collaboration ended. Returning to "Eggtart Party" itself, the reason it continuously receives collaboration support from top brands is largely due to its careful selection of partners. It can consider both the brand value and culture of both parties while creating more interesting activities and an ecosystem that achieves value extension with its collaborators.I am going to the store to buy bread and milk.For example, in the selection of Linked IP, Danzai strives to choose well-known IPs with high popularity and topic spread among the young demographic. It has collaborated with popular classic IPs such as Red Bean, Fruit Warriors, and Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf to create a cross-border universe composed of a series of elements such as new skins and scenes. This releases the influence of the IP and attracts attention from various user groups. Recently, NetEase's flagship IP "Fantasy Westward Journey" collaborated with "Danzai Party", one being a long-standing MMO champion in the gaming industry and the other being a rising star. They combined Chinese culture with trendy culture, enhancing the ecosystem, content, and user flow between the two sides and breaking the boundaries of game collaborations. In addition to collaborating with "Danzai Party", "Ace Racer" and "Identity V", which were once in the top 3 on the bestseller list and have over 100 million users worldwide, have also joined the "Danzai Collaboration Family" recently. At the same time, the collaboration of "Danzai Party" has not been limited to the gaming industry but has also directly contributed to the success of the toy brand Flying DongDong. Looking at DongDong's rise, it is not difficult to see the crucial role played by "Danzai Party". At the beginning of their collaboration, DongDong was an unknown toy brand. "Danzai Party" discovered the high compatibility between the cute round Danzai and the soft and white little lamb, and they reached a collaboration agreement. With the increase in the popularity of Danzai, supported by the large number of users from the game, the commercial value of the DongDong brand has increased. From being an unknown toy brand to a sought-after brand, it has gained overwhelming popularity on the Internet. Player-generated content based on DongDong has also played a role in breaking boundaries and spreading. Now, DongDong has become one of the iconic collaboration appearances of Danzai and one of the most popular collaboration appearances. In addition to entertainment brands, "Danzai Party" has also collaborated with brands from various fields such as Meixue Ice City, Lawson, Xian Yuxian, and Green Arrow to launch various co-branded custom products, covering a wider range of people through fast-moving consumer goods and achieving flow and customer acquisition in the virtual world. In the "Danzai Collaboration Family Plan" announced on November 10th, the official Danzai team stated that they will continue to explore new forms of IP collaboration, from the earliest "everything can be Danzai" to deep customization and immersive collaborations, providing important reference value for future commercial cooperation of the Danzai IP. With the continuous expansion of the collaboration IP matrix and the clarity of business boundaries, it will maximize the platform effect of "Danzai Party" in the future, open up interactive channels with players and fans, help with user retention and long-term operation of the game, and further expand the influence and commercialization capability of the IP. The large user base creates high barriers, and efficient dissemination achieves collaborative empowerment. It begs the question, how did the collaboration marketing world break through its limitations? For Luckin Coffee, their commonly used strategy is to collaborate with IP or brands that represent the characteristics of their products, and collaboration is repeatedly used to hype and continue their strategy of promoting flagship products. This strategy is based on their large user base and absolute confidence in their products. "Danzai Party" is very similar in this regard. According to previous data released by NetEase, "Danzai Party" has become the game with the highest daily active users in NetEase's history, with a daily user scale of 30 million. In August this year, "Danzai Party" achieved the achievement of surpassing 100 million monthly active users and accumulating 100 million maps, known as the "double-hundred achievement". In fact, it is precisely because of their strong capabilities, large user base, and good reputation that Danzai and Luckin Coffee were able to attract top players in the industry. Based on Danzai's large player ecosystem, spontaneous player participation and dissemination can be formed during collaboration, creating a "self-propagating content ecosystem" to increase activity. By using various touchpoints on external social media platforms to create external voices, they create advantages for the brand and product, and continue to attract high-quality IP collaborations. Taking the collaboration with the popular beverage brand Meixue Ice City in July as an example, during the collaboration, they jointly launched activities such as the Danzai Ice King appearance, the "Ice King Danzai Dance Troupe" music video, the Meixue Ice City new store in Danzai Island (in-game), and the Danzai Ice King-themed pop-up store (offline). In terms of product, during this collaboration, Danzai and Meixue Ice City conducted in-depth co-creation, including limited skins in the game, highly recognizable and widely spread Danzai packaging, activities at pop-up stores for check-ins, and interest-oriented peripheral products that attracted young consumers. All these aspects have strong social influence, and through the combination of online and offline activities, the average social interaction between the two parties increased rapidly during the co-branded period, further validating the appeal of Danzai. For the collaboration partner Meixue Ice City, it also uses "Danzai Party" to connect Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co., Ltd.'s consumer channels, high frequency, and diverse gameplay to achieve wide-ranging and low-cost dissemination. It deeply explores consumer value and achieves a good breakthrough in breaking boundaries, with increasing calls for a return. From this perspective, Danzai and Luckin Coffee have not only achieved commercial success, but they have also empowered the brand and products of their collaboration partners through their strong collaborative appeal and boundary-breaking capabilities. "Danzai Party" itself has become a phenomenon-level IP in trendy culture, synonymous with trends and youth. With its large and highly engaged consumer group, it undoubtedly provides stable and sufficient momentum for future performance growth. In conclusion, with a deeper understanding of consumers, "Danzai Party" uses "fun and interest" as its core, breaks through the casual gaming market through diverse and popular IPs, and adopts rich collaboration and innovative strategies to tap into the core of consumer interests and continuously explore the potential for interest-driven consumption. This lays the foundation for the steady expansion of the game's user base and enhances its competitive advantage.Profound, now it has the potential to become a "super popular product", it will also bring long-term driving force for its and its cooperative development.Please provide the text you would like me to translate.