When Cosmetics and Online Gaming Team up: MAC Cosmetics X Honor of Kings Makeup Collection Collaboration
Yes...you read that right.
This caught my eye as I was scrolling through my WeChat article feed. Why wouldn’t it? Have you seen video games collaborate with makeup brands before? The hugely popular video game in China, Honor of Kings, reportedly made $5.3 million PER DAY in 2018 and made $139 million in December 2019. 96% of the game’s revenue comes from within China, and interestingly 54% of the game’s players are women. This would explain why the brand has decided to collaborate with international makeup brand MAC Cosmetics.
MAC Cosmetics is renowned for its dramatic, fashion-forward looks - from Chrome, metallic, shimmering looks, and more. Their talented makeup artists are frequent guests backstage at the world’s top fashion week celebrations such as NYFW, MFW, PFW, and LFW.
Some of the most-played characters in the Honor of Kings online game
The limited-edition collaboration has its own WeChat mini program online store, and MAC’s WeChat official account has released landscape orientation WeChat articles to promote the collection. WeChat article readers can click through to the collection’s dedicated mini program to shop the collection (and of course check out using WeChat Pay).
Five of the game’s most-played characters each have their own tailored color palette to match with their own cosmetic skins and attire in the game. Li Bai, Han Shin, Zhao Yun, Bai Li Shou Yue, Zhu Ge Liang, are the featured characters from the game.
Brand Ambassador Meng Mei Qi from popular girl group ‘Rocket Girls 101’
Another notable tactic of this collaboration is that MAC recruited popular girl pop group ‘Rocket Girls 101’ member Meng Mei Qi (孟美岐) to be the Brand Ambassador for this collaboration.
From the various campaign elements, we see that the campaign has been tailored for frequent female game players of Honor of Kings, who may also be fans of Brand Ambassador Meng Mei Qi.
We have yet to see a similar collaboration between online games and prominent makeup brands in North America - are we due for more innovation in this arena?
