How the owners of that ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ jingle are benefitting from its TikTok virality

In 2012, Metro Trains — the public transit operator in Melbourne, Australia — created “Dumb Ways to Die,” a popular public safety campaign that spawned a series of tie-in mobile games. Over a decade later, the campaign’s jingle is massively viral on TikTok — and its current owner, the mobile game studio PlaySide, is taking advantage.

“Dumb Ways to Die” began as a morbidly cute music video featuring cartoon characters accidentally killing themselves in a myriad of unusual ways. In 2013, Metro published a “Dumb Ways to Die” iOS game to take advantage of the campaign’s popularity. PlaySide has helped develop sequels such as “Dumb Ways to Draw” and “Dumb Ways to Dash” since 2018, and in 2021, the company acquired the rights to the game series.

This isn’t the first time “Dumb Ways to Die” has gone re-viral in the years since its inception, but this is shaping up to be its biggest viral moment yet. After a TikTok user created a video template using the campaign’s titular song in late January, online searches for the phrase “Dumb Ways to Die” increased tenfold, according to Google Trends. Influencers and celebrities such as Coco Gauff and Olivia Dunn quickly jumped on board the trend.

To learn how PlaySide is taking advantage of this unexpected viral moment, Digiday contacted the company’s general manager, Danny Armstrong, for an annotated Q&A.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

On the role of nostalgia in marketing mobile games

Armstrong: “There’s just something about this title, and especially what I classify as evergreen titles, where it’s been a game that’s been around for a long time now, like 10 years or so. And it’s kind of fostered this audience from kids who are now in the TikTok generation, and it’s mostly a nostalgia element to them. The amount of organic downloads that we saw, just from the YouTube video itself, was just insane. You can see people commenting, ‘Oh, my childhood — I love this game.’”

Digiday: At this point, smartphones have been around for nearly 20 years, so it’s not surprising that members of Gen Z and younger are beginning to feel nostalgic for the mobile games of their youths. Nostalgia is a key driver of successful creative work in the mobile gaming industry, according to AppLovin’s Creative Trends Report 2023 — so marketers might be wise to expand their definition of nostalgia to include games and trends that only feel old to people who aren’t, well, old.

On the impact of the ‘Dumb Ways’ viral moment on mobile app installs

Armstrong: “We’ve seen a significant increase in downloads. Of course, we’re number one in the U.S. in games, and we’ve been there since Friday last week — which is insane. I was actually …read more

Source:: Digiday