Colorwood Words: the Ukrainian game that conquered the App Store

What the talk is about

Olga Tarasova tells how Burny Games' mobile word puzzle Colorwood Words reached number one in the Ukrainian App Store. The team wanted to test a hypothesis: what happens if you go beyond translation and localise with cultural subtext, using jokes, memes and references familiar to Ukrainians. The campaign launched just before Constitution Day on a few ad networks with reliable attribution and small budgets, and the team even recorded Ukrainian songs for the ads with a band in which a colleague sings. Creatives with cultural hooks showed double the conversion and noticeably better day-one retention, so spending was scaled up while the product, creative and marketing teams watched the charts almost around the clock. The company now applies the same approach to other markets. Useful for mobile marketers and user acquisition teams.