‘The model is shifting’: In esports, brand dollars increasingly follow the personalities

Turns out, it’s the culture around esports, not the competitions themselves, that really interest advertisers.

Marketers at Digiday’s virtual Gaming Advertising Forum earlier this week said as much. And the way they advertise to gamers is changing as a result. They’re increasingly choosing to build campaigns around the biggest personalities in esports, over the teams and competitions.

“We recognized early on that a lot of creators who were [high profile] gamers already loved Chipotle, so it helped us identify that this was a huge segment we should go after,” said the brand’s vp of marketing Stephanie Perdue at the event. “Then it was about finding those authentic partnerships with the right teams with the right streamers who are already talking about us on their own.”

Like traditional sports and entertainment, gaming is becoming more personality-driven by the day. Increasingly, esports fans are tuning in to watch individual people as well as the teams. So the sponsorship model is shifting toward a personality-driven arrangement between advertisers and team organizations. This shift toward “star power” is evidenced in the types of assets being created for sponsorship deals, from content over logo slaps to product endorsement over product placement.

“We still work with esports teams, but they’re a much smaller part of our overall strategy than they have been in the past,” said PepsiCo’s head of gaming and esports Paul Mascali during a session. “We’re more focused on the cultural side, insofar as working with the tastemakers and the influencers that are deriving gaming culture forward. That’s much more important as we think about how to authentically reach gamers.”

When PepsiCo gave video game streamer and esports personality Dr Disrespect his own limited edition of its Mountain Dew Game Fuel promotional flavors, for example, it sold out in 72 hours. It worked so well, said Mascali, because the tie-up didn’t come across as forced to Dr Disrespect’s fans. They know why he promoted the brand but appreciated the fact that he seemed to actually like it.

“You had a situation where there was an authentic brand for gamers being drunk by someone who’s a celebrity to many of them,” said Mascali. “He’d be drinking and talking about the drink while streaming to his fans who know how he talks about the brands he does and doesn’t like. They trust him. So we had a meaningful connection this way, as opposed to getting him to share a random social post or something along those lines.”

Unsurprisingly, these tastemakers are increasingly at the forefront of advertising around esports — and, more broadly, gaming. After all, many popular esports personalities have large followings to whom they often stream for upwards of eight hours a day. That sort of media exposure is hard to ignore for marketers. Recent deals from the likes of Chipotle, Razer and Adidas bare this out.

“Typically, these deals were pushed and brokered by communication agencies and activation units,” said Umair Saeed, chief operating officer at Blitz Advertising, a Publicis Groupe affiliated sports marketing agency. “Now it’s …read more

Source:: Digiday