Driven by the forthcoming direct listing of Roblox, plus the juggernaut success of Animal Crossing and Fortnite, marketing services are setting their sights on gaming — a new and arguably belated recognition of the power that gaming communities can hold for brands of all stripes. Companies with direct ties to gaming, like headphone makers, are of course no strangers to the space, but many other brands have avoided marketing to gaming communities. Yet the rise of these agencies suggests that brands are finally eager to break into platforms like Twitch and into virtual, in-game universes in games like Fortnite.

One entrant, LiveCraft, a new branch of the marketing agency Podean, is focused on connecting brands with different axes of the live-stream shopping ecosystem — Twitch, Amazon Live, Instagram Live and so on —with a special eye toward gamers. Twofivesix, another agency, has worked with the likes of Warby Parker. New ad-tech companies like Bloxbiz are also popping up, while more established PR firms, like FleishmanHillard, have talked about focusing more on gaming.

Mark Power, the CEO of Podean, said that LiveCraft’s big bet is on gaming. Not only is Twitch, an Amazon-owned platform dominated by gamers, one of the most important live-streaming companies around, but he also said that LiveCraft will be pursuing “immersive shopping” opportunities in the near future. “What platform or what ecosystem out there is best placed to make that a reality? It’s gaming,” he said. Power recently set up a partnership between Elf Cosmetics and Twitch streamer LoserFruit, who used Elf products to recreate her Fortnite look, and he is also working on building out a branded world within Fortnite.

According to Jamin Warren, founder of the strategic consultancy Twofivesix, that shift has come more on the brand side than on the gaming side. Gaming’s massive reach is nothing new, and for years video game revenues have dwarfed even film and TV earnings. The difference now, Warren said, is that today “there definitely are more common touchpoints even for people who don’t play games.” Fortnite, Animal Crossing, Roblox and Among Us have swept mainstream culture to the point where even non-gamers know them well — reaching a kind of mainstream success rarely seen before.

Gaming itself is also on the rise — and its core audience has become both broader and more dedicated than before. According to a July 2020 NPD Group study published, 32 million more people played video games in 2020 than in 2018, and the average amount of time spent on gaming jumped from 12 to 14 hours per week. To many brands, the demographic of “gamer” no longer feels so niche.

Warren first began thinking about how brands and gamers overlap in 2011, when he started a gaming-focused media company called Kill Screen. To earn money, he worked with companies to create branded content for his …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron