Creative Agency We Are Social Amplifies International Gaming Approach

As demand by marketers to access the constantly growing gaming audience, international social media creative agency We Are Social is formalizing its offer in esports. It's aiming to work with both brands and developers around the world to connect them with communities. As gaming has become a core business offer to its clients in recent months, the agency, which employs around 1,000 people globally, wants to build on work it has created for non-gaming brands such as Uber Eats, Vodafone, Lidl and Renault and campaigns such as Global Pride's annual parade on Animal Crossing. According to the agency’s Digital Report for 2021, the time spent playing video games on a gaming console was one hour and 12 minutes each day. Action-adventure was the most popular genre with among half of gamers (55.2%). We Are Social Gaming will not be created as a separate division within the business and will instead run across the agency’s entire portfolio. It will involve 20 gaming and esports experts and will be overseen by chief strategy officer Mobbie Nazir, Singapore managing director Christina Chong, CEO of Italy and Spain Stefano Maggi and Australia managing director Suzie Shaw. Atari Re-Invades Gaming Space With Logo Celebrating 50th Anniversary “We see gaming as a social place. … There's not one single gaming platform you can point to. … It's fragmented,” explained co-founder and group chief executive Nathan McDonald to Adweek. “But all of these spaces are social in nature. When you're playing games with other people, it's a place to hang out. You're there for the gameplay, but you're also there in a social way to hang out with people that you share an interest with.” Brands will be given access to the agency’s existing capabilities and expertise with a focus across four areas: understanding gaming culture, enhancing gaming experiences, navigating the gaming ecosystem and maximizing impact through a connected approach. “By separating it out from the rest of the social business, it would be like saying that it's different, but we see it actually as the same,” McDonald added. “It's about communities. It's about the culture that is formed in those communities and the conversations that happen there.” Previous brand work has included adding retailer Lidl’s Christmas jumper into Animal Crossing, a virtual Formula One reality game for Renault to create a pitstop where the player had to change and working with UberEats to amplify its offer to the gaming community through influencer partnerships. The Renault pit stop gaming experience. “[UberEats] wanted to tap tackle and appeal to a new audience, so we got them into gaming audiences by basically working with influencers on Twitch where we're doing big streaming sessions,” McDonald said. Lotus Comfort, the French toilet roll brand, also tasked the agency with the creation of a mobile mini-game that would keep the player busy during toilets breaks. The Lotus Toilet mini mobile game. The aim will also be to work with games publishers on promoting new titles after already working with developer brands such as Activision, Riot Games, Sony, G2, Fnatic and Amazon’s streaming site Twitch. We Are Social currently has 15 offices across four continents, including New York, Toronto, London, Singapore, Berlin, Paris and Dubai.