To Reach Gaming’s Massive Audience, Brands Go Bespoke

New game releases attract more attention than the biggest of the summer movie blockbusters. A lot more. In fact, it was years ago that entertainment moguls learned to schedule movie releases such that they wouldn’t conflict with the release of highly anticipated new PC and console gaming titles. Failing to do so took money out of the pockets of the studios, especially in key demographics that overlapped with gaming audiences. When it comes to entertainment, gaming still plays second fiddle to television, but perhaps for not much longer, thanks to the continued fragmentation of TV audiences and the wild popularity of gaming across all demographics. More marketers are beginning to find success leveraging gamer attention but often find the rules of the gaming business to be more restrictive and less forgiving than simply developing a 30-second spot for TV. For example, the timelines and commitments required for deep integration into a video game are much more rigid than moving some TV dollars from Q2 to Q3 to accommodate a delayed product launch. For marketers that require flexibility of commitment, the industry has tried several times to build momentum behind a programmatic ad approach to video games, but it keeps resulting in on-launchpad detonations and ham-handed execution that gamers find unexciting. In Gaming, Psychological Safety Measures Are Still Lacking If anything gets gamers excited about advertising, it’s deeper integrations that put their favorite brands into games in a bespoke way, like when Marvel and DC build their characters into Fortnite, such that players spend an entire season in the game trying to reach the levels required to get a special Spider-Man or Harley Quinn skin. But there are many more ways to integrate brands deeply into what gamers are doing. Sure, there’s the domain of the hardcore gamer—esports—where gamers go to learn just how good someone can get at a multiplayer game. Companies like Enthusiast Gaming can bring those opportunities to life for brands via creative contest partnerships with brands like Lego. Where it gets even more compelling is when brands underwrite the creativity of gamers who want to create new experiences. A few months back, my eight-year-old invited me to play a game of Among Us, a well-known and well-past-its-prime game that catapulted the word “sus” into common parlance. The funny thing was that he did it in Fortnite. Developers had essentially recreated Among Us within Fortnite’s creative platform. The notion that a well-known game can be recreated within the platform of another game might be mind-blowing to anyone who grew up playing Defender on an Atari 2600. But it’s noteworthy that gamers are helping incentivize other gamers to create within gaming platforms. See where I’m going with this? There’s no reason brands can’t get in on the action, too. To do so, though, they’ll need to earn gamers’ trust. If they just drop in a banner, annoyed gamers may ignore it. Far better to look for opportunities to encourage gamers to create—whether by launching a contest that pits gamers against one another to produce the coolest build or simply by underwriting their creations by enabling them to earn in-game credits. And look for gaming to grow in a very specific way. The future of gaming is not necessarily who can come up with the next great cross-platform title that has 20-somethings skipping work to go play. It’s about platforms where gamers can inhabit virtual worlds. There, they can create more games, attack a challenge cooperatively with friends, meet new gaming buddies or create their own take on an existing game. It’s easy to draw a direct line between this approach and the one that’s getting people excited about the metaverse. To succeed with advertising, brands need to adopt less of an automated, one-size-fits-all approach and instead launch bespoke programs that underwrite gamer creativity. Think sponsorship and integration, not just spots and dots. Why Creator Content Studios Are the Future of Esports