What the rise of gaming means for brands

There may be those naysay­er brands that dis­miss the fast-mov­ing esports and gam­ing sec­tor as a tem­po­rary fad among teenage boys, but shrewder heads believe its poten­tial as a mul­ti-demo­graph­ic ad plat­form is only now becom­ing appar­ent.

With what the indus­try calls the “gam­ing ecosys­tem” rapid­ly migrat­ing from com­put­ers and con­soles to the ubiq­ui­tous smart­phone, cre­at­ing a mean­ing­ful brand pres­ence among gamers, whether through in-app adver­tis­ing, brand char­ac­ters, spon­sor­ship or shop­pable con­tent, is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant.

That’s the view of mar­ket intel­li­gence house App Annie, which pre­dicts glob­al spend­ing on mobile games alone could be close to £85 bil­lion this year, mak­ing it 50 per cent larg­er than all oth­er gam­ing cat­e­gories com­bined. 

“Mobile adver­tis­ing in gen­er­al, much of it around games, kept the entire ad indus­try afloat in 2020 and so far in 2021. With the oppor­tu­ni­ty to return to the stream­ing of live events, the spend is like­ly to be far big­ger still,” says Lexi Sydow, senior mar­ket insights man­ag­er at App Annie.

“Gam­ing may be a new habit that many have adopt­ed in 2020, but with the devel­op­ment of more inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing tech­niques, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our view, in-game cus­tomis­able avatars, it will become a cat­a­lyst for oth­er new behav­iours too. Smart brands are recog­nis­ing that phones are mini mobile con­soles and get­ting into this space right now.”

While hard-to-reach Gen‑Z audi­ences adept at using ad-block­er tech­nol­o­gy are already in mar­keters’ sights, the breadth of game gen­res now on offer, from first-per­son shoot­ers and arcade games to elec­tron­ic scrab­ble or ludo, for exam­ple, makes gam­ing “inclu­sive and acces­si­ble”, she adds.

Bud Light, which recent­ly launched Europe’s first on-pack beer and esports pro­mo­tion in part­ner­ship with UK-based pro­fes­sion­al esports organ­i­sa­tion Fnat­ic, was an ear­ly con­vert. 

Aid­ed by brand­ed char­ac­ter the Bud Knight, as much as three quar­ters of Bud Light’s total UK mar­ket­ing spend was devot­ed to gam­ing and esports in 2020, up from 10 to 20 per cent in pre­vi­ous years.

Why gaming could be “as big as football”

“Esports and gam­ing aren’t a side hus­tle for us, we believe they are a gen­uine pas­sion point for many con­sumers and have the capac­i­ty to become just as big as foot­ball and rug­by one day,” says Lourenço Arria­ga, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er for Bud­weis­er and Bud Light in the UK and Ire­land.

“With con­sumer atten­tion in COVID switch­ing from TV and oth­er tra­di­tion­al media to gam­ing and the live stream­ing of esports events on Twitch, I would advise oth­er mar­keters with rel­e­vant brands to embrace the fact that this is a phe­nom­e­non which is here to stay,” he says. 

Launched in the midst of the pan­dem­ic last year, Dentsu’s esports and gam­ing arm DGame, whose clients include Kellogg’s and Cad­bury, argues that the glob­al gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty, esti­mat­ed to soar to more than three bil­lion by 2023, is a new form of social media, offer­ing mul­ti­ple and prof­itable avenues for brand inte­gra­tion.

“Gam­ing attracts peo­ple look­ing for com­pan­ion­ship, shared inter­ests and, cur­rent­ly at least, an escape from lock­down. This adds up to an enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ty for in and out-of-game spon­sor­ship, in-app adver­tis­ing, prod­uct place­ment and, ulti­mate­ly, the devel­op­ment of orig­i­nal brand­ed con­tent,” says Peter Jacobs, client part­ner at DGame.

“By con­tin­u­ing to spend the bulk of their bud­gets on tra­di­tion­al TV ads, the many brands out there look­ing to appeal to 18 to 25s may not actu­al­ly be talk­ing to their tar­get mar­ket with­out even real­is­ing it,” he adds.

Entering a highly fragmented market

Despite the UK already boast­ing more than 37 mil­lion reg­u­lar gamers, split fair­ly equal­ly between men and women, Jacobs notes that many brands remain reluc­tant to dive into what is still a high­ly frag­ment­ed mar­ket.

“Brands are at dif­fer­ent stages in terms of their jour­ney into gam­ing and esports, and while some are already fair­ly sea­soned, oth­ers are first movers or very keen to take that first leap, but unsure of how to do it,” he says.

While Jacobs sees the spon­sor­ship of live esports and music events as a nat­ur­al and poten­tial­ly lucra­tive entry point for new­bie brands, par­tic­u­lar­ly when atten­dance num­bers return to pre-COVID lev­els, he agrees there are a num­ber of obsta­cles in the path to gam­ing glo­ry.

L’Oréal has open­ly declared an inter­est in devel­op­ing gam­ing strate­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly for its female-lean­ing brands, yet the long-held per­cep­tion that the sec­tor remains pre­dom­i­nant­ly male is prov­ing hard to shift.

The com­plex world of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) may well prove a bone of con­tention between games pub­lish­ers and mar­keters as the lat­ter seek to mon­e­tise their involve­ment fur­ther and this is an area in which IP lawyers may be the even­tu­al vic­tors.

But it’s the poten­tial cul­tur­al clash between devel­op­ers and brands that may prove the stick­i­est prob­lem of all.

Understanding gamers

“Gamers are a high­ly pro­tec­tive com­mu­ni­ty and while they wel­come brands into their world, we have no auto­mat­ic right to be there unless we add real val­ue,” says Arria­ga. “If a brand or ad appears out of con­text, it can quick­ly back­fire on a mar­keter via com­ments on social media.”

While the immer­sive and inter­ac­tive nature of gam­ing makes it high­ly recep­tive to brand mes­sag­ing, App Annie’s Sydow advis­es mar­keters to “respect and under­stand gamers” to keep audi­ences on-side.

“It real­ly mat­ters if your in-app ad is hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal and so does avoid­ing any inter­rup­tion to the flow of play,” she says. “By col­lab­o­rat­ing with pub­lish­ers and devel­op­ers to cre­ate great ads that enhance rather than detract from the game, you can make an enor­mous impact.”

With devel­op­ers will­ing to open their doors to inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing at a far ear­li­er stage, there is much to play for on this still-new plat­form. 

But whether it’s Bud Knight on an in-app bus shel­ter ad or an option for gamers to pur­chase Louis Vuit­ton fash­ion for their avatars, brands will need to know their place as the mar­ket matures.