By Alexander Lee • July 12, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
As brands grow more comfortable in the gaming space, they’re handing the reins over to creators for longer and deeper sponsorships that are inherently integrated with their content and communities.
Brands’ romance with gaming influencers and creators has blossomed in 2024. Marketers have moved beyond in-game ads as they realize the spending power of “cultural gamers” — or self-identified gamers who primarily engage with the medium through social media and digital content rather than the games themselves.
To reach gamers outside of video games, brands have moved beyond one-off activations based on specific intellectual properties toward more fully integrated programs that span across all aspects of a creator’s community and fandom. Brands’ creator sponsorships are longer, too, with creators signing on for more open-ended campaigns lasting months rather than committing to a specific list of deliverables. These longer partnerships can provide creators with the comfort and freedom to introduce brands to their audiences however they feel is best.
One creator who has embraced a more integrated approach to sponsorships is the YouTuber and professional “Fortnite” player Cody “Clix” Conrod. Conrod’s recent partnership with apparel brand Hugo, for example, included a sponsored trip to Berlin and a VIP fan event, in addition to the usual promotion across Conrod’s social feeds, which, collectively, boast millions of followers.
“I’m not sure what all brands are doing or how they’re thinking,” Conrod said. “But, the way my team and I see my brand opportunities are definitely with a longer-term and more in-depth view. The only way that a brand can really become a member of my comm[unity] is if they show up over a longer period of time and add some sort of value to them.”
Conrod is far from the only influencer to feel this way in 2024. It’s an approach taken by many creators at his esports organization, XSET, whose leaders actively encourage their sponsors to let team members activate as they please instead of following prescriptive instructions or guidelines.
“This is critically important. I think brands are starting to understand more that if you don’t let the creators be themselves and support them in an authentic way, the message falls flat and doesn’t effectively market the brand or product to the creator’s audience in a way that feels organic,” said XSET CEO Greg Selkoe. “I would take it one step further: If the creator doesn’t generally like the brand or product, we don’t do it.”
As brands deepen their presence directly inside gaming platforms such as Fortnite and Roblox, creators are reaping the rewards, too. Although immersive integrations are winning the battle for brands’ in-game advertising dollars, marketers still rely on creators to promote their branded experiences and otherwise help drive traffic to them.
Working with creators for longer, more integrated partnerships allows brands to develop a natural presence inside community spaces such as creators’ Discord channels, making their fans more likely to actually participate in branded experiences when they happen.
“Long-term collaborations allow for ongoing feedback and improvements, as players get more insight from player interactions as well,” said Matt Zanazzo, head of Fortnite at the metaverse development studio Gamefam. “You can fine-tune it, or enhance the brand’s presence. You really have time to see what players are enjoying or not, and then make those adjustments. That continuous interaction leads to higher-quality content and generally more effective marketing strategies, and ultimately drives better results.”
The more integrated nature of gaming creators’ sponsorships in 2024 is not the result of a hard strategic pivot by brands or marketers, but rather the natural result of advertisers’ push into gaming in recent years. Marketers are finally doing away with lingering misconceptions about the difficulty of reaching gamers authentically — and they’re doing it by working more closely with creators who have their fingers on the pulse of the space.
“Brands are understanding that creators have a unique relationship with their audiences. What you say and how you say it is such a crucial component to people seeing content as authentic versus being simply an ad,” said Damon Lau, head of gaming and esports at United Talent Agency. “I think brands recognize this, and have empowered creators more and more to take control of how that message is deployed because they simply know their audiences so well.”
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