As video games become cultural juggernauts, marketers still struggle with buy-in

NEW YORK — The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s PlayFronts returned in-person Wednesday, bringing with it a raft of publishers, platforms and types evangelizing in regards to the power of video games as a marketing tool. Now in its second yr, the industry confab also ceaselessly doubled back to a subject that might be familiar to someone who attended last spring’s PlayFronts: Why don’t marketers invest more in gaming?

Despite the continued ascendance of games in popular culture, including through HBO’s recent hit adaptation of “The Last of Us,” marketers in lots of cases remain reticent to go all-in resulting from misperceptions in regards to the gaming audience and the tactics available to them, speakers said. Even firms with a longtime stake in gaming and esports marketing noted those are areas where they should be more open to learning from failure, a potentially daunting proposition in a belt-tightening period.      

“So much of what we’re attempting to do is take calculated bets in these places,” said Beth Woodruff, senior director of name strategy, integrations, gaming and innovation at Ally Financial, during a panel on the show. “Sometimes, you’ve got to go in knowing that you simply’re perhaps going to miss the mark slightly bit. There are ways for brands to recoup from that.”

Woodruff was joined by executives with varied levels of gaming experience from PepsiCo, Mondelēz International and Coty for a discussion moderated by the IAB. 

In the case of Coty, the sweetness marketer is a relatively fresh face in gaming, though its push into the channel indicates how consumer preferences are changing. Increased adoption of gaming has welcomed a more diverse mixture of marketers into an entertainment arena that’s typically been associated with energy drinks and salty snacks targeted at young men. About two-thirds of U.S. consumers are gamers in some capability, though gaming captures lower than 5% of promoting budgets, in line with an IAB study published across the show that cited Entertainment Software Association data.

“Today, everyone seems to be a gamer,” said Nicolas Comestaz, vp of worldwide media, communication and performance at Coty. “This is an existing audience that we’d like to contemplate as a marketer.”

Growing pains

With games now generating massive sales and holding the eye of key demographics like Gen Z, getting buy-in from corporate stakeholders looks like it must be a neater pitch. That’s not at all times the case, in line with Woodruff, who helped execute an “Animal Crossing” activation for Ally earlier within the pandemic that resulted in a 320% increase in account openings. 

“Sometimes leadership is like, ‘Gaming, really?’” Woodruff said. “We feel like we’ve to always prove that down funnel.”

At the identical time, gaming doesn’t at all times have a transparent place in conventional marketing organizations. 

Some games-related marketing centers around in-game ads that function similarly to purchasing traditional programmatic promoting. Other tactics involve bespoke placements and integrations or creating custom maps for multiplayer titles like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft. Ally, for example, designed an Ally Arena in Fortnite, with a planned launch for sometime next month. And then there are content creators — the livestreamers and social media personalities who hold gamers at rapt attention but will be harder to manage. 

“This is a latest area that is sitting inside several teams,” said Coty’s Comestaz of gaming. “I’m leading with media … but more often than not that is coming from the team that is driving innovation inside the organization. It requires numerous willingness to collaborate across the teams.”

As a relative newcomer, Comestaz described challenges in shifting from being “opportunistic” with gaming to fostering long-term loyalty. On the opposite end of the spectrum, PepsiCo offered suggestions as a “first mover” with a history in gaming dating back to Mtn Dew Game Fuel’s debut. Paul Mascali, the food and beverage giant’s head of esports and gaming, cautioned against focusing an excessive amount of on one-off experiments when attempting to make an impact. 

“Honestly, that is not how we construct a relationship with these communities,” said Mascali. “All of the deals we do are longer-term.”

At a conference displaying numerous latest bells and whistles for gaming, resembling rewards systems and “g-commerce,” Mascali emphasized that creators are still those moving the needle and setting cultural trends. PepsiCo works with partners resembling Dr. DisRespect, a streamer who can attract between 30,000 and 40,000 each day viewers on platforms like YouTube, in line with Mascali. A Game Fuel flavor made for Dr. DisRespect sold out inside 72 hours.