Through gaming activations, GALE has transformed world-class brands by making them playable–from a Roblox game that made Bomb Pop the #1 selling food item in the platform’s history to the biggest women’s Fortnite tournament series ever, The Milk Cup. While GALE and our clients–as well as other agencies and brands–have experienced massive gaming successes like these, many brands remain hesitant to invest their marketing dollars in this space.
Why?
Gaming has a branding problem. It’s often perceived as a time-wasting activity performed by headset-wearing teenage boys. When, in reality, nearly 50% of the more than three billion worldwide gamers are women. Plus, gamers span a variety of ages, not to mention other demographics. And what constitutes “gaming” is quite wide-ranging: from Wordle on your way home from work to, yes, the games like World of Warcraft.
To better understand how to overhaul gaming’s reputation, GALE CEO Brad Simms gathered three marketing leaders at Stagwell’s Sport Beach at Cannes Lions 2024: National Women’s Soccer League Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer Julie Haddon, Activision Blizzard Head of Global Industry Marketing & Communications Claire Nance, and Lenovo President of Global Ecommerce Ajit Sivadasan.
The panelists credited several reasons for gaming’s branding problem. “One of the barriers for brands to enter into gaming is that it’s quite a complex ecosystem. There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach with gaming,” Nance said. “Honestly, that’s quite intimidating for folks, because they don’t want to get it wrong–especially if they haven’t been active in gaming before.”
According to Haddon, one reason for the negative perception is gaming’s perceived kinship with sports betting–an industry that was once considered “low-brow” and downright nefarious. Sivadasan echoed Haddon’s gaming-perception issues, linking parents’ historic disapproval: “Society would say you’re wasting your time with gaming–rather than doing your homework–though research would say that there are very positive benefits.”
So, with stereotypes and scrutiny abound, what’s gaming to do?
For Sivadasan, the key to unlocking positive sentiment is to highlight the industry’s community-building capabilities, citing how Gen Z and Gen Alpha–generations plagued by social isolation and mental health issues–turn to gaming to build connections.
Nance offered two solutions. First, to make the gaming industry more approachable, shift the language, moving from “gamers” to “players.” This democratizes the sector, making it more inviting, and reflects the expansive nature of what constitutes a game: from mini-crosswords to esports. Second, she encouraged the gaming industry to speak the same language as brands and advertisers, leaning on comfortable concepts of viewability, brand lift, and ROI, for instance.
No matter either the perceived root of the problem or the solution, all the panelists agreed that investing in gaming will only continue to command consumer attention. Looking forward two to three years, they predicted gaming would merge seamlessly with live sports, enable brands to create bespoke experiences at scale, and be dominated by immersive experiences. To get there, gaming publishers, as well as agencies and brands with gaming success, need to break down the industry into more accessible and approachable components for brands, so they will better understand the various ways to activate and, ultimately, invest more in the space. With this, brands will score big, driving community, brand affinity, and brand engagement.
