Some Gaming highlights - Webby Awards

This week I've judged a few Gaming entries for the The Webby Awards . And I might have written too much. At least you know it’s not chat GPT.?

But before Webby's… It would be strange to not acknowledge the layoffs affecting gaming companies at a brutal scale. If you are one of the thousands that were laid off since the year has started, my best wishes go to you. Take a deep breath. Post on LinkedIn. Try to ignore the emotional response to rejections—they are mostly done by an AI tracker that has no emotions at all. And activate your network. <3

Since I have your attention, and perhaps you are interested in Gaming but never really worked in Gaming, let me talk quickly about some definitions:

- Console - PS, Xbox, PC, Switch…. Big brands, big titles, big tickets —?taking community aside, the main strategy here is brand building via awareness. Generate desire and sell devices and new games. Although gamers are a more sophisticated audience when they are deciding to spend ￡400, the marketing perspective is quite similar to other brands and products.

- Mobile Games - Those games you have on your phone and play whenever you have some idle time. (Very simplified and shallow view of the multitude of genres, motivations and audiences). Here the advertisers are the Publishers or the Developers themselves.

And there are mainly 2 kinds of businesses: a) the ones that build games for players, invest in community, high quality gameplays, in-game events, IPs, R&D, etc—usually a free app with ads integrated to play, and/or, in-app purchases; and b) the ones that build for profit-only, that have unstable tech, are less connected to the gamer’s desires, and that are essentially a machine created to capture eyeballs. These advertisers tip the market scale because they will do whatever it takes to acquire players, and because they are so many, they really impact the overall perception of the industry. Don't all these ads look kind of the same?

As you can see, these are different businesses altogether. Which takes us to different definitions of gamers. At Meta we conducted several studies and meta-analysis and gathered powerful learnings like this: Everybody is a gamer. 86% of internet users have played at least one mobile game. So, if you still have the image of the teenager eating pizza in the basement, forget about it. Here is a new one: Your mom likely plays on her phone while pooping. (Yes… I did this. Your mom poops and she is a gamer. Get over it.)

So now, you have the first slide of a thousand in a gaming deck. Ha!

Back to the Webby’s highlights. I was hoping to see more gaming cases (especially in the mobile games category). But guess what? The cases (at least the ones I saw) were from brands leveraging gaming partnerships, or doing in-game activations, and not for the actual games. Not wrong AT ALL, but so limited. IMO, it’s an opportunity for gaming companies to build stronger creative and get some exposure on the global awards stage. Cannes has its own Entertainment Lions category, btw.?

And the impending end of the cookie world demands gaming companies to learn new tricks and hopefully leverage creativity in new ways. Once targeting gets fully into the inevitable blind-automated form, the most important lever these advertisers have to connect with players, is their creativity. And what a space to play! Gaming audiences LOVE stories, and yet, we see that poor butler shower in lava all the time.?

I am super aware that when you are operating a business looking at ROAS on an excel sheet, celebrating creativity with an advertising award (and paying for fees and travels) can be absolutely irrelevant. But remember, less signals require more creativity. And undeniably, awards is one of creativity’s playground. It shouldn’t be a goal to win, but a good goal is to be part of it. Imagine the power of a brand that smashes it at CES, GDC, Webby’s and Cannes??

With all that said, let me share a few cases and comments:

1) Winner, winner, chicken dinner. It’s so refreshing to see an activation that tries to break the sameness in the category. And the betting industry is somehow part of the games industry--but behave very differently. I’m not going into that for now. But check this one out. A casino app built a pop-up chicken sandwich shop, and even got some chickens to talk about it: Watch the case.

2) Long COVID mode. This is such a fantastic execution of a good idea, but unfortunately advertisers are more interested in saying that ZERO media dollars were spent, instead of explaining how they created this gameplay partnership with the game developers (for free?). Especially because the client is “Long COVID Europe” and strangely they have budget to hire an agency. Anyway… On this one your character is affected by Long Covid, and you get to play Minecraft and other games in a different way. It’s all super niched, but I love that at least they are focusing on the gamer’s experience and fun. Watch the case.

3) Ultimate road trips on the Metaverse. Shell had a brilliant idea and execution in Fortnite. Would be even better if it didn’t come from Shell. But my climate consciousness aside, this is created and built by people that really understand the game and the player dynamics. Normally, when non-gaming brands decide to go into gaming or metaverse, it usually screams “advertising”. In this case the execution and the promotion is really authentic and well done. Watch the case.

4) The Watch - A community watch on Call of Duty to punish racist players. Btw, hate, racism and sexism in gaming are old debates. Old issues that need to be solved. This strategy of “generating content that is bad PR for politicians or corporations, to force a reaction” is pretty nice when the problems have real impact on people, and changes are made. Absolutely love that it came from Melanin Gamers - a DEI consultancy. IMO, it should be a platform, beyond CoD, and beyond race. But it’s nice anyway to see it coming to life. Watch the case.

I’ll make sure to bring some more in case I bump into something interesting.?

And embrace these takeaways: build for people, be creative to relate to people and protect players (did I say they are people?).?Thanks for reading!