Success Story: #AirAsiaEsports - How AirAsia Allstars Created Internal And External Awareness On Esports

Hello everyone! :)

Recently, I was encouraged to share this unique success story on LinkedIn by many esports industry leaders whom I met at the Esports BAR, an annual B2B Esports Conference in Cannes, France, which was attended by 300 esports industry leaders and delegates from 40+ countries.

I was invited as a Panel Speaker to share on our AirAsia Esports journey!

1) Surprising & Unconventional Approach

Many were surprised at AirAsia's approach in esports, from an angle unheard of before to most of them. They are sharing AirAsia Esports as a successful case study to the big corporate companies and organisations in USA and Europe. What an honour! This was unexpected and it is truly humbling for us, as we're quite new to esports.

Apparently, most non-endemic brands usually require a longer time to enter esports due to lack of understanding by their senior management. Some may take up to 2 years due to their company's budget cycle (1 year to educate; and by the time they understand, another 1 year to get budget approval).

For AirAsia, we only took a few months instead of 2 years to make our foray into esports, and our Branding team was quick to react - we recently sponsored Mineski Pro Dota 2 Esports Team, one of the best Dota 2 teams in Asean and globally.

This is our story:

2) How It All Started

One fine day in June, I received a random message from one of our Allstar Nas Alyan, who said that Tony Fernandes, Co-Founder and Group CEO of AirAsia, knows about 'esports' and 'Twitch'. Me be like "What on earth is esports?" and isn't "twitch" about twitching your eyes?? Haha. I was curious and decided to do some investigative research on the net.

After googling both key words 'esports' and twitch', little did I know. My oh my. I was amazed and #mindblown! Didn't know that Amazon bought Twitch for close to US$1 Billion back in Year 2011! Must have been a really important acquisition. Wait, where have I been??

The few words that caught my attention were: Millennials and Generation Z Digital Natives, spectator sport (eyeballs), insane prize pool (USD24million for The International (TI7) Dota 2; 90% of that money is crowdfunded!), approximately 100Million monthly viewers for League of Legends. All this while, I thought it's only for fun! I didn't know an industry existed all along.

It helped that Tony Fernandes was exposed to esports at an earlier stage thanks to his son, Stephen:

3) Agility & Speed

Our foray into esports was accelerated due to these key important factors:

3.a) Collaborative Digital Engagement With Allstars Via Workplace by Facebook

Workplace is a collaborative platform developed by Facebook; used to communicate with our colleagues and offers the social networks features in a corporate environment.

Allstar Siew Fei, coincidentally, created an online discussion group on Workplace by Facebook, named - AirAsia Esports Channel to crowdsource for feedback on this emerging digital sport. The rest, as they say, is history. Let’s roll out!

3.b) Internal Branding To Drive Esports Awareness

We approached esports from an internal branding perspective by getting help from our AirAsia Allstars (AirAsia employees), to create esports awareness to our C-Suite executives, senior management, branding and marketing teams, by giving them customised esports jerseys personalised with their own names.

3.c) Support & Endorsement From Senior Leadership

AirAsia's Co-Founders, Tony Fernandes and Datuk Kamarudin Meranun played a big role. Both of them were extremely supportive on our esports initiative and even shared on their social media channels:

100+ C-Suite Executives, Senior Management, Branding and Marketing teams received their customised jerseys, personalised with their names:

4) Embrace. Digital. Transformation

• Esports - The sport of the Digital Generation
• AirAsia - Transforming into a Digital Company
• As we transform into a Digital Company, we must engage our audiences (Millennials and Generation Z Digital Natives) on the digital platforms they're on (non-traditional)

5) AirAsia Esports - 3 Key Pillars

AirAsia got involved in esports for three main reasons below:

• Employee Engagement
• Employer Branding
• Support The Esports Ecosystem

I could go on typing, but I'd rather let the slides and videos share a more compelling story.

6) AirAsia Esports deck (download it for free): Click HERE

Note: This LinkedIn article is just the tip of the iceberg. You will gain more insights and understanding on the depth of esports by going through the presentation. As we went on-ground conducting market research - by engaging the esports community and industry leaders since June 2017.

• This was the presentation that esports industry leaders would like to share with non-endemic brands in USA and Europe. Please download the deck as it looks pixelated on Slideshare:

7) YouTube: On-Ground Esports Market Research In 2017

8) Feedback By Esports Industry Leaders

a) Ralf Reichert, Global President & CEO of ESL: Click here

b) Esports BAR organisers: Click here / Click here

c) QPR Queens Park Rangers Football Club shareholder: Click here

d) Andreas Schicker, Head of Esports for Logitech G: Click here

e) Daniela Russell, Right Formula, award winning London sports marketing agency(handling Logitech G campaigns): Click here

f) Can Yang, Co-Founder, Team MVP South Korea: Click here

g) Joe Hills, Founder, LFG Esports Agency based in United Kingdom: Click here

h) Andrei Mikheev from UCC, Russia: Click here

i) Nasim, agency for elite talent from music, film, television, esports: Click here

9) Advice To Corporate Companies Interested To Enter Esports

• Please be a fan first and do lots of research
• Engage with the esports community and esports industry leaders (our AirAsia Allstars went through many chit-chat coffee sessions, weekend sacrifices, volunteering to help on AirAsia Allstars Esports Club after 6pm work hours).

10) Thank You & Appreciation

This whole initiative would not have been made possible without the involvement of 3 key parties:

• AirAsia Co-Founders: Tony Fernandes and Datuk Kamarudin Meranun
• AirAsia Allstars: There are many who volunteered their precious time to make this initiative happen successfully
• The Esports Community and Esports Industry Leaders: Too many to mention but each was important for us to meet, in order to effectively understand the esports space better.

Note: There's no Esports Department in AirAsia. This was a self-driven initiative by our AirAsia Allstars, without any prior instruction from management. We lived our Allstar Values, to #makeithappen, #daretodream, #ONEAirAsia.

Thanks for reading and the support from AirAsia Allstars.

Best regards,

Allan Phang,

Allstars Engagement & Internal Branding

AirAsia People and Culture

Esports Evangelist