This Thursday, December 10, we organized a special edition of our event Wake Up Your Audience. Following the various health measures and in the impossibility of meeting you during our traditional breakfasts, we now offer our WUYA online live on Twitch and youtube !
For this Wake Up Your Audience dedicated to eSport and gaming, we had the pleasure of welcoming Nicolas Borri, Head Of Marketing at Kellogg's Francia, James Dimmock, Global Influencer & New Touchpoint Manager (Esport & Gaming) at Michelin, Allisson Sarrazin, Business Development and Partnership Manager at ubisoft and Benoit Agard, eSport project manager at Société Générale.
“There is a real difference in Esport and Gaming! ”
To introduce this new webinar, Quentin Gressien and Jérémy Danulot recalled the various lessons of the last WUYA. You will find the replay as well as the various slides in the dedicated article! Jérémy thus reminds us that there is a significant difference between esport and gaming as many platforms are now dedicated to these two phenomena.
“Esports and gaming are a real strategic platform for us”
Nicolas Borri, Head of Marketing at Kellogg's is the first to intervene to give us a history of the various activations carried out by Kellogg's in the fields of esports and gaming.
“We have been investing in esports and gaming for a while now. We launched our Trésor brand in 2017. We were one of the first responders at the time. We started the simplest way to talk about it, with buying media on Twitch. It's the best way to test the ability to reach this very specific audience. We then partnered with the famous French streamer Lutti (Alexandre Delattre).
In 2018, Kellogg's renewed an experiential activation on Twitch where 2 influencers flew a drone live and it was the chat that indicated the actions to be carried out. Then, in 2019 and 2020, a more strategic structuring of the gaming approach was put in place. First in media buying with Trésor but then a massive arrival of Pringles, including partnerships with Riot Games (publisher of League of Legends), Playstation, Xbox and many other brands. Today, gaming is an integral part of the communication strategy and it is in fact the two largest brands in the Kellogg's portfolio that invest in esports and gaming.
“Gaming and video games have become a fundamental trend. I challenge the fact that it is reserved for a young audience. We are talking about a fairly large group, which corresponds well to the targets of Trésor and Pringles in this case, with in fact a core target of 18-35 years old if we count the 2 brands, but which is not only young. With more than 35 million players in France, our target is much wider.
“We have become the world's first virtual tire supplier”
The second speaker is James Dimmock, Global Influencer & New Touchpoint Manager (Esport & Gaming) at Michelin. He starts by saying that he is a car enthusiast and a gamer. So, it is an incredible opportunity to be able to work on these two areas.
We need to try to integrate ourselves into the video game community by putting our expertise at the service of the community. For us, it is not a question of partnership, I want to make it clear. It's about bringing our expertise, our identity, our emotion and our passion for tire development, in order to allow people to be part of this environment, to understand the history of our brand and our products.
We became the world's first virtual tire supplier with esports. We are working on the Grand Tourismo Esport Challenge, certified by the FIA, the biggest global simracing championship that was viewed more than 65 million times in 2019. Our integration into this race series and into the game itself means that on the tire selection screen, you are choosing a Michelin product.”
In 2020, which was an incredibly difficult year for so many people in many ways, we experienced a real acceleration in esports in motorsport and we reimagined our role in the Le Mans 24 Hours, virtually.
A presence on this esport scene has given us real visibility and legitimacy to communicate to our audience horizontally. It allowed us to talk about the Michelin brand and products to people who might not normally be interested in tires, but who see and receive positively the relationships we create. It gave us the opportunity to engage with our consumers.
For us, it was a really exciting opportunity to integrate our motorsport branch, our communication branch and our licensing branch to come together and work together to offer the esports community the opportunity to engage with the Michelin brand. But more than that, it also allowed us, as a lever of influence, to work on exciting events that we would not normally have the opportunity to work with.
“When a brand wants to establish itself in gaming with Ubisoft, we seek to understand its objectives, its targets.”
The third speaker is Allison Sarrazin, Business Development and Partnership Manager at Ubisoft.
Ubisoft is a video game publisher that includes more than 25 licenses including Assassin's Creed, Watch Dog or Rainbow Six Siege. Ubisoft considers itself to be a creator of worlds that allows players to transcribe many emotions.
Allison presents us with a first case study with the collaboration between Assassin's Creed and the sportswear brand Reebok. Products like shoes and sweatshirts were designed around the universe of the latest installment of the famous assassin game. Various assets have been created to promote this collaboration.
In a second case study, MSI purchased several games to offer to consumers of these products. This makes it possible to get people talking about the brand at a key moment: during the release of the last Assassin's Creeds.
Thirdly, Allison tells us that Ubisoft is organizing its own video game competition, including Rainbow Six Siege: The 6 French League sponsored by the Rhinoshield phone case brand. Rhinoshield was able to benefit from visibility on all the assets present on the stream with the presence of the logo on the various overlays as well as on social networks. In addition, Rhinoshield made shells in the image of the game Rainbow Six Siege.
In 2021, Ubisoft will continue the 6 French League and is looking for a partner for the French Rainbow Six team that will participate in the 6 World Cup.
“Our partnership with GamersOrigin is a real partnership, not just sponsorship”
To end this Wake Up Your Audience, the last guest to speak is Benoit Agard, project manager at Société Générale. His presentation starts with congratulations: Société Générale had just won an award for one of its gaming activations “La Détection” created with the streamer Doigby and the Gamers Origin agency.
Société Générale is very active in the sports sector and now in esports. Benoit presented concrete cases carried out in recent months.
The first case presented is the partnership with Gamers Origin. The DNA of Société Générale and its slogan “You are the future” correspond perfectly with esports and gaming.
The development of these two worlds within Société Générale is the result of an partnership of 4 enthusiasts who have set up an in-house start-up in order to offer to position themselves as a sponsor of a team, Gamers Origin, since 2018. Société Générale was thus able to create a training center in the heart of Paris and raise 3 million euros in funds. As Sofyan presented to us at our last event, Gamers Origin is also a communication agency that works with Société Générale on a daily basis. Today, Gamers Origin is a true partner.
Bank cards with the image of LOL characters were proposed but it was really The Detection, a tournament organized on the Fortnite game that got the word out. More than 40k registered for 10k seats and more than 5 million views. The aim? To bring out talents that do not have the visibility of the various influencers/streamers. Following this event, 4 days were signed professional contracts.
Société Générale was also the main partner of zLAN 2020, a multi-gaming competition organized by the streamer Zerator. Beyond simply having a logo present on the screen, La Société Générale sponsored an event “The Mental Calculus Test by SG”, also offered contests on Twitter as well as a video on the esports career of Shemek, a League Of Legends player.
To finish the case presentation, Benoit mentioned an employer brand activation with tournaments offered to students (“The Academy”), in order to make them want to come and work at Société Générale. ©More than 1,000 registered users in total. Internally, a Fortnite tournament was offered to 150,000 employees worldwide. The aim was to make employees and their families experience Société Générale's commitment to esports.
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