5 common methods of e-sports marketing!

EDG is the champion!

In the League of Legends S11 Global Finals, the EDG team from the Chinese division successfully defeated the DK team from South Korea and won the 2021 League of Legends Global Finals championship. From being underdogs to making a comeback and breaking through, the news of EDG's championship quickly spread across the entire Internet, triggering a nationwide carnival.

During this period, the topic #EGD wins the championship# topped the hot search list for 6 hours, the reading volume of related topics reached 3.08 billion, and the discussion volume exceeded 3.93w. Before and after the event, related topics were listed on 80 Weibo hot searches in total.

From winning world championships to e-sports being included in the Asian Games, this emerging youth industry is slowly becoming mainstream. The victory of S11 not only pushed Chinese e-sports onto the world stage, but also provided a development direction for brand e-sports marketing .

Through S11’s event sponsorship and brand marketing methods, we have tried to sort out five common methods of e-sports marketing, hoping to provide some reference for the brand’s future e-sports marketing (such as the upcoming highlights KPL King of Glory Professional League and League of Legends Mobile Weibo Cup).

Method 1: Long-term and deep cultivation to create a "deep space"

For many brands, e-sports marketing is still a new field that needs to be developed, but brands that enter the market early have already won at the starting line in terms of educating users and younger transformation. Breaking-edge cooperation between brands and the e-sports field cannot be achieved overnight. It requires not only unique vision and foresight, but also long-term exploration and experimentation.

The future development of the e-sports industry is still on the fast track. For most brands, it may not be too late to enter the market at this time.

In 2017, Mercedes-Benz put forward the marketing slogan "Fearlessness creates heroes". Coincidentally, this "born fearless" spirit cleverly sparked sparks with e-sports. Since then, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would sponsor LPL throughout the S7 season and become the chief partner of LPL, thus starting the brand's development in the e-sports field.

2021 is the fifth year of cooperation between Mercedes-Benz and League of Legends. Just like the slogan of the Chinese division this year - "Breakdown before construction", Mercedes-Benz has continuously invested in e-sports marketing for five years, using new marketing methods to drive the growth of sales of its young models.

On the day of the finals, if we search for keywords such as "S11 live broadcast", "S11 finals", "S11 schedule" on Weibo, we will see Mercedes-Benz content displayed on the first screen. Mercedes-Benz has strengthened the connection between the brand and e-sports by deeply cultivating the topic of #首号界地地#, associating keywords, triggering interactive comments, connecting the brand and users on Weibo, and focusing on the e-sports events themselves.

Mercedes-Benz uses e-sports and social platforms as its entry point, and through the communication methods and language of e-sports players, it has achieved circle dissemination of customized content.

Method 2: Sponsorship and cooperation to improve "marketing value"

E-sports events and e-sports teams are the largest "marketing resources" in the e-sports field, and often have extremely high visibility and commercial value.

Audiences who follow League of Legends events should be impressed by the "old man" who is full of technology. Starting from the S8 season, KFC announced its sponsorship of League of Legends and became a partner of League of Legends. The virtual image "Colonel KI" came into being and became a new carrier for KFC to leverage the power of e-sports.

From its debut and upgrade to the addition of AI and the Metaverse, Colonel KI has built a "new bridge" between the century-old brand and modern users. When users search for keywords such as "fried chicken" and "Colonel KI" on Weibo, we can see the content extended by KFC based on its cooperative image.

Of course, KFC’s e-sports marketing this time does not stop there. Its key topic #S11 High Energy Moments# also carries a large number of high-energy highlights of the competition. For e-sports enthusiasts, watching the game scenes and highlights and eating a KFC by the way seems just right.

Through various means, KFC and Weibo adapted to consumers' behaviors and habits during viewing, deeply explored the scenarios of users watching e-sports events, and completed the diversified exploration of brand image.

This year's S11, TCL is undoubtedly one of the winners. As a well-known domestic home appliance technology company, TCL became the official partner of LPL in February this year and became the strategic partner of EDG team in March. EDG's victory not only enabled TCL products to break through the circle, but also increased the influence of brand culture among young groups.

If cooperation with teams and events is the foundation of TCL's e-sports marketing, then cooperation with social platforms has become the "vanguard" for increasing the brand's voice.

During the S11 season, when we opened Weibo, we could see that TCL supported the team through topics such as #EDG advances to the finals#, #EDG's fancy support is amazing#, and #EDG wins the championship and TCL rewards 3 million#. The brand was able to fully reach the young user group through the influence of the team and increase the popularity of its own e-sports related products.

The core of e-sports marketing is to continuously bring fresh experiences to consumers by understanding and feeling the interests of young users. Through the cooperation between brands and modern social platforms, KFC and TCL have been constantly experimenting and making breakthroughs in content on Weibo, allowing us to see the value and prospects of e-sports marketing for brands.

Method 3: Deep digging and looking for "e-sports scenes"

For brands, seizing the consumer market is the core goal of marketing. How to make the product usage scenarios resonate and overlap with the consumer groups is the key to the brand's e-sports marketing. For brands outside the e-sports industry, cross-border creation of usage scenarios in the e-sports field is one of the important methods of brand e-sports marketing.

Among the partners of S11 this time, there is a new face - Lancome. As an internationally renowned beauty brand, Lancôme has begun to penetrate into young consumer groups through e-sports. According to data from Crawley, beauty and e-sports have highly overlapping audience groups, and the overlap is further increasing, which creates possibilities for cooperation between beauty brands and the e-sports field.

During the event, Lancôme launched the Skin Suit Edition of the Little Black Bottle. Through the concept of "dual-channel true repair", it organically combined the product's efficacy with the offensive and defensive skills of the game characters. Through the e-sports users' habit of staying up late, it refined the product's usage scenarios in the e-sports community and completed the linkage at the IP content level.

From the exposure of topics in the warm-up period to the hot searches and promotions during the outbreak period, Lancome finally completed the scene transformation of e-sports traffic during the event stage.

At the same time, not only the beauty industry, but also the traditional hotel industry is also creating a suitable "e-sports scene". E-sports hotel viewing and offline e-sports social networking have become new marketing footholds. In this S11 season, Meituan took advantage of the opportunity to market e-sports hotels, bringing new space for e-sports marketing.

The cooperation between brands and e-sports is no longer a simple "1+1 model" or mere exposure, but more about in-depth exploration of the scenes and interests and habits of young people. The "e-sports scene" of segmented brands can help brands break through the simple content output and "OEM" cooperation mode, and promote the advancement and development of the basic industry itself through deep integration and exploration with social platforms.

Method 4: IP co-branding to create customized e-sports models

For e-sports users, e-sports does not only stay at the two levels of "watching games" and "playing games", it is more like a recognition of a culture and lifestyle, affecting young people's consumption habits at all levels. This accelerates the efficient empowerment of e-sports IP to brand culture and brand image.

By leveraging game IPs that are familiar to young people today, brands can be provided with an opportunity to get in close contact with players. It can also help brands establish connections with players on an emotional level through users' existing knowledge of the game, ultimately achieving consumer conversion and secondary dissemination.

In 2019, on the eve of the launch of S9, Riot Games announced that it had signed a contract with OPPO as the exclusive global smartphone partner of League of Legends, and the partnership between the two parties will last until 2024.

Subsequently, OPPO used various design elements from the game to launch limited-edition co-branded products in 2020 that meet the aesthetic and functional needs of young people, and seized the consumer market of e-sports users by combining with e-sports content.

During this year's S11, in addition to combining hot topics on Weibo and interacting with e-sports users by "setting flags", OPPO also delivered customized materials for EDG's championship event to achieve dissemination to specific circles.

Method 5: Mildly leverage the trend and conduct “gentle” marketing

Every large-scale event will trigger a new round of discussion. For brands, participating in user topic discussions and taking advantage of the e-sports craze can subtly expose products and is also a very cost-effective marketing option.

Recently, AMX created a customized brand video #对线你的可能# on Weibo for the e-sports community, leveraging the opportunity to convey the brand concept of "unloading burdens and creating unlimited possibilities" to young people. Through the hot topics of e-sports, we help brands establish connections with players on an emotional level, and ultimately achieve consumer conversion and secondary dissemination.

This is not the first time AMX has leveraged e-sports for marketing. In the second quarter, AMX created a "fan-gathering" marketing campaign that spanned both online and offline during the JDG team's fourth anniversary celebration. During the 618 shopping festival, AMX combined the characteristics of the players of the TES and JDG teams, combined product features with e-sports "jargon", and staged the brand's "dry humor", which resonated with young users.

By cleverly leveraging the trend and operating it, AMX provides brands with new e-sports marketing ideas and promotion directions.

Matching social marketing with e-sports elements

Deepening value, event cooperation, scene creation, IP shaping, and topic leveraging, the diversified and differentiated presentation forms ultimately cannot be separated from social amplification.

With the development of mobile Internet, the characteristics of contemporary youth circle culture have gradually become prominent, and young people with the same interests and hobbies can quickly gather together. Social platforms have built new content outlets and social channels for e-sports users, becoming a new value space for e-sports marketing.

As the first frontier for obtaining e-sports event content and social discussions, Weibo became the official voice channel and a hub for connecting fans during the S11 event.

From the voices of clubs and professional players to the "national" discussions among fan users, while helping e-sports events to complete secondary dissemination, it has also successfully opened up a new marketing field among "brand-event-user".

As the commercial potential of e-sports is gradually discovered, we look forward to more brands delving into the e-sports market, grasping users' consumption habits through social platforms, and using e-sports, youthful and entertaining marketing methods to disseminate value, bringing new possibilities for e-sports marketing.

Author: TopKlout

Source: TopKlout