Finding a Brand’s Place in Cyberspace with We Are Social

Once dismissed as an insular, anti-social activity, gaming now rules the online social roost, with gaming and game-adjacent spaces uniting vast numbers of people through play -  particularly among Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha. 

For a brand trying to penetrate this space, it can seem overwhelming. How do you make sure your brand doesn’t come across as ingratiating or out of touch? How do you navigate the particular codes and values of each specific gaming environment? But where some see obstacles, We Are Social sees opportunity.

Between 2015 and 2022, the number of gamers in the world rose from approximately two to three billion. And this trend definitely skews younger, with Gen Z clocking in at seven hours and 20 minutes of playtime a week - half an hour more than millennials, and three hours more than Gen X. 

“Young people are spending hours and hours at a time in these immersive experiences, and the opportunity for brands is to get in front of them,” says We Are Social Sydney CEO Suzie Shaw. “And while they're gaming, they're not watching television, or doing the many other things that offer media opportunities for brands.”

And when it comes to maximising that opportunity, Suzie is quick to add that the answer will vary from game to game - but that, at its heart, the process of appealing to Gen Z means listening to them, and taking them seriously. “This is an extremely literate and online generation, and they can tell straight away when a brand isn’t adding value to their lives. That starts with listening to them.”

The process of advertising in a gaming space, then, is the process of appealing to Gen Z - in one of the most unpredictable, and interactive contexts possible. And yet, it’s precisely here where We Are Social has thrived. LBB’s Delmar Terblanche spoke with Suzie alongside ECD Ben Clare and senior strategist Zach Rippon to find out just how they managed it.

L-R: Suzie Shaw, Ben Clare, Zach Rippon

LBB> Let’s begin with the obvious: why are you focusing so much on gaming?

Suzie> We Are Social globally has identified gaming as a growth area because, as we see it, it's the next frontier of social. It’s not new news that gaming is big, but I think what we've seen grow, and has really come into sharp focus for us, is that it is where people are increasingly socialising. 

Zach> And I think there are the immediate examples that you think of the big, famous multiplayer games where they are immediately and obviously social spaces, but I think with Twitch, YouTube, and the general culture and conversation around games - for instance, talking to friends on discord, or on a subreddit, or in a Twitter space - those media channels mean that even if you are playing a single player game, there is still that social culture around it as well. There is a huge culture of interactivity driving all these spaces.

Suzie> We're a socially-led creative agency. So, you know, we help brands do creative things in environments that are often social spaces where audiences are gathering, spending time, and talking to each other. And the reason socially-led is good is because socially led campaigns tend to get a bit more traction. So it's just an opportunity to help brands activate themselves in a space where you can get people talking about the brand, you can earn reach, you can engage audiences in a more immersive way.

LBB> I understand you’ve got a dedicated ‘gaming squad’ in We Are Social. Tell me about that.

Suzie> We're a network of 1200 people across 16 offices. And when we decided to really pursue gaming as a growth area for the business, we felt we needed to put experts at the heart of our efforts. 

But equally, we didn't want to create a separate practice, because we believe gaming is central to social and it's a growth area. We wanted everyone in the business to lean in, understand it. So we felt we needed champions who could help advocate for gaming, keep it top of mind and educate those around them. So we put a call out to the network to see who was an expert and who was passionate about gaming, and we auditioned, essentially, these volunteers, and selected I think, the 16 or 18, across the network. They meet regularly to help prepare responses to briefs, prepare materials to help upskill the rest of the team, and create thought leadership.

LBB> Did the importance of gaming as a social space change in the wake of Covid? 

Ben> Historically, gaming has, unfairly or otherwise, been stereotyped as antisocial or quite isolating, and I think post-COVID, or throughout COVID, we saw that it's definitely not the case. It's not just a place that people go to entertain themselves. It’s a place to facilitate those social connections that have been otherwise lost - connections quite literally across the world. And I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon, either.

LBB> So I'd be correct in saying that you see this very much as a long term trend?

Suzie> Yeah. And I think two things have coalesced to make it a long term trend. First, the technology is enabling this in a way that it didn't used to - gaming didn't used to be connected and online, and they weren't all these tools that enable people to connect with each other. But there's also the consumer behaviour that is just increasingly becoming aligned to meeting and socialising online. Younger audiences are just increasingly comfortable socialising in this way - it's native to them. That's how they've grown up and teleconnect. That's how they meet people.

LBB> In your campaigns you’ve done such an impressive job of speaking the language of those younger audiences, of seeming completely in touch with them. How do you get it so right?

Zach> I think there's a few parts. First, by the nature of who works here, we just have a lot of gamers and young people, so we just have the specialism. We have the people that play every day. But more to the point, you really need to take the time to properly understand the specific audience, the specific game; how they would play that game, what are the behaviours? When do you play that game? How do people work, communicat? We'll talk about that specific game, because every game is different, as is the language that you use, the culture around it, the really specific terminology. If you try and get into a gaming space without properly thinking about that individual game as its own unique set of behaviours and conventions, then you'll miss the mark.

Suzie> Twitch and Activision are clients, so we're actively working with communities. I think one of the things you have to understand is, people who play games often see themselves as a community. And for brands to be welcomed in their space, you have to get out of the way of gameplay or, and, or enhance it. Don't get in the way of them being able to do what they want to do, which is play well together. So sometimes that might mean working with creators who are going to represent you and advocate for you. And that's what will help shepherd the brand into the space. And I think all that comes down to starting with some really heavy insight generation.

It is very different from traditional advertising in that if you're making an ad for TV, you make one ad and it's going to play out in every TV slot that you buy. Whereas here, I think what we're seeing is you need to tailor it very specifically to the environment and the context. But like all good contextual advertising, if you get that right, you'll reap the benefits.

Ben> It's so tempting for brands to just jump in headfirst. But you’ve got to have your story straight. For us, we're benefited by the fact that we've got this global gaming squad that you can sort of tap into the local gaming squad, here in the Sydney office.

Suzie> The other thing is collaboration with creators. Creators are often the gatekeepers of these environments, and if they are seen to be advocating for the brand and supporting the brand's presence, it can go a long way to getting community outside and that's the same it's true in gaming but it's the same in other environments you know, greatest creators are very powerful you know, the new school publishers and they have a lot of lot of power.

LBB> How do you address the fact that different gaming spaces and demographics might have very different value sets from one another when planning your activations?

Suzie> A big step is doing due diligence and thinking these things through, because it's interactive, and you can't completely plan how an activation is going to unfold or how the community is going to respond. We wouldn't be doing our job unless we did explore what his brand safety looked like for any given brand in any given gaming environment, and ask ourselves ‘what are the risks and how do we mitigate them?’ 

Zach>  I think brands do need to come into gaming knowing that they have to relinquish some control. Because when you put your brand in those spaces, it's interactive - it's not passive. People can play with your assets and do things. So to that point, you need to really think about what you're doing, and do all the planning to make sure and choose the right environments. For instance, some more intense war games, for the vast majority of brands, are probably not brand-safe environments, just by the nature of the content that you're activating. But for the right brand, while you're trying to reach that audience, it can work. So it's just going to find the right brand fit.

LBB> I feel like we've spoken around creative a bunch. What sources of inspiration do you use?

Ben> We try to monitor the social spaces - keeping an eye on what people on Reddit, or the Discord servers, or on Twitter are saying about a particular game or style of gameplay - there’s just a lot to draw from in terms of knowing what the community is actually saying or how they feel. And then we’ve also got the newsroom, which is just a daily discourse that we have here in We Are Social. A team of 10 editors kind of get together every single morning, and just scour the internet, basically, for anything that is emerging across the worlds of entertainment, music, gaming - try and keep our fingers on the pulse of the conversation.

LBB>People talk a lot about the gamification of social media. How transferable are the lessons of advertising in video games to advertising in other online social spaces?

Suzie> I am going to answer with a slight inversion and say I think the skills of advertising in other online social spaces were quite similar to the skills of activating brands well in gaming - and that's why we're leaning into it. I think you're trying to activate communities, rather than it being one to one communication or that sort of thing.

Ben> There’s a real opportunity to it - to make audiences feel like the brand is close to them. If you think about the gameplay experience, the audience is extremely focused on the screen, extremely receptive - taking in every single bit of information. You run a risk, sure, but what an opportunity!