THE FUTURE OF GAMING, ETHICS AND ADVERTISING
The Cannes Lions Festival, which since 1954 has been driving an international standard for creativity and impact in brand marketing, took place from June 19-23, 2022. This article reflects on insights from four sessions specifically related to gaming, exploring the transformational shift in the way brands are engaging with audiences in dynamic digital experiences.
Good News for Brands: Gamers are the Most Participatory Audiences in the World
With over 3.2 billion gamers in the world (The Economist, 2022), approximately 4 in every 10 people are gaming. For GenZ, this number is even greater, with 8 out of every 10 playing games (NewZoo, 2021).
“66% of gamers are playing for social experiences, making games the biggest social gathering spaces to meet and make friends in a very real way,” said Johanna Faries, General Manager of Call of Duty at Activision Blizzard, during her keynote at the Cannes Lions.
This is a significant statistic as the social dynamic of gaming and active participatory behaviour is like none other in the technology and entertainment sphere. Gamers are the most vocal and engaged audiences in the world, which is good news for brands.
For example, Call of Duty (COD) releases new content each fall and relies on over 200 influencers to share their product with hundreds of millions of followers to find and report bugs. This authentic engagement with influencers builds community trust, promotes COD’s annual releases, and taps into the very fabric of gaming culture to reach a mass audience. As a result of these tactics, COD has been the #1 best-selling video game franchise in the US for the last 15 years.
These numbers have not gone unnoticed by third-party brands now increasingly targeting the gaming market.
Social Activations Come with Social Expectations: Gamers Are Holding Brands Accountable
As brands tap into gaming more frequently, their power to influence at scale is growing. Brands leverage the dopamine-pumping and habit-inducing nature of games to boost their bottom line.
At the same time, businesses are increasingly held accountable for their impact on society, particularly around the topics of mental health, environmental sustainability, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) as GenZ and Millennials are the greatest advocates for positive social change. Their virtual worlds are just as much home as their real ones, resulting in greater activism for and against brands that venture into digital domains.
Where brands get this right, the impact is enormous. Demonstrating this, four campaigns were highlighted during the PR Awards tour and Gaming Insights Sessions at the Cannes Lions:
Enfant Bleu x Fortnite
Enfant Bleu, a Youth Protection Organization, created an avatar in Fortnite to talk and detect maltreatment using in-game chats which resulted in 1200 kids being helped. Streamers and influencers, trusted sources, were engaged to speak to children about Enfant Bleu on channels their parents wouldn’t be watching. $800M value in PR was organically achieved through this campaign to open a dialogue around child abuse. Enfant Bleu was a character played by actual volunteers 24/7 who would speak with kids who needed help
Xbox 'Beyond Generations '
XBox launched 'Beyond Generations' to highlight the relationship-building potential of games and encourage younger people to start gaming with older family members, combatting isolation and loneliness.
Fighting to Remember, Zikaron Baslon, by McCann Tel Aviv
Online gaming pauses for nothing, so Zikaron Basalon set out to bring National Holocaust Memorial directly to gaming platforms. The organisation tapped into Israel’s top gamers to invite their 3.5m followers to watch them play the world’s most popular WW2 game- Call of Duty®: WWII, but this time featuring conversations with Holocaust survivors with real stories to tell about real places featured in the game.
Anti-Bullying- Fortnite + Samsung
Kids who can’t afford skins in Fortnite are called defaults because they play with the default character. This bullying has been so widespread, that it’s even become a genre on YouTube.
So Samsung released a new Fortnite Skin called The Glow. Unlike other skins, the skin was available to all Samsung Galaxy owners for free. The campaign was covered by Fortnite’s biggest influencers who donated their Glow Skin to default players during live streams, reaching millions of players, and encouraging everyone to do the same. The campaign resulted in $50M in earned media, +290% search on Google, and 74K social interactions with 97% positive feedback.
Games are a Blue Ocean for Brand Engagement: Yet Brands Are Still Allocating Less Than 5% of Their Ad Dollars to Games
Each year brands are investing $1.03bn on in-game advertising, a number that is expected to grow to $2.34bn in 2026, according to Cannes Lions Intelligence on Gaming. In the US, this is still less than 5% of ad budgets, reports a study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
These are micro numbers in the grand scale of the $781bn in global ad spend in 2023, indicating that while the popularity of gaming is growing, ad spend is not keeping pace with one of the greatest commercial opportunities of all time.
Beyond Play: Gaming is The Social Fabric of Our Time
For GenZ however, we’ve learned that games go beyond play. Games are more than entertainment, and they are far more than social media. They are an evolution of the two, where Gen Z are spending 11 hours each week (Deloitte Report on Gaming, 2022) hanging out with their friends, making new friends, and in turn being shaped by the medium in which they exist as digital beings.
As the gaming sessions draw to a close, the Cannes Lions Gaming Intelligence leaves us with four insights to advertise in games:
Know your brand story: Have a clear understanding of your brand narrative and which games and gaming communities are most aligned with your goals
Understand your players: Consider why gamers engage in particular environments. To compete? Make new friends?
Enhance the experience: Games are grounded in communities and identity. Add value to the player experience. Gamers appreciate brands that understand their needs and improve the experience
Break the old paradigm: Successful brands will break the paradigm of what it means to market through gaming. The traditional constructs of awareness through reach and frequency won't work
These deep insights and touching stories that the Cannes Lions are recognizing highlight the importance of the societal impact of advertising campaigns. Culture is not transactional, so advertising and PR in gaming cannot be either. The time of paid reach to preach is long gone, and in-game advertising that has a positive impact on the world is here to stay.
