The importance of influencer marketing for reaching gamers can’t be overstated. In 2024, the market size for influencer marketing reached $24M USD – nearly double the size of the market just three years earlier. But with so many brands and publishers having cottoned on to the importance of influencer marketing, the issue becomes how to stand out from the crowd.
Live streaming on sites like Twitch offers many unique opportunities to engage new customers, using long-form and highly personalized content to deliver exciting branded experiences. Even better, these streams can then be repurposed into short form content for other social media apps like Instagram and TikTok. Finding creative brand activations via live streaming therefore offers the best chance of capturing users’ attention amidst the flurry of online advertisements, while also showcasing what’s most unique about your product or game.
In this article, we’re looking at some examples of creative influencer marketing campaigns to provide inspiration for your own brand activations. If you’re interested in some more in-depth, personalized advice, check out how Stream Hatchet’s consultants can work with you to create a custom campaign:
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Cosplay and Props Bring Game Worlds to Life
This first approach is particularly useful for game publishers whose titles feature engaging worlds and distinct art styles or characters. Creating real life costumes and props based on elements of a game brings the game world to life and reinforces a transmedia approach to marketing. In other words, this isn’t just a game you’ve released: It’s a universe suited for all kinds of storytelling possibilities, from comics to shows to live performances. Turning a game into reality captivates fans, particularly for long-running franchises. Consider Hacksmith, who turn pop culture weapons into working prototypes (like Samus’s arm cannon from Metroid).
Perhaps the most common approach to this strategy is cosplay – a particularly strong drawcard for fans of anime-themed games (where the cosplay subculture originated). Game publishers can partner with well-known cosplayers like Emiru to design the perfect costume replica of one of their iconic characters, assisting with official permission to use their designs or with art direction and resources. MissMikkaa’s cosplay of 2B from Nier: Automata was a fantastic way to promote the crossover event between Nier: Automata and Naraka: Bladepoint due to both games having an anime aesthetic, and the collaboration itself being an example of transmedia marketing.
Challenges Create Unbelievable, Viral Content
While cosplay and props are great ideas for games with intricate worlds, challenge-type content better suits games with a hardcore player base that want to show off their skills. A slew of challenge-heavy games have captured the attention of live-streaming audiences in recent years, from more straight-forward challenges like Chained Together to the more involved challenges of Souls-likes and ARPGs. Challenges can either reinvigorate older games by adding a new challenge (say, to promote the release of DLC) or be used on launch to showcase the complexity of the game’s mechanics. Naturally, game publishers and brands will want to ignite these challenges by inviting influencers to take part (also giving them a chance to show off their skills).
While simple challenges like speedruns or no-hit runs are standard go-to options, it’s worth thinking outside the box to catch people’s attention. Take Superlouid64’s challenge run of Elden Ring, for example, in which he played the game exclusively using a controller he had constructed out of a banana. This odd gimmick was enough of a hook to reignite passion from the Elden Ring fanbase (who were no doubt exhausted by the flood of regular challenge runs). Keep in mind that challenges don’t have to be solo affairs: These challenges can catch on as trends, with streamers tasking their friends to also complete the challenge (and a subsequent wave of streamers jumping on the bandwagon to generate views).
Turning Streams into Events Elevates the Live Streaming Medium
For games that have both in-depth worlds AND feature technically challenging gameplay, a hybrid approach to brand activations can work even better. These kinds of combos create “event viewing” for streamers, justifying higher production value and greater amounts of hype. This might mean set dressing, professional trailers, promoting the event weeks ahead of schedule, and even cameos. All of these elements make these “event streams” stand out from the regular schedule of more relaxed streams.
No one does event streaming better than Kai Cenat, who has made a name for himself with marathon streams in which he completes difficult games. For a streamer who typically generates millions of hours watched from IRL content alone, fans get extra excited when he decides to devote his time to a particular video game. While there are many examples, Kai Cenat’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice marathon was one of the first to combine multiple influencer marketing elements to create event viewing. A fully produced trailer added an air of prestige to the event, combined with full set dressing and cosplay as the game’s protagonist, and all of this layered on top of the marathon stream challenge.
Creator Tournaments Tap Into Diverse Audiences
Taking this event streaming logic one step further, game publishers and brands can team up to produce even bigger events that group together multiple streamers in much-anticipated collaborations. These collaborations cross-pollinate different streamers’ audiences, which not only means a larger target audience for the publisher or brand, but also the potential for streamers to grow their fan base as well. For this reason, streamers are even more likely to want to participate, putting the publisher/brand in the position to offer something more than just money. Of course, this means brands have to be extra selective with which streamers they choose to partner with – a task made easier with something like Stream Hatchet’s AI Discovery tool.
Minecraft is the perfect game for this type of brand activation, featuring an expansive, adaptable world and instantly recognizable IP. The publishers leveraged their large base of Minecraft content streamers to source 40 streamers who battled it out in The Ender Cup (a celebration of Minecraft’s 15th anniversary). These types of events are important for solidifying the importance of games in gaming in online culture by creating an atmosphere of “everyone’s playing this”. No doubt many friend groups created their own mini-tournaments off the back of The Ender Cup’s success. While this particular event was competitive, creator-led events can also be collaborative such as k4sen’s Final Fantasy XIV collaboration in which a group of beginner players mounted an assault against some of the game’s toughest bosses.
Non-gaming Events Switch Up Traditional Gaming Content
Earlier, we mentioned the idea of thinking beyond the game itself to develop a transmedia approach to promotion. Going even further afield, why not develop a non-gaming method to promote one’s game while still leveraging the live-streaming format? Getting streamers out of the gaming chair can be a welcome switch-up for fans, pushing their favourite content creator into an unexpected situation. IRL events also tend to get more hype for going against the grain, with creator-led events performing more strongly than ever.
This might have been MapleStory’s incentive for sponsoring Ludwig’s Creator Dodgeball event: A massively collaborative sporting tournament between influencers from various live-streaming platforms (and even podcasts). Although these kinds of events require more props, filming equipment, organization and so forth, this high investment pays off with the larger audience they can pull together. These events could get more ambitious in the future, now that non-gaming events have a proven track record of success.
The examples provided here are just a taste of some of the more interesting activations out there. The key to successful branded activations is two-way communication between influencers and sponsors: Streamers know their fanbase and what they’ll respond to, so see how you can tune your campaign ideas to their audience knowledge. Finding the middle ground between your needs as a sponsor and the streamer’s popular content will lead to better sentiment around your brand activation.
Keeping abreast of the latest creative activations is difficult without an expert to guide you and give advice. To discuss creative influencer marketing strategies for your brand or game, have a chat with us today:
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