Creating LevelUp OAC: A Gamer-First Marketing Solution

According to gaming analytics firm Newzoo, the number of people globally who play video games grew from 2.03 billion in 2015 to 2.96 billion last year. Whilst not as established as other forms of media, gaming has grown into an entertainment juggernaut in the increasingly competitive battle for the general public’s attention. This is something that creative agencies and media companies, like Omnicom, have been taking note of - and now, it appears that they have begun to make concerted efforts to formalise “gamer-first” marketing as a serious offering.

To provide a comprehensive solution for brands to access the growing gaming market, the Omnicom Advertising Collective has combined the expertise of two of its core agencies to create ‘LevelUp OAC’. Despite not being an independent agency in its own right, LevelUp OAC will utilise the capabilities of two OAC agencies, ‘The Marketing Arm’ (TMA) and ‘GSD&M’, as well as wider Omnicom Group partnerships - to help brands tap into the $47 billion-plus gaming market.

“As the gaming market continues to grow, brands will require an integrated ‘consumer-first’ - or in this case, ‘gamer-first’ - approach to strategy, creative, and engagement planning that will seamlessly flow into activation, execution, and deployment,” says James Fenton, CEO of the Omnicom Advertising Collective (OAC). “We never envisioned it as a standalone gaming agency. Rather, this is an example of where the whole is greater than the individual parts. It's one of the things we believe separates LevelUp OAC from other competitive offerings.”

James explains that whilst gaming has been a growing focus for all OAC agencies, now is the time to bring together “complementary skillsets and expertise that had sat across different agencies to formally shape an end-to-end solution for clients.” Two of these experts are Dave Kersey, chief media officer at GSD&M, and Andrew Robinson Jr., group director of gaming at TMA. Speaking with LBB’s Ben Conway, they explain that marketing in the gaming industry has its own nuances, despite being predicated on universal marketing principles like value creation and storytelling. 

Dave says, “In gaming, it may be even more critical to ensure you actually understand who that audience is and how and why they engage in the gaming ecosystem. Then you can design a relevant opportunity to intersect or complement the audience experience with a brand’s strategy - in a way that leads to engagement and drives business results.” Andrew agrees, highlighting that specificity is key when it comes to an audience as varied and fragmented as ‘gamers’. “Saying you’re targeting gamers is about as broad and useless as saying you’re trying to reach music fans,” he says. The more specific you can get with your targeting, the better we can define where and how you should show up.”

Forming the leadership of this new “gamer-first” venture, Dave and Andrew are joined by Maria D’Amato, executive creative director at GSD&M. These three and their creative teams will collaborate closely on LevelUp OAC, says OAC’s CEO James Fenton, whilst retaining the “unique cultures” at their respective agencies. “We work hard to champion and support fluid collaboration between agencies that still enables people involved to retain their own agency’s identity.” 

Continuing his description of LevelUp OAC, James elaborates on the ‘authentic, 360-degree engagement’ philosophy that he outlined in an announcement earlier this month. “The current gaming landscape is highly fragmented, but brands can benefit greatly through an end-to-end gaming strategy. Across OAC, we are fortunate to have a breadth of capabilities ranging from creative advertising to multicultural marketing, B2B, retail performance marketing, content production and experiential activation.” As well as these, he says LevelUp OAC’s leaders can also engage sister agencies within Omnicom Group to deliver capabilities such as PR and earned media, commerce and digital experiences, merchandising and even IP licensing.

Describing what TMA provides to the project from its 12-plus years of experience engaging gamers, Andrew lists the “expertise in consulting, strategy, creative, partnerships, influencer, and experience” that have gone into campaigns such as TMA’s State Farm partnership with NBA 2K. And highlighting GSD&M’s capabilities, Dave shares the agency’s successes in growing an ESL pro league media partnership and developing interactive experiences like ‘E.C.H.O.’ and ‘Command the Stack’ for the United States Air Force. Additionally, he says that GSD&M’s work in casual gaming has been “a great driver for providing the end user value during their gaming session without being overly intrusive.” The success of its clients in this space, he believes, is indicative of the vast growth in gaming - matched with the agency and brand truly knowing its audience. 

“Incredibly encouraged” by ongoing conversations with both new and existing clients, James says that opportunities will likely come to LevelUp OAC via individual agencies reaching out, or through the wider Advertising Collective. The clients and projects they take on will be decided case-by-case, depending on how best LevelUp OAC can satisfy their needs - a versatility that Dave suggests is made possible by its nimble structure and mindset.

He says, “Our integrated partnership is designed to uncover the true opportunity for a brand and customise a rich experience for the audience. Coming together with our cross-agency expertise and capabilities provides a strategic advantage in the marketplace and it’s one that many brands will benefit from.” His colleague Andrew adds, “We believe this level of integration, combined with deep expertise in all the gaming sub-practices, is unmatched in our industry.”

This flexible structure is made possible by the varied, adaptable talents that both TMA, GSD&M and OAC as a whole have strategically hired in recent years, developing the ideal culture and capabilities for a collaborative cross-collective project like LevelUp OAC. Maria D’Amato, executive creative director at GSD&M, says that the standard hiring practice has been to evaluate individuals on a multidisciplinary basis - taking into account their personal interests and motivations, along with their professional skills.

She says, “For some, that means being an AR developer who’s also an experienced strategist and a Nintendo aficionado. For others, it’s being a systematic UI designer who loves handheld console games. By hiring with an eye for what people are passionate about as well as their hard skills, we have a wealth of deep knowledge to draw from when it’s time to tap people on the shoulder to join a LevelUp brief.”

From TMA’s perspective, according to Andrew, a significant benefit of this process is that the agencies don’t have to make major changes to their hiring strategies to try and fill in any skill gaps. He says, “This allows us to continue to strengthen our existing capabilities and lean on our partner agency who has expertise in other areas.”

Looking at the wider industry for inspiration, Maria highlights VMLY&R’s ‘Super Wendy’s World’ campaign as the kind of “fantastic” work in the gaming space that LevelUp OAC aims to match or better. “[‘Super Wendy’s World’] looked at each game as a specific opportunity to create something unique. That’s the type of specificity that drives great work in this space.”

In a similar genre-crossing vein, Andrew selects Riot Games’ ‘K/DA’ project, which turned League of Legends’ iconic characters into K-Pop stars. “[It] was an ingenious way to merge two cultural tentpoles at the top of the list for their fans.” He adds, “And maybe I'm biased, but the original ‘Doritos and Dew’ double XP campaign changed the game and spawned dozens of copycats. It sparked developers to build double XP in as a core mechanic to many major multiplayer games across genres.”

As gaming grows and these kinds of groundbreaking, interactive campaigns between brands and everyone’s favourite video game franchises become more prevalent, LevelUp OAC will certainly be looking to facilitate this service for its clients - with a flexible and collaborative end-to-end model that offers a dedicated “gamer-first” approach. This is a unique advantage that the OAC team believes it has over other gaming ad offerings which don’t have a structurally integrated approach to gaming like LevelUp OAC provides. 

The gaming sphere, like the creative and marketing industries, moves at a lightning pace, with developments such as remote-play, cloud-play and other new tech changing how gamers are playing on a daily basis. To create engaging campaigns for gamers, Maria says that it’s “crucial” to stay ahead of this rapid ‘levelling up’ and to keep the shifting contexts in mind when developing ideas. One of these significant shifts, which Andrew believes is a vital consideration for LevelUp OAC’s approach to “gamer-first” marketing, is that more and more gamers are looking to turn their hobbies and passions in the gaming realm into a career. 

“Whether it’s through content creation, esports, game development, social media -  or even, in the near future, ‘play-to-earn’ - young gamers are entrepreneurial and looking for ways to earn a living while playing the games they love.” This emerging angle is just one of many innovative routes for OAC’s new gaming arm to explore, as it launches into one of the most exciting, prospering sectors of advertising - and a multi-billion dollar industry that shows no signs of stopping. 

Summarising the wealth of possibilities for LevelUp and the collective going forward, Andrew says, “There are major opportunities for brands to add value at various steps in this process and help gamers achieve their goals.”