Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

There has been a paradigm shift in what constitutes entertainment especially amongst the younger generation. The global pandemic has accelerated and opened the realms of online media/ entertainment consumption. Live streams provide a unique viewing experience in which audience can actively engage via the chat. Whether you’re watching or playing, this campaign sought to bring high quality esports/ gaming content in a fun and engaging format whilst enabling community building online. Content diversification, influencers/ streamers, LIVE streams, partnership with other brands in the gaming ecosystem and a range of media channels formed the backbone of a truly engaging, entertaining campaign.

Background

SITUATION: Advanced Micro Devices Inc, (AMD) and Intel Corp have been competitors in the microprocessor industry for over 50 years. For much of that time, Intel dominated this segment of the industry, leaving AMD a distant second in terms of market share. From 2017 the tide had been shifting and AMD has steadily gained market share. As of 2021, depending on markets, AMD captures around 20-45% for the gaming PC category. From a marketing point of view - AMD needed an impactful, differentiated, and evergreen campaign to engage gamers in an authentic yet entertaining way. BRIEF: Build a cohesive and impactful marketing campaign to engage multiple markets and drive brand awareness and sales consideration, associating AMD with high performance gaming PCs amongst gamers in Asia. OBJECTIVES: • Raise awareness and brand association of AMD • Higher audience viewership and engagement (versus 2020 campaign) • OEM and gaming ecosystem partners participation

Describe the creative idea

Building on the success and framework of the award-winning AMD Streamer Challenge 2020 campaign, the idea was to leverage the popularity of esports and gaming as content to showcase the high-performance capabilities of AMD-powered gaming laptops. Utilizing different game genres, participating streamers would lead the campaign to connect with the audience in an organic and authentic manner, building AMD’s brand association with high-performance gaming among the gaming community. The campaign comprised of three AMD-branded content categories: • AMD Streamer Challenge: online LIVE streams that not only provided fun content for gamers to watch, but also encouraged them to participate and win prizes while playing with their favourite streamers • AMD Esports (new): Live-streamed community-focused online tournaments open to the target audience • AMD Gaming Creators (new): Online content and activations that cater and spotlight creators in the games industry (e.g., artists, designers) as well as participation by the target audience

Describe the strategy

Based on research conducted by AMD in key gaming markets, the campaign strategy took into consideration the target audience’s psyche and behavioural habits, focusing on creating content that they could relate to while ensuring brand and product placements were prominent yet not perceived as intrusive. Gaming influencers and streamers from each target market were engaged to front the campaign, equipped with AMD branded apparel and products to be featured on their social channels and live streams. The campaign was run completely online, which was well suited to the digital natives. As gamers spend a large portion of their time on social media, we identified the top social platforms across the target countries, and focused marketing and media buys on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, YouTube. Additionally, AMD activated parts of the campaign in gamescom asia (a key gaming event in Asia) for an extended, targeted reach to the gaming community.

Describe the execution

The campaign microsite (amdgaming.gg) was the main portal for information, including participating streamers, broadcast schedule, AMD/ OEM product information. Audiences could also tune in to the live-streams embedded on the site. All content was localised to Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean. • Campaign ran from July 2021 to January 2022 • 42 localised episodes broadcast live on Twitch and Facebook • 13 esports tournaments (Grand Finals live streamed) • 28 streamers from 10 countries, participating in LIVE-streamed challenges with their fans to vie for glory and prizes • All episodes, tournaments and activities were promoted on official AMD, OEM partners and streamers' social channels • An official live broadcast with hosts was produced for AMD channels, localiszd for each market • Streamers also live-streamed their own point of view on their personal channels, giving fans a chance to look behind the scenes and engage real-time during each episode

Describe the outcome

As the FIRST gaming marketing campaign of this scale within the AMD worldwide marketing organization, the results were unparalleled and serves as a best-in-class case study. With strong OEM participation as added validation - the campaign was a roaring success both internally in AMD and with the external business stakeholders. The campaign achieved a total of 75M impressions,1.35M views across all platforms, which crushed the set campaign targets of 45M impressions, 1M views respectively. 3,478 people signed up to participate in the Streamer Challenge and Esports activities, way above the available slots, which were allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. The choice of media platforms proved to be effective in reaching the gaming audience and facilitated sharing and engagement, especially on Facebook, YouTube and Twitch. Each episode achieved significant live viewers, and the uploading of highlights to Facebook and full recordings to YouTube helped achieve even higher viewership numbers.