"Don't Try and Sell Them Sh*t!": The Ultimate Rule for Marketing to Gamers

And none of these communities are naive. They're not idiots. They're there enjoying some of their downtime. They use that often as escapism. So don't try and sell them shit. They don't try and push something on them. Welcome back to Brans & Play, your podcast for everything in massive marketing and the number and the use strategic marketing consultant. And I'm Nick Hill, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Saw Wars. This week on the news, luxury brands are crashing first-person shooters. IR code wants to make every image instantly scannable. The running man is sprinting into some wild new ad formats and Netflix house just swung its doors open in Philadelphia. Yeah, that's an exciting one. And after this, for our real time review, I'm going to be checking the TACCIS summer of intensity activation that they've done on Twitch with six different streamers to dive into how they've essentially leveraged Twitch, either way, to connect with the gaming community and deep dive into their community-led engagement strategy. That's right. And later we'll be sitting down with Matt Kid and Lex Alexander from GetRech Labs. They were the ones that did that campaign. And we're going to be talking about live stream gaming marketing. We'll explore some of their recent live campaigns, including Battlefield 6, Expedition 33, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that one. Guys, don't forget to subscribe, like and follow the show. So let's get into it. Let's go. Albanne, what's up? 41 episodes. I know. How are you doing? How's me doing? I'm well. Busy week. Busy weekend. Lots of fun stuff going on. How about yourself? Yeah, very good. As I said just before the show, for anyone that is a stranger thing fan, my off time has been more on catching up with stranger things and just reminding myself, what's coming up. I'm really excited about that one. But do you have any other exciting announcement to share with the rest of the team today? I've got three things I got to say quickly. Yeah. First, we have a new activation that software's dropped last week, which is for Netflix's In Your Dreams, their new animated film. We did an integration on Roblox into the game, Flores Lava. So that's pretty exciting. It's going well. And we also found out just a few days ago that our campaign for sinners that Warner Brothers put together, they won a Cleo, the grand winner for the theatrical integrated campaign. And we can't take, we can think of it as a slice of the credit because that campaign was broad. You know, there were so many different touch points. But essentially, the gaming component of it was mostly what software's did in partnership with Warner Brothers on Fortnite, getting a Cleo and getting that recognition is pretty awesome. So much respect to our partners at Warner Brothers because they smashed it. And I think it's amazing as well that they're being recognized, I guess, for the 360 activation. As you said, it was a massive campaign, but it's all the different touch points that they've done, including what you guys worked on. I think that really made them one. So I'm so good that we're seeing that kind of effort being recognized. Yeah. And you know, it's not like a very new sort of award group, the Cleo's, they're old school, they're old school market, it is, exactly. So to get the recognition from that group, it is really cool. Yeah, congratulations guys. Thank you. And then the last thing I did over the weekend, which is super fun. I went to see a live broadcast of my favorite podcast, Pivot, which has a Kara Swisher in Scott Galloway. So they had a live sort of a event in this big theater in downtown LA. And Chelsea Handler was the surprise guest that popped on. And so it was awesome. I mean, obviously, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. We've been talking about them since we started this podcast. Like even people who are in this podcast. People should be listening to them. They're good. Yeah, no, I really, like you've made me discover them. I really like them as well. I think that like they're really brilliant duo as well. Yeah, well, I mean, it's, they're no brands in play, but they're good. We can hold. Well, let's just keep this train going. You want to jump to the news? Yes, let's get into it. Right. What did you have for your first story, Nick? My first story is all about how these luxury brands are jumping into first person shooters. So just last week, I don't know if you caught the news, but I saw several brands sort of partnering with these, with these type of games. I know. And the first was Balenciaga. They're obviously the high fashion brand. They went into a shooter. And so did Hamilton, which is a luxury watch brand. So the first was Balenciaga. They jumped into PUBG and sort of high fashion battle rail. And they are launching custom skins and gear and a branded map inside of that game. And they have real world merch that they've also produced. And what's interesting here is they did sort of both when it comes to the digital designs. They did traditional stuff. So things that you combine the real world that look normal, those are in the game. But there's also all of this sort of elevated armor that's like Couture style Balenciaga battle armor that they created for the game, which is not something that you would see in the real world. But it's something that you can do inside of video games. I thought that was really creative. Did you see that campaign? I did. I must say, I think I was again a little bit underwhelmed. But maybe it's more a person. I just felt like it looked again very similar to what they've done in-- was it four, five years ago now? It didn't feel like anything new. Not innovative. Yeah. So you just felt a little bit like what they've done again, when they went on Fortnite again. Most recently, I think we spoke about this. It was literally the same skin, but for the Lego avatar. Yeah. I don't know. I think it's because Balenciaga used to be known for being such a leader in the space. They were the first one I created. They're in game at a time. They used to be a brand that was really innovative. And I feel like they haven't-- I don't know. I feel like they haven't-- They set a bar for themselves. That they have to jump over. Yeah. I don't know. I think I haven't been excited about anything that the brand has done in recently. But maybe it's also their personal tastes around the brand. I'm just waiting for them to do something really exciting. Yeah. And that just did to do it for me. That's fair. But at least they've been in gaming. You know, they're consistently showing up in different places. I think the innovation could be pushed. And then the second activation was Hamilton going into Call of Duty. So they had Hamilton the Watch Company. This is going into Black Ops 7. And they released this limited edition watch, both in the game and in the real world. And the watch is worn by one of the main characters in the game. And it's featured prominently. And it's pretty cool. They did these pop-up stores in London and New York kind of like showing off this watch. And I just thought that was a really strong way to kind of work up a product in in a very seamless, organic way. Did you see that one? I haven't seen that one. So I can't comment. Can't compare into Balinda Teghaz. I don't know if it was good or not. Yeah. Well, it looks pretty cool. I mean, the watch looks cool. And I think the main takeaway from the story is obviously first-person shooting games are mainstream culture. These are so big, so brands align themselves. Makes a lot of sense. Also the digital to digital brand integration. It's not like they're just slapping their logo inside of these games. They're figuring out how to get physical product and digital product integrated properly, which I thought was good. And obviously the deep level of immersion you get when you connect with these brands in a digital space opens up your mind to considering them in the real world. But my main question here is brand safety. These are first-person and third-person shooting games that are very violent. So I would say that opportunity is not for every brand. There's definitely a safety issue here. Yeah, for sure. I think depending on the brand, I guess the marketing team is probably going to decide the level of violence. And less violence, I would say more realism, that they are comfortable with. And they want to be associated with. But I think to your point, it just goes to show that there's not one game. And I think they are recognizing that there's several-- even if they've been on other platforms, they're recognizing that there are different gaming community that is relevant to both of these brands. And that's why they have to show up. And I still find it always impressive when you see your brands integrating a AAA game like that. Because I think we need to remember that this is sometimes like year in a making, depending on the level of integration, is a really big IP partnership. This product involved, these are really long-term commitments. So as much as I was a bit underwhelmed with Balancedaga, I still recognize the effort of the team to go into that kind of partnership. So it's always exciting to see a seamless integration like that. Yeah, agreed. And valuable. What's your new story? So this is a bit of a different one. But it really caught my attention. So I think it was last week. It was brand-on-week. So that's organized by our week publisher. So it was a panel with the company-- I don't know if it's Aircore or I-I-I-R quote. But essentially, what I find was really interesting is-- and I think you like this, Nick. But they essentially created this technology that will allow people to scan images. For more information, visit www.cicolour.com/cicolour. them to be links to any branded website, content, whatever the decide. So I think right now, so no more QR images. That's right, no more QR images. And the way that their CEO was kind of describing themselves was like, we are the shazam, but for image recognition. And then really focusing right now on pushing the technology to now be also available for video. So right now it's images, but I think that they're making great progress way to be. So any videos like any advertising that you see any so either moment, the use cases more out of home campaigns or images that you see in real life. But something that was, you know, that you and I have been talking about more related to the smart eyewear that you're wearing. But this kind of technology already allows brands to be able to measure organic engagements of these out of home, because it's allowing people to essentially start scanning all of these different images that they're seeing in real life and make, I don't know, on log different kind of content. So there were mentioning two use cases. One of them was a film that was based on the Hamilton, I think, on Hamilton. And it was essentially they were giving away different like cinematic, etc. And it was all in times square. So they were able to measure how many people had engaged with those really expensive screens on timesquares and how many unlocked in the park. The other one, which I think like for me was more interesting was also with this knee land where it was the scatter of a just hunt. And I don't know, I'm really bullish on how we're going to start making a real link between RRL content, whether it's like screens like on times square out of home, but also something that you're not watching on TV as well or like a now that you're seeing on your phone or on your laptop. And how that is going to start unlocking things. And I just thought because we are like talking about a massive content, I just thought I wanted to mention that because I, yeah, I just thought that was a company that I wanted to keep keep an eye on because I thought that what they're working on is really interesting. I love it. It's super cool. I think anytime you can start to remove layers of friction to get people engaging is smart. And I think people are kind of tired of seeing the QR code. And they're not excited by it. Yeah. You know, so it's just because it's there. It doesn't mean people want to take their phones out and scan it. So maybe that helps with this, but also the most important thing is being able to track that engagement. That's right. Because yeah, how you validate how valuable a billboard is, it's just people saw it with their eyeballs. And then they made choices later. I need to draw attribution. So maybe this is a solution to kind of like prove that. Exactly. And something that he mentioned that they're going to start working on more and more is is also product placement. So he mentioned it quite extensively around the entertainment industry and product placement. So we know, I think for me, the fight club is the one that I always think about around Starbucks and the amount of Florida's placement that is known in that film. Yeah. But we know that this is a big strategy for a lot of brands. So this is something that he was saying, this is not going to be a big focus of this that brands can start also measure like placements within those within like those films, etc. So wanted to give a shadow, I think, to their work and probably keep a close eye on what they're doing. Yeah. In general, I think out of home and digital out of home is going to be very interesting in the next like five or 10 years, which I think we'll be talking about it a lot more. So it's opportunities to get crazy. Thanks to the technology. But moving on to my next story, it's all about the running man film. Are you familiar with this movie? I am not sorry. You're not. Alban, I got to be honest with you. I feel like you have you have are missing out on some amazing ways. Let me running the old team. I'm just going to check it out. No, I yeah, not for those younger listeners, there was a movie called The Running Man that came out in 1987 and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's a sci-fi movie. It's a banger is worth a watch. And Paramount is releasing a remake of this movie. And that's coming out in theaters fairly soon. So you should check check out the original Alban and let me know how that was just with just with the poster doesn't look like my kind of movie, but I might. I'm not promising anything. But let me know what have they're done. What have they done? Okay, well, let's jump in and talk about it. So in addition to their current marketing campaign, you know, they're doing all the traditional touch points, making trailers, running media, like they always do. But they this particular campaign caught my eye because they did two really interesting activations and immersive activations. I thought we're talking about the first being a global augmented reality mission through niantex ingress platform. So yeah, so basically like this is it was based in Los Angeles. So players can use the geo function on their phones if they're playing this this game. And they can sort of walk around the city and go to all these different touch points. And they created like a narrative story that's in line with the film. And it's like a location based quest that's cool in Los Angeles. What do you think about that? I like a scavenger hunt. So I think that's always like really fun. I always I'm always a bit skeptical. A little bit like the this Milan example, I'm always skeptical of how many people are going to do that, but especially with the size of LA. But I love the idea. I think it's always fun when you're asking people to do something or a hell. Yeah, well, it's running right now. There are no metrics or ports or case studies on it. But if you're living in LA, you should check it out. I might check it out myself. But the second one that I thought was really interesting was on Reddit, they have a campaign called Dodge the Drones. And they're leveraging Reddit's new paid ad format. So this basically is interactive ads that you can run within the Reddit platform. And this is cool because it's like in game feed where players can, you know, kind of play as Glenn Powell's character to unlock if they jump through all the hoops and get through the game, they get a personalized video clip that's exclusive to them with the talent from the film giving them a personal message. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I think that's right. So like this, you can definitely tell this is like the innovative or sorry, the innovation chunk of that budget. Because I feel like who knows how they're going to perform compared to all the other stuff. But yeah, I'm really curious to see what type of engagement this part of the campaign gets compared to their traditional side. Yeah, absolutely. And I like the fact that they're going into Reddit. And that doesn't make sense for what I'm assuming is the target audience of that film. So I'm always I'm more less really excited when I see Brian's doing stuff on Reddit now. No doubt. Well, you got the last story. Let us know. The last story is a very short again, more of a newsbyte, I would say is Netflix House is now open in Philadelphia. So that is in the King of Persia mall. So that's opened. I think it was this week. And they're also opening a new one in Dennis next month. And I just thought, I don't know if you've seen the images, but essentially this is a bit like replicating the Disneyland model where they are creating an immersive space for fans. So not only subscribers, but also people that are non subscribers to engage with some of their IPs. So they have Wednesday there, they have stranger things, they have like so many other like really popular IP where they created immersive experiences around it. It's a lot like meowulf, right? I don't know meowulf. Meowulf is like it's the same thing. It's like an immersive experience that you can go into and it's a physical space and you can engage with IP and explore. Exactly. So it's not there's no rights. Like it's so don't don't think it's going to be like a universal map yet. So for now, it's still like there's there's VR. I think that's integrating within that is also like mini golf. I think they're more leveraging like immersive tech to be able to bring to life some other IP. The one thing that I thought was really fun that I would love to test is the Netflix bites. So it's the whole like food area that serves food that is inspired by food from different IPs. And I think that just you know, I'm a foodie. So that just made me like really excited about it. I think the only thing that I thought was I wanted to maybe talk about was how we know that Netflix has done a lot within gaming. They obviously have you know, games within their own app. They've gone on Roblox as well. There's also some of the IP that have their own activation themselves. I just though was quite interesting that they're still thought it was important for them to have a RL environment. And I guess a space for people to engage with with some of their IPs and also with the Netflix brands. But what's your thoughts on that? Because obviously like I think for us, it's always a bit of a question mark when there is a RL when you have such a strong product already like what is the the need to have an RL because we know it's quite limited. It's not always scalable. But what's your thoughts about it? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. We've talked about the Netflix house on this show, you know, several times. It's awesome. And congrats to Netflix for launching. So very curious to see how it performs. You know, I'm not going to make it out all the way out to Philadelphia. But I think when the one comes in Vegas, I'll be at that one. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's really smart. And also it's, you know, it's like media empires. It's what they do. Netflix is an innovative company. So I'm cautiously optimistic that these are going to be pretty cool. And I think that when it comes to fandom, it's really great to take it to the next level. You know, people already love these IPs. They sit down, they stare at these screens. But when you can expand that, it's it's expanding the the IP and fandom in exciting ways. So it'll be super interesting to track how that performs. Exactly. We'll keep an eye on it. But let's change gears and let's jump into our real time review. I think this week, you're jumping into the talkies, uh, live stream activation, right? That's right. Let's jump into it. Real-time review. So Albin, I'm really curious about this, this activation. You know, we're gonna be talking to our friends from GetRect and they obviously worked on this. So I'm curious, tell us about it and how do you feel? Yeah, so this was a quite an exciting, especially because it was done in the UK. So a lot of like really cool activations are sometimes done only in the US market. So I was really excited that that was done in the UK. This was released. This is older, older activation. So that was done in September 2025 for the crisps. Actually, do you say crisps in the, in the US? We don't say crisps. These are, these are chips. Chips? Well, that's a lot easier for my friend Jackson because crisps is so hard to say. So actually, I'm gonna go American for this. I'm gonna say crisps. There you go. No, chips. So, it's a snack food. Chips brands. And they were releasing several new flavors. So it was the summer of intensity. And essentially, what this reminded me of, like the new, the new, like branding and the new flavors that they have reminded me a bit of like the hot ones, where essentially every different package had different layers of intensity in terms of hotness. And they collaborated with six UK streamers. And there were five different levels of challenges that these streamers had to compete in order to like win, win the challenge. But I'll get a little bit more into what was the, I guess, the structure of this activation. So first things first. Just quickly. So they, clearly the brand is targeting the video game audience. And they wanted to work with these things. I'm sure they had other activations. But for this particular campaign, it was six gaming streamers. What I really liked is that there was a big range of, I guess, game diversity. So they didn't go with honest streamers that play Call of Duty or Fortnite. All of them played on their stream. Very different games. And that's one of the first thing that I wanted to highlight is that the way that these challenges were done was sets by the streamer themselves. They had five challenges, they themselves decided on what these challenges were going to be based on the game that they wanted to play that day. So you had like fantasy football that was played by one streamer. You had someone that was playing dead by daylight. It's like you had so many different games, which I really liked. And the streamers chose those, right? They are. That's right. So it's, it just also makes it's a lot more natural. Because it's a streamer that is deciding what they're going to play, what challenges. And every time they were going in levels, obviously the intensity and the difficulty of the challenges was, was increasing. So how does Takis play into this? Exactly. So at the beginning, they were obviously mentioning more about the brand. They were showing up, they were showing the, the product themselves. But all throughout the streams, they were interactive overlays, but also pop-ups that were appearing when you were just during the stream. So the brand presence, you obviously had like the product placement. You had the stream overlay. You know, when you start the stream, there's always like an overlay on an art that the streamer has that was going to find the brand. Also, so I'll go into that. But the community was heavily involved throughout. So the community was the one deciding. So you have to, you have to think like this fight at different levels, the streamers deciding on with each level what challenges is within that. And then is the community that has to vote on full-level one. What is the, what is the challenge that the their streamer has to do? So they're always really engaged. The poll as well was all like organized and branded by Takis. There's obviously like chat emotes that unlocked and enabled essentially their streamers to move from one level to another. So we like, we'll touch base on that a little bit. So yes. You have live fans like watching the stream. That's right. And they can interact in the chat and then it's affecting what's happening in the stream. That's right. But what they've done if they've they're really immersibly in integrating themselves within the stream. And then the brand placement didn't feel interrupted because it wasn't, I wouldn't really consider that an art. It was more really clever like logo placement or like brand placement that would just path, I guess, of the code of a stream. So like I said, the start of the stream, there's always something. It made sense for them to be there. They just really integrated seamlessly. So the, it just, I just felt like the stream was a lot more fun than, you know, than any other brand activation that I had seen previously. It was also a very simple, very effective. And I didn't feel like they were setting the product. The only like downfall and I think that what could have been improved, I wouldn't say it's the it's the fact that it was, it by no means was it intrusive. I just feel like the brand and it's less of other technology behind it. I just feel like the brand could have, you know, they could have unlocked different parks or like different. I think a lot of the people on the chat were asking for like discount codes or, you know, parks to be like participating in that. So it was purely in terms of objective for them. I feel like it was like pure engagement and awareness, not really like bottom funnel. Well, let me ask you this, like what added value do you think is there for a brand? Because brand see live streams all the time and they don't have this layer of interactivity or overlays. Like talk to me about the added layer value. Because there was another layer of talent around it, it just made and there was like time behind it. It was timed. I feel like it made all of the streams that I was watching a lot more intense. So a lot more entertaining. And I think for these streamers, it also helped because not all of them, I guess, are like, you know, you have to be a specific type of talent to be able to entertain like live streamers are like another type of beast of content creators because they are like playing playing their game, managing their chats, but also being in a city like this is a lot of work. So you know, on top of that ad branding content within that sometimes it is very difficult. So those challenges just made the integration of the brand all throughout so seamless and so fun. Like you didn't really think about it, but you work consuming branding content. It seems really smart. So, exactly. So I just, I just like, let's maybe like, let's step in into our interview with Lex and Max to like deep dive more into it, but definitely would recommend it. And I'm putting it as like a highlight of how to activate with streamers. That's awesome. Well, we appreciate the recap, Alban. And now let's go to our interview. We're excited to be joined by the GitREC Labs team, a leading gaming agency specializing in high impact live stream campaigns, custom overlays, interactive tools and creative driven production, bringing broadcast level polish to Twitch, YouTube, eSports events and large scale creator activations. So today we got Matt Kid, founder and director and Lex Alexander growth manager. Let's talk about how brands leverage their solution to make their live streaming integration more impactful and discuss the future of live streaming in gaming. Matt, Lex, welcome to brands and play. Yeah, thanks for having us. And also if we could get that introduction to put on our website, that would be perfect. Thanks. I think you just introduced us better than we would do ourselves. I think I will be your hype man. It's such a pleasure to have you both. And we're so excited about our interview today. I love because I think both of you have have different backgrounds. I would love maybe to give our listener a bit more information about both of you. Maybe Matt, we can start with you first and then Lex will go to you. But Matt, I love to understand a bit more about your background and also, you know, how you got to create get rect and maybe what problem you were trying to solve to begin with. Yeah, so I've been in the game industry for about 10 years now. So my journey started actually with community LAN events. So I actually used to work in spinal surgery. I have a degree in marine biology. So actually my education and previous career is nothing to do with what we do at GEREC. But I actually fell into the destiny community quite passionately. We started running community LAN events. We've doing a lot of charity work. Not actually led me to get to know the guys' Activision, get to know the guys, the brands that were supporting the events and such. And it was actually that that directly led to my first job in the industry, which was the marketing head for game. So at the time, game were developing esports arenas for a grassroots communities across the UK. So I've had really big aspirations to have 100 arenas across the UK, small communities, live streamed every day. We have a studio in house. So that was kind of my first very deep dive into the gaming industry. So a big kind of first job that something I really enjoyed. So GEREC from the LAN events have actually turned into kind of a creative agency. So we got to know a lot of content creators through working with game. A lot of them are asking for support on broadcast assets. How do they create more engaging streams? So it was essentially a two-man band myself and our creative director now Carl, who were working directly with creators and we did that for three or four years. I think we worked with over 700 content creators. So we obviously developed a very deep relationship with those creators and really understood what made them tick and what they saw value in from a live streaming perspective. But I suppose the question that everybody wanted to answer was how do we drive audience growth for them? How do we drive revenue for them? How do we really support them in a meaningful way? Aside from just creating a nice personal brand for them and creative assets, how do we do that more meaningfully? So that's where the team really grew without our development team, our 3G design team, and we started looking at even developing mini games and that kind of thing. So kind of mind forward to today, we pivoted probably two or three years ago into the agency space, so we kind of, in terms of our goals, out grew the direct creator communities. That's when we started approaching agencies, brands, publishers, actually is an opportunity for us here to work together. It's been an exciting journey. I'm like, so join us. Yeah, what led you to the gaming industry? I just love how everyone, I think, in gaming, I feel like really comes a very different background, which is a way to get into here. And I guess what about you, Lex? How did you end up being a get wrecked and what's your background? What led you to the lovely team I get wrecked? I heard I feel like I haven't got the same sort of, I did a degree in marine biology. Yeah, I was going to say like I hear the rich. So the bar high there, there's a pressure for fish is required. How'd you follow that? Unbelievable. Yeah, so I actually took the, it's like a different route. So I went in the data space, so I worked for a large credit agency for a long period of time, then moved into more behavioral insights of data and e-commerce and then did really well at a business. He got sold and then I found myself having like two months, three months with nothing to do. I think nothing to do. Like I had a life of luxury. I still had bills to pay and still had life to live. But then I ended up meeting up with a group that had started up like an influencer agency, influencer platform. No, we're doing a lot in TV and radio, but I got really really deep into the influencer and gaming and sponsorship and partnership side. So for a number of years I was working in that environment, kind of 15, 18 hour days, which were quite taxing, especially when you're kind of doing calls 3am in Thailand or wherever. Like just like, come on. Around the club times. Yeah. And then you got to a point where I left that business after probably three, four years and I'd met Matt probably 12 months before that through a mutual friend in the industry. And I thought GetRect was wicked. Like it was just one of those things where I was like, I have no idea why not more people are doing this kind of thing. Without having any idea of the complexity or any of the actual hard work that went in, I was like, this is pretty good. Some more people should probably do this. So I came and worked for Matt for a bit and I was actually consulting to begin with. So I think we were both at that point when it was like, do I know what I'm talking about? Am I good at my job? And I still have that. Take it to you, Meg. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So I spent a long time learning it and then come on full time in FedBury, I think. And it's just been unbelievable. We work with some incredible brands. We've had some really, really cool people to work with and it's a great excuse to go to the pub and sit down and have a chat with people or a nice dinner or a cup of tea. I spend most of my time just sitting in and having cups of tea or beer with people and just like, what do you want to do? It's nice. I like it. It's a very easy job. The most British activity that you can name, how are your cup of tea going to the pub and having a beer? Yeah. It does well. It seems to transcend international boundaries. Everyone wants to go for a beer. It's great. This is true. Well, you guys do some really fantastic work, but I was wanting a step back for our listeners. And I think you guys have a unique approach to helping brands integrate and connect with gaming audiences in almost an indirect way. You're not building games from scratch or doing integrations into games necessarily. You're finding a way to connect with the audiences in a unique way. Can you explain what that's like? A brand comes in and says, I want to reach gaming. I don't know what to do. How do you suggest they come in? In the past, there's been a quite a dictatorship approach to live stream content, when it comes to brand sponsorships and such. I think that really takes away from the magic of live streaming because obviously it's the authenticity. It's that chaos. It's the unpredictability that gives you those clipable moments and those fun elements within the stream. So that's really something that we advocate really is how do we build tools, build creative around your brand message or it might be a product or obviously for a game launch, it might be game modes, mechanics and kind of split messaging around the game. So it's really how do we build all that together? And we have kind of broken this down quite recently. Probably the last six months where we've sat down and tried to refine this in terms of what components do you need to look at from a live stream perspective? And we often break it down into five core components, which is production. Okay, how are we going to represent your brand on the streams? What kind of creative pillar should we need to make here? So how do we engage creators? Because I say you really don't want to dictate content to content creators that they've got amazing personalities like you want to give them tools to make the best content they can. How do we give them some direction, some kind of guide rails to work within but still give them flexibility? There's the audience engagement piece in terms of, I mean, if you're live streaming on Twitch and you're not using any kind of audience interactivity tools, you're kind of missing the point, I think. There's so many tools available there that allow you to really get that deeper engagement with the audience. And there's how to be tied that in with the creators. But obviously we can talk about kind of most specific ways of doing that later. There's reward mechanics. I mean, often you'll have to provide some kind of reward system for gamers like they're very used to that kind of mechanic. And I think there's a brand when you're trying to build a fantasy within, you need to give something back for their viewership. But I don't think you can sponsor a stream and expect the world to bend at your knees because you grace them with your presence on Twitch. And then I think the really important piece of this that I think isn't always considered is they give what tools can we look at to deliver a specific API. So it might be okay, you want website visits, you want some tangible output from those conversions, which might come further down the line in the campaign. But what kind of things can we integrate with their systems to create some kind of long-term tools that can assist with that really? Yeah, I think it's important to note as well that if a brand wants to align itself with the community of a certain game. So for instance, like Street Fighter is a great example. Like if that's the target demo, maybe if they're not familiar with you guys are familiar with this the Twitch world, they might be thinking like, well, how do I make a partnership with Capcom so I can get my brand into the Street Fighter game? And like, it's almost impossible to do. So what you guys offer is a solution to cut through the red tape and actually reach that audience directly, right? Yeah, just wait to jump in as well and say, um, something you said earlier, we do actually build games. It's just not in the way that people traditionally think about it. So, um, Hampstead Battle Royale is probably a thing I've spoken about hundreds and hundreds of times. But we worked out that there was a gap. I'll be very quick with this, but we worked out there was a gap that loss creators have to do what nature intends. Sometimes they have to go to the bathroom, take a call, do whatever. There's that gap where people are just kind of sat staring at them. So in conjunction with a creator, we built this Battle Royale environment in Unreal that could be on while they were away. Instead of a B-Rite Backscreen, there was this game where people would type into chat, their Hampstead would spawn and then they can send commands to launch rockets or thunder or cool slap their hair out of each other or whatever you choose. And we also worked out there was a commercial potential in there, which was there was a supplement brand could attract basically the purchase. If somebody used the code, that would drop in and spawn in to make the Hampsteads Hulk out extra and be larger. On this activation, it was decided not to be done because it was just as a gift for the community to say thank you and so that they could interact in that way. But we do have various different ways of building games. It's more probably aligned with streams than it is a four feature length frame. There are very talented people out there that do that. And speaking of actually, I love the idea that you're right when in livestream that pose moment is maybe like where a lot of the audience is actually dropping. But when you think about livestreaming and how does that fit within a brand strategy like you've mentioned, you've mentioned one of them being you know, they want to integrate an existing livestream and it's more about integrating the message. The other one that we've discussed when we first spoke to each other and I know you work with publishers as well is when they try to amplify a game or an activation that they've done inside the game. So it's very much taking a livestream as a way to amplify around around the activation that's happening inside the game to boil it down like how important is it to leverage content creators, livestreaming when you are launching a game. Because I think some for some brands or I think for a lot of publishers, they might think isn't the content and isn't the game enough to get all getting growth. Yeah, I think the biggest piece of that, me and Lex were a jang about this earlier, it's how do you get the most value out of that sponsored content? Because often they'll have a fixed amount of time that they're being paid to stream the game for example to the young big AAA launches. But that's actually not guiding that content in any way, it's a real missed opportunity to showcase specific game mechanics or like specific story beats. So something we do a lot of is tasking creators within that stream to do specific activities just to make sure that we're kind of covering all those bases and I think the big piece of that as well is allowing the audience to play along with them. I think but you're just possibly watching a stream that opportunity isn't there and we do approach that in different ways, why they allow them to guide the narrative. So for a first person shoot a game like Battlefield 6 was a game that we've been involved with quite heavily since launch. How do we allow them to add restrictions to the game? How are they choosing game modes? The creators to play what classes they play with those two being that really core components of what they want to promote during the game. And then for more narrative driven games, we've just just written a showcase for the Border Lands 4 launch. And obviously the type of engagement they expect is very different. I think when you're looking at FPS games, those kind of competitive audiences, you have to lean into that. So having them be able to contribute to the greatest success or failure is a fun way to do that. And equally when you're looking at narrative driven games, how do they direct the narrative, how do they direct the direction of the stream, but also how can they play along with them as a really important piece of that. And sometimes we'll just do that through okay, vote on what the creator does next. They'll build some mechanics in all of those lines. But more recently something we've been doing is using in game IP to create stream disruptions or mini games within the stream. I think also just to jump in here, we do have the benefit of working with some spectacular agencies as well. So we can't always claim all the credit for the work we do as much as we'd lovely to. I think there are some exceptionally talented people that we get to work with. And a lot of the time, a really important thing is the synergy between the content creators, the brands themselves and that ability to have that open conversation. And I think one of the points you made earlier was really interesting about publishers talking about their live streaming space and being more maybe more efficient in the live streaming space. I think what you're seeing now is a lot more brands are evolving more in that space and realizing that just slapping the logo up or just having an ad that pops up every now and again isn't working for them. And affiliate codes, they are a thing that can be good. So not to say anything disparaging about that, but also creators are also contractors in this regard. They build an audience, people want to work with them because they've built this audience and their audience trusts them and they value their judgment. Just the same as if one of asked kind of hired somebody to build a fireplace. You kind of want that they've got some expertise in fireplaces. It should be paid their right due and they should be given the right value for doing these kind of streams. And I think brands understand this, publishers are more and more creating value for their creators so they're looking to give back to them. So I think it's a really good point to be made about publishers are doing a lot more live streams, but brands are getting there too and they're gaining leaps and bounds and it's really exciting to see. Yeah, I would say that like most brands at this point have worked with influencers in some way, shape or form and you know, launched on social media in the form of video. They understand that. I think a lot of brands have not ventured into gaming and live streaming quite yet. So what advice would you give to those brands that and what do they not understand about the live streaming space? If they're trying to just equate it to what they know with influencers in the social space. I think it's not just about getting your branding set it in there and it's not just about buy this product. I think there's too much of this buy this product, buy this product, do this thing and it's exhausting and you get ad blind to it all and this is why people get kind of sick of seeing the same sort of billboards or the same sort of signposting and they get to that point where they're like the communities are delighted that their favorite streamers or favorite content creators are being sponsored. They're super happy for them. There's no engagement from them. They're just like, oh, you've sponsored one of my favorite streamers. I might look at your product but the likelihood's really low. It's about understanding the depth of the motion that goes into these kind of streams and why people are there and building a narrative behind it. I think earlier I was talking about, this is going back a little bit talking about TV which is wow, you should never talk about TV when it's gaming and it's all digital of course. But there was the Guinness advert always sings to me. So there's a really infamous, I'm not going to do the song, I'm the song again but if you know, you know, it's in your head. But there was these horses that were like cresting but it was symbolizing waves and it was all very dark imagery and eventually it came to this settled image of like the top of a Guinness. The whole point wasn't about by a Guinness drink. It's the the emotion behind that. It's the telling a story about these guys that have obviously gone and surfed together or they've gone and played rugby together or whatever it is, is that that built relationship and gaming's no different. You have to build a relationship with gamers and they're not naive and none of these communities are naive. They're not like not idiots. Don't try and sorry bad language but they don't try and push something on them. They will acknowledge your brand there and if you're naturally there and if you're comfortably there, they'll love you being there. Look at vans with skating. The skating community loves vans because they've built a care around them. They've built the fact that everything is designed to fit around them. They've not designed it so that the community has to fit around the brand and this is what's so important to to accentuate the brands, to accentuate the publishers to anyone that's looking to be in these spaces. Build a narrative. Don't just push a product. Yeah. Especially with live streaming, I think the difference with Vald is that an influence can re-edit and reshoot maybe the content but live streaming if the connection is not there. I think that can be immediately apparent in that live stream to their community. A question that really interests me is more on the measurement sides and how we know that live streaming can sometime last three to four hours. It can be a bit daunting or there can be a bit of a question mark for marketers to understand how many people are actively looking at the live stream when their brand integration is happening. Can you tell us a little bit more about the maybe some of the technologies or some of the strategies that you implement to be able to measure active engagement from users when they are watching a long live stream and I guess how do you prove the ROI of setting campaigns? I just want to jump in here and have a brief rant on this one because this is something that's always like you go. What's your rant? Go on. So my rant is there's a lot of ROI conversation, right? And you look in the creative space, you want to create something brilliant, you want it to create something beautiful and the best way to do that is to give somebody the creative freedom to do that. There's a lot of people that look for CPMs or ROI or whatever in the creative space and it's you're looking at the wrong thing. Again, it's going back to building this narrative, build a story, identify with your target customer, know who they are, Coca-Cola, I'm assuming we'll do CPMs, etc. But everyone knows about Coca-Cola because of like Santa or whatever else. Same with video games, GTA, they won't do a huge, well, I can imagine they will do a huge amount of marketing. And I know it's delayed, so it's controversial. They will. They spend too much money not to do a marketing wish. The big thing for them is like people will buy it anyway, right? They've built that zeitgeist. It is like a cultural shift. So I get just a little bit pived by ROI because it's just one of those things where it's like build good content, do something good and people will follow that. But also we do measure that. So I'm going to pass out the map. We completely contradict myself. But it's a thing that I'm like, ah, do do this. That is that isn't great. No, because so often like you look at those KPIs on those case study reports and it's like two, you know, million people saw it from that's an impression. It's like, but how many of those people did it sink in? Realize the impression actually valuable. What if it was a fourth of that? But it resonated so strongly that those people actually became fans of the brand and actually chose to buy something. I'd rather much rather take the smaller number of value than quantity. Yes, it's an interesting one. I think that when we look at these campaigns, obviously we can report on all the usual Twitch statistics. But I think one of mechanics allow us to do this report directly on FardD for engagement. I think this is the conversation we had last week really about. Lerkers, people that are watching Twitch streams on second streams. How do we turn them from passive viewers into active viewers and fully engage with the stream? We can say a lot to shiny metrics that the view time on streams with our tools versus not using our tools as three to five times more. We can tell you that the engagement rates are super high. But in reality, because the mechanics are so different and the use case is so different, it's really important to think of these than a longer term campaign basis. You see test campaigns are set at Benchmark. Obviously we can look at creators, baseline levels and see how it compares with our tools. But one of the biggest barriers to entry or perceived barriers of entry are one is risk, which we've spoken about before in terms of allowing creators to have the guide rails, but allowing them to make their own authentic content. But I think there is still that kind of air that people think that someone's going to talk about the brand in the wrong way, or that they're going to speak about them in the wrong language. But that obviously adds to the authenticity and drives the engagement with the viewers. But the second one is cost of entry or barrier of entry with the tech in the created that's involved. Something we're trying to encourage a lot of now is rather than just doing that one big splash campaign to say we did something for the gaming audience. Is that okay? What does this look like over the year? We've built you this tool kit. We have all this creative available. We have a year ahead of us to get some results here. Let's look at them on a campaign basis and see how we can improve off those numbers and drive that engagement. But a lot of the things that we can report on tend to be obviously chat based with that being the way that they can engage with the streams. So usually it will be we can track exactly here, engage with the poll versus the overall viewership if we're doing something that's kind of command or run, mentioned driven, we can track all that information. So really what we're trying to do is get above that baseline of engagement that creator has and try and get to obviously get a better point as the campaign runs on and create better and better tools that the community is engaging with more. So at the end of the day, for the creators having a really good time, yawning some of the good time, we're going to see much better retention numbers long term and much better engagement numbers. So that's really kind of how we'd like to guide the conversation moving forward. Because I think we've we have done a lot of kind of one-half campaigns now. And it is a real shame to see these campaigns do an amazing job like they win awards and then we never see them again. It's like, well, let's think about kind of a longer term strategy here and gaming is a core part of the mix and live streaming is core part of the mix of the past. This is something we're going to spend our innovation budget on over six months, for example. So, that's the image I look forward to. But we're going to tell you guys Matt, Lex, we really appreciate you coming on the show or fans of what you guys are doing and just excited to see what future brand activations you continue to do. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that was it without interview with Lex and Mike. I want to send them so much again for joining us. I think for me, my key takeaways, I know that live streaming can fill a little bit scary because you have very little control over what can happen. And I think there's a lot of prep that has to go into it. But I feel like with a team like them, you are in really good hands. And I think they've shown that with their tactics campaign. So it was just such a pleasure to talk to them and how they are bringing more interactivity into live streaming. Yeah, I agree. And I think that that is the key word is interactivity. And I feel like this is a little bit, they're doing a little bit of live streaming innovation, which excites me. It's like, where is live streaming going? And I feel like they're one of those companies that's at the forefront of like experimentation. And I think that as we know, interactivity is so important for building brand connection, you know, like moving people down the funnel. So I feel like anytime that you can add layers of interactivity and pull audience in and give them agency adds a ton of value to marketing campaigns. And I feel like that's what they're doing. So super exciting. Yeah, absolutely. But now without further ado, let's go into hit miss and back. It is your time of the week. Next. So I'm really excited to hear what you've got that you got prep for us. I think I got some good ones this week. Yeah, okay. And this is a good week for new. It was like so much so much stuff happening. So my hit, let's start there. My hit is a overtune. Do you know this company? No. You've not heard of them. So they they're a company that's creating a virtual music studio on Roblox. Okay. And yeah, so right now it's basically what it is. It allows users to create beats, tracks, and compete in music battles. And oh, no, I heard about them. Yeah. So it's like under wraps right now. It's not released. It's being tested with apparently hundreds of thousands of users are testing it. But it's launching at some point next year. Now the reason why I think this is a hit or definitely will be a hit when it comes out is that it's turning the Roblox space when it comes to music from a just a passive listening such opportunity to a creative creation. Yeah. And so I think that like obviously with Roblox, you can build games now and share those games, but you can't really build music and share that music. And I feel like this is the direction that platform is going as we as it starts to age up and become less about like a kid's gaming platform and more of like a social like interactive immersive creative hub for for people. So I saw that I was like that's that's going to be awesome. So I was happy to see moving on to my miss. So you know, there's a stat that came out that is a little whack basically, you know, white male hosts are dominating top tier podcasts across the board. So the top 100 podcasts of 2024 64% of those hosts were male and 77% were white. So obviously this, you know, begs the need for more diversity. And I feel like, you know, a new medium like podcasting is such a right right opportunity for all kinds of diverse voices to come in and repeat in the space. So, you know, this is kind of like why why does it have to be like that? I feel like I want to see more diversity. Yeah, it's up to all listeners. I mean, this is not like there's none. Like there is a love like really interesting podcast. And I think it's probably up to the up to the listeners to also, you know, support support these podcasts that are a bit, you know, I have a diverse cast crew. So I think it's it's a good good thing to raise definitely today. Now moving on to my bet. And maybe this is obvious, but it's worth chatting about. I mean, I feel like entertainment platforms are going to be going both ways in 2026. And what I mean by that is I feel like Netflix wants to be YouTube and YouTube wants to be Netflix. And basically, I feel like the point is the sweet spot is producing content that's high production value while at the same time has a UGC component to your platform. So I feel like we're going to see more and more of these large platforms opening up. And the ones that are already opening, you know, adding more layers of professionalism inside of them. Maybe because I'm prototyped over film. And maybe I'm more used to seeing like games like Rob Blocks. So maybe my like, I don't know, I'm just a little bit more like flexible around that. But when it comes to like film and documentaries, I'm still like such a whole quality. Yeah. No, I'm the same way. Trust me. I, you know, I appreciate quality. And I it should be, you know, an upper echelon. But at the same time, I love UGC. So there's got to be a balance. Yeah. Come together. Let's see what happens. But that's a wrap on this week's episode. I want we want to do a big thank you and shout out to all of our listeners for tuning in. But that's a wrap. If you like our show, don't forget to like and subscribe. We appreciate you. And until next week, Edward, please read us out. And that was Brands in Play. Thank you for joining the podcast. We will be exploring muscle marketing and the people who are leading it. Co-sted by Albandt Puyu and Nick Hill. I'll show it today was produced by myself. It'll rig you with creative direction by Joey Gerder and audio engineering by someone KU. The views thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosting guests. You do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of host employers. The information shared during this podcast is based on personal experience and publicly available information. It is intended for informational purposes only. Any references to specific platforms, companies, or partnerships are made in a personal capacity and do not imply endorsement, partnership, or official association with any organization mentioned.