Month: April 2022

Key hits:

• The Washington Post has dropped its paywall for three days leading up to Earth Day.
• Condé Nast announced new sustainability commitments to meet its goal to become carbon neutral by 2030.
• Bloomberg is hosting its annual climate-centric summit next week.
• Vox Media’s Recode and Group Nine’s NowThis are focusing editorial initiatives on climate coverage.

Bloomberg 

Bloomberg Live is hosting its annual Bloomberg Green Summit on April 27, featuring key figures in the climate industry. Registration to the hybrid event is free, for those attending in-person and virtually. The event’s premier partners (one of the sponsorship tier packages Bloomberg sells to advertisers) are Holcim and JLL. The publisher did not share the financial agreement.

Condé Nast 

The publisher announced a new set of sustainability commitments on April 21, as part of its plan to become carbon neutral by 2030, a strategy first announced in 2020. Its new commitments include, in part:

• Only accepting ads from energy companies promoting renewable energy products and technologies, or ads encouraging audiences to transition to renewable energy (and other more environmentally-friendly solutions).
• Eliminating single-use plastic packaging by 2025. The company says it has eliminated more than 90% of single-use plastic globally and 100% of the paper used to produce the company’s print across its owned operations is certified (FSC and/or PEFC-certified).
• Only using paper internationally certified as sourced from responsibly managed forests.
• Appointing a network of “global editorial ambassadors for sustainability,” to focus on sustainability across the company’s media brands and editorial verticals including lifestyle, beauty, tech and innovation, food and fashion.

Multiple Condé Nast offices, including those in New York City, London, Germany, Italy and Spain have transitioned to 100% renewable energy.

Covering Climate Now

The journalism coalition has worked with its partner outlets including The Guardian, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, VICE, Now This, Al Jazeera, Times of India, Taz and The Daily Maverick to run stories from April 11 through April 22 on the climate crisis and its ties to democracy, as part of its series leading up to Earth Day called “Climate & Democracy.” It includes an interview with U.S. Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, conducted by Reuters, the Guardian and Climate One public radio.

Vox Media

Vox Media’s tech news vertical Recode unveiled a week-long editorial package on April 18 focused on the intersection of tech and climate, and the ways in which technology has contributed to the climate crisis and could also help solve it. The coverage ranges from the sustainability of cryptocurrency and batteries, to restoring coral reefs.

Social media-focused news brand NowThis is posting videos hosted by people who work in organizations working to improve the climate to TikTok and other social platforms, documenting the ways the climate crisis has impacted society. One TikTok video shared on the NowThis Earth channel (a NowThis vertical created in Sept. 2020 in partnership with Earth HQ, the media arm of the Global Commons Alliance) — on the continuing impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion 12 years ago — is hosted by Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, an advocacy organization dedicated to ocean conservation. Another is hosted by Erin Axelrod, project director at Trees for Climate Health, on reforestation. NowThis Earth’s TikTok channel was created in September 2021, with a focus on issue-specific content to help viewers better understand the climate crisis, a NowThis spokesperson said.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post has lifted its paywall from April 20 to 22 to commemorate Earth Day. The last time the Post lifted its paywall was in March when it made its website free to access for those in Russia and Ukraine. It was the first time The Post had lifted its paywall for a specific region.

“For those unfamiliar with our comprehensive reporting on these global issues, Earth Day is a moment when we want people to explore our journalism without any commitment,” Michael Ribero, chief subscriptions officer at The Washington Post, said in an email. By removing the paywall barrier to access the Post’s coverage, Ribero said the team believes “many of these readers will become more frequent visitors and even subscribers after they experience our journalism more deeply.”

Dropping the paywall is also a way to test what drives people to subscribe. “We’re constantly experimenting with different strategies, with a mindset that our model to attract readers and subscribers should match the innovation in the newsroom and represent what consumers want,” Ribero said.

The financial services giant, with its media agency Havas Media Group, said it has built what it calls the “Fidelity Stack” in metaverse destination Decentraland, a gamified educational experience to help the very youngest capitalists learn about the ins and outs of investing.  

“The Fidelity Stack allows the next generation of investors to build their financial savvy while enjoying a unique gamified experience,” said Kathryn Condon, Fidelity’s head of marketing channels and emerging platforms. “More than 3.8 million accounts were opened by investors under age 35 last year at Fidelity, so it’s critical that we meet this younger cohort in the spaces they’re already visiting, whether that’s TikTok, Reddit, or now the metaverse.”

And Decentraland seems an apt moniker for a virtual financial interface with potential millennial and soon, if not already, Gen Z investors. “It’s one that afforded us some of the flexibility that we were looking for, to be able to build an experience and to be able to effectively bring to life objectives around this specific initiative,” said Matt Dunn, senior vp of social, content and influencer at Havas Media Group

Dunn acknowledged that some spaces in the metaverse aren’t exactly teeming with potential customers, but they might still have the right customers. “When you get to platforms like Decentraland or Sandbox, it is a smaller cohort of the population that is engaging with it,” he said. “But it does tend to be favorable cohort that you’re looking at. They are younger [and] they usually have some degree of affluence. So there’s a lot of benefit in reaching those audiences.”

Though neither client nor agency would discuss the cost, securing “real estate” in metaverse environments can run into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, along with infrastructure costs. 

“There is definitely a real estate investment ecosystem that is becoming sophisticated. It exists in the metaverse, just like in real life,” said Dave Gross, founding partner at integrated creative shop Anchor Worldwide, who has pitched metaverse experiences to his clients as well. “They’re building shopping malls and casinos. The investments are big — in the millions. But I don’t think the demand is there — it’s on the acquisition side, but not necessarily the utility side.”

While Fidelity has made recent field trips into the metaverse, this initiative is a more permanent — for now — destination. And the gamified elements represent a means of getting younger investors to absorb more information effectively. Dunn explained that Decentraland visitors are encouraged to move up Fidelity Stack’s multi-floor environment, gathering various items along the way, but also learning about ETFs (a newer form of mutual fund that’s traded as a stock) and other financial tools. 

Daniel Kedinger, principal and director of digital strategy at agency Mesh, said the format one chooses can affect the outcome and, in these early days, simpler may be better. “There is definitely more ground to be gained in AR experiences before jumping into complete virtual brand experiences,” said Kedinger. “The vast majority of consumers already have an AR-ready device in their pocket leading to a much faster adoption rate.”

Still, the big question remains: just what is the metaverse in the eye of the beholder? Answering that will determine the measure of “success,” whatever that will be. Indeed, Dunn noted that we’re talking about the metaverse today just like marketers and consumers were talking about the internet in the mid 1990s. Picture the now-classic conversations on NBC. 

Enough said.

The brand is looking to create more in-real-life ways to get in front of consumers as well as position itself as a competitor to apps like Robinhood or Coinbase. “By leveraging out of home, we have been able to get that message in front of a much, much broader and more diverse cohort of people,” said Schaffer-Goddard.

Titan is not alone in its OOH investment. Startup brands like Andie swimwear, JUDY emergency kits, dining app Seated ramped up efforts, launching OOH campaigns within the last year, as previously reported by Digiday. Across the industry, OOH ad spend has been slowly recovering since the pandemic lockdown, reaching $7.1 billion last year, up from the $6.1 billion spent in 2020, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America’s 2021 OOH Facts and Figures Ad Spend Performance report. 

Per Schaffer-Goddard, the entire campaign was done with an unofficial in-house across growth, content and design teams, made up of fewer than 10 team members. However, Titan has worked with agencies for other marketing efforts in the past.

Titan’s current media mix is heavily invested in Instagram, but the app leverages both paid and organic social media strategy across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok, per Schaffer-Goddard. Titan currently has several video ads across Facebook and Instagram, according to Facebook ad manager. 

The OOH buy was less than 25% of the total ad spend in Q1, according to Angus Kirkby, senior growth marketing manager at Titan. The startup has significantly increased its total marketing spend year-over-year, said Kirby, who added that in the first four months of 2022, Titan has already spent what it spent throughout the entire year of 2021. Pathmatics reports that Titan spent $3.8 million across Facebook and Instagram in 2021, significantly up from the $411,000 spent in 2020. 

The OOH space’s slow rebound is a trend that’s expected to continue as people resume regular, in-person activities, according to Jennifer Eenigenburg, vp of digital media at Rain the Growth Agency. 

“OOH matters as a media channel as it can play an effective part of a campaign media mix to generate awareness, reinforce messaging users have been exposed to via other channels, and ultimately encourage engagement with a brand,” Eenigenburg said via email.

In the future, Titan’s Schaffer-Goddard says time will tell if the brand will increase its investment in OOH advertising. 

“The appetite for making a splash in this way, the next time we have that creative idea in-house, is certainly on the road map for us,” she said.

To learn more about this key cohort of Roblox players, Digiday enlisted the help of Tara Weiss, a senior reporter at our sister publication WorkLife, who put us in touch with her 10-year-old daughter, Mia Bronstein. Mia is a Roblox power user; every day after school, she uses the platform to play with other members of her 25-person Roblox group chat, called the Swag Squad.

According to Mia, Roblox is “an online app on your device, where you can join a game and play with all your friends. And you can chat with them in the game, and there’s a lot of games that you can play on it.” During the interview, she and her friends played three games in Roblox: Brookhaven RP (a role-playing life simulator), Super Golf and the cops-and-robbers game Flee the Facility.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Digiday’s conversation with Mia and fellow Roblox enthusiasts, named Andrew and Julie, in the Swag Squad.

Kids aren’t using Roblox to mirror their appearances and personalities in the physical world — they’re using it to experiment with new looks and identities

Digiday: Would you wear this outfit in real life?

Mia: No.

Digiday: Why not?

Mia: In Roblox, it doesn’t really matter, because no one’s going to get you in trouble for wearing something like this. Also, in Roblox, the weather doesn’t matter, and in real life, you have to wear something that fits the weather. On Roblox, I kind of just wear what’s available, and that’s kind of cute, that I personally wouldn’t wear in real life because I want to try something else out. Like, I don’t have blonde hair in real life, but in Roblox I put on blonde hair. And I wear jeans in Roblox, but I don’t really wear jeans in real life.

Digiday: Are your friends in real life any different in Roblox? Do you act differently with your friends in Roblox?

Mia: Some people act different on it. Someone in real life, she’s very nice and very decisive, but in Roblox, she’s kind of indecisive. There’s different versions of me being shy. Because in school, I’m kind of shy, but on Roblox, not really. So, in Roblox, it kind of shows who you are. My friend from third grade, she wears really cool outfits that are really colorful [in real life], but in Roblox, she just wears ripped jeans and a cute shirt. So it kind of shows the different side of you.

Kids enjoy branded Roblox experiences as long as they are genuinely engaging

Digiday: Would you want your favorite movie to show up inside Roblox? Is that something you care about?

Andrew: Well, they are doing something really special — they’re doing the Kid’s Choice Awards here. And there are also concerts!

Mia: Yeah, there was a Lil Nas X concert — it was live, but you could also watch it later. There was a whole server about that. [The server is a computer that coordinates with all participants in a virtual space to ensure their experiences line up.]

Andrew: That was a nice concert — I would definitely like to do another one there. They had a lot of really cool stuff. Turns out it was actually Lil Nas X dancing at the concert. He had this suit on! I also went to a Chipotle thing.

Mia: The Chipotle thing shut down the whole server.

Andrew: Because so many people wanted a free burrito. So 14 million people joined, and all of Roblox got shut down for three days!

Mia: Everyone was playing this online game that Andrew found, but it just wasn’t as good as Roblox. And when it finally turned on, we were all trying to log into our accounts that day, and it didn’t work.

Kids prefer to use tactile devices, such as iPads, to access metaverse platforms

Of the Swag Squad members present for the interview — Mia in person, the others through a Zoom call — the overwhelming majority used iPads to play Roblox; only one used a more traditional laptop computer during the session. 

Digiday: Why do you prefer to use the iPad?

Mia: Because a computer is more complicated. With an iPad, you can zoom in and out easier.

Andrew: It’s the best way.

Mia: When I used the computer [to play Roblox] for the first time, it was pretty hard, because there’s so much more buttons, like ‘W’ to walk. And if you go backward, it’s a whole different thing than just going on an iPad and controlling it through your screen.

Kids are down to spend money in Roblox, and most likely to spend their ‘Robux’ on items or features that change their visual identities

Digiday: How often do you spend Robux on things, and what do you spend it on?

Mia: Usually, I spend Robux on my avatar, because avatars are cool, and they cost a lot of money. So first, I go to the avatars, and then I join games, and I buy stuff in the games. [Robux are priced on a sliding scale and typically go for about 80 a dollar, with the prices of in-game items varying wildly based on their creators’ preferences.]

Digiday: What kind of stuff do you normally buy inside the games?

Mia: Special colors! In [Super Golf], there’s different colors you can choose, and some of them are for Robux. And then there’s premium accounts in games like Brookhaven. There’s premium in just Roblox, where there’s a special game pass in every game. Does anyone have premium in just Roblox?

Julie: I do.

Mia: Julie does. So, Julie gets special things. There’s a game called Club Roblox where she gets a special portal.

Digiday: How hard is it to get your parents to buy Robux for you?

Mia: I use my money and give it to them. Usually, I walk the dog, or I just get some from my grandfather. 

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed kids to spend more time on Roblox

Mia: During the pandemic, we couldn’t really go outside to the park. So when we called our friends and played Roblox, it was kind of a way of connecting, because some of the people in the group chat, I personally know them best after I played Roblox with them. I kind of knew their style, because of the stuff they chose to do in the games. So now I know them much better.

Digiday: So Roblox made you more friends.

Mia: Yeah, mainly connecting with more people. During the pandemic, it was kind of hard, because we didn’t get to see our friends in person. But everyone had an iPad at that time, so we all said to each other, hey, can we get your Gmail? Then, a few months later, we found Roblox, and everyone just got addicted to it.

Kids don’t see themselves playing Roblox for the rest of their lives… yet

Digiday: Do you think you’ll be using Roblox for the rest of your life?

Mia: Um, no. Because if I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian, and then I don’t think I’m going to have time to play Roblox.

“We recognized early on that a lot of creators who were [high profile] gamers already loved Chipotle, so it helped us identify that this was a huge segment we should go after,” said the brand’s vp of marketing Stephanie Perdue at the event. “Then it was about finding those authentic partnerships with the right teams with the right streamers who are already talking about us on their own.”

Like traditional sports and entertainment, gaming is becoming more personality-driven by the day. Increasingly, esports fans are tuning in to watch individual people as well as the teams. So the sponsorship model is shifting toward a personality-driven arrangement between advertisers and team organizations. This shift toward “star power” is evidenced in the types of assets being created for sponsorship deals, from content over logo slaps to product endorsement over product placement.

“We still work with esports teams, but they’re a much smaller part of our overall strategy than they have been in the past,” said PepsiCo’s head of gaming and esports Paul Mascali during a session. “We’re more focused on the cultural side, insofar as working with the tastemakers and the influencers that are deriving gaming culture forward. That’s much more important as we think about how to authentically reach gamers.”

When PepsiCo gave video game streamer and esports personality Dr Disrespect his own limited edition of its Mountain Dew Game Fuel promotional flavors, for example, it sold out in 72 hours. It worked so well, said Mascali, because the tie-up didn’t come across as forced to Dr Disrespect’s fans. They know why he promoted the brand but appreciated the fact that he seemed to actually like it.

“You had a situation where there was an authentic brand for gamers being drunk by someone who’s a celebrity to many of them,” said Mascali. “He’d be drinking and talking about the drink while streaming to his fans who know how he talks about the brands he does and doesn’t like. They trust him. So we had a meaningful connection this way, as opposed to getting him to share a random social post or something along those lines.”

Unsurprisingly, these tastemakers are increasingly at the forefront of advertising around esports — and, more broadly, gaming. After all, many popular esports personalities have large followings to whom they often stream for upwards of eight hours a day. That sort of media exposure is hard to ignore for marketers. Recent deals from the likes of Chipotle, Razer and Adidas bare this out.

“Typically, these deals were pushed and brokered by communication agencies and activation units,” said Umair Saeed, chief operating officer at Blitz Advertising, a Publicis Groupe affiliated sports marketing agency. “Now it’s happening at a more strategic level directly with the CMOs. This has also resulted in the creators being forced to up their packaging game.”

Still, none of this necessarily constitutes a radical sea change in the esports industry. Rather, it is a gradual change that has arguably been underway since the moment a non-endemic brand signed its first esports partnership. It was then that esports really started to become a more expansive entertainment product. Players became celebrities; teams turned into organizations; content deals replaced sponsorships. All these shifts have been impacted by the evolution of competitive gaming. They’re still all esports, of course — just different sides to it. 

“When most people say esports, they mean everything from PewDiePie to Belle Delphine — they just think esports means the internet,” said Ryan Morrison, CEO of esports talent agency Evolved. “And it’s not always the most important distinction, because all they care about is, well, where are the eyeballs? Where’s the most bang for our buck, and how can you show us how to get there? So our advice is, 99 times out of 100, going to be to work with the talent themselves.”

His point being “esports” now means different things to different people. Among experienced industry veterans, the term specifically refers to high-level professional play in a structured league or tournament, usually one of the major esports leagues operated by game developers such as Riot Games and Activision Blizzard. But to the average layperson — including most brand marketers — esports simply refers to any video games played in front of an audience, a definition that could be applied to any popular streamer or influencer.

Esports organizations are, understandably, trying to lean into this idea. 

Fandom for esports teams is often at the mercy of fandom for the games being played. When games are new or hot, viewership increases across the board, and obviously, the reverse is true as well. 

“So it’s incumbent upon esports organizations to find ways outside of regular gameplay to connect with their audiences and engage their fan bases, and that’s often where sponsored content comes in,” said Steve Brauntuch, chief marketing officer at esports and entertainment company Misfits Gaming. “Whether it’s behind-the-scenes access or player interviews or lifestyle content, teams need to be creative with how to integrate sponsors in a way that drives engagement with their fans outside of gameplay and helps build brand equity as well.”

Granted, competitive success still forms a backbone of popularity and legitimacy for many esports organizations. Even Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, whose organization 100 Thieves boasts a deep influencer roster, stressed the importance of high-level competition for his company in a tweet last year, with 100 Thieves investing millions of dollars to build its championship-winning League of Legends squad.

Still, those investments only take teams so far. That much is clear from the number of esports CEOs scrapping their way to profitability as investor money dries up. So much so that there are some early signs that esports organizations could deprioritize competitive success. The culture around esports, goes the thinking, would be enough to supplant the competition itself as a driver of consumption. 

“It will have to fall by the wayside for those organizations that want to remain in business and producing revenues and profits, just because there’s so much more inventory and opportunity around from a content-creation standpoint,” said Justin Miclat, whose talent management firm The Kinetic Group represents popular streamers such as NICKMERCS and SypherPK. “But you shouldn’t be investing $10 million to build your Counter-Strike team, because that’s just one moment, one day, one event.”

Both Miclat and Morrison, whose agency also advises brands entering in the gaming space, said that their individual influencer clients have seen a rise in brand interest, while the frequency of team-level sponsorships has decreased. In an effort to circumvent this, esports organizations are becoming influencers in their own right, with FaZe Clan going as far as to sign a separate organization-wide representation deal with UTA. “What 100 Thieves is today is certainly not what TSM was 10 years ago,” Morrison said.

As esports organizations move toward the holding company model in a bid to secure new revenue streams, their focus on competition will inherently be diluted. The more budget a company dedicates to the manufacturing of peripherals and apparel, the less resources are available to hire and hone a competitive squad. But the competitive side is unlikely to disappear entirely; at the end of the day, “esports” still stands for electronic sports. If esports organizations truly wish to divorce themselves from the stress of competition in the future, they’ll need to pick a new name for their entire industry.