eSport from the advertiser's point of view

You hear whirling tires screech, and the flaming red Lamborghini Diablo crushes with a deafening blast into transparent window of a car emporium, then you feel a familiar feeling of being pulled out onto the cabin from the chair you are sitting. Then you drive the blaring car out onto the road, and hit the gas. Flying through the city's streets lit by neon signs of "Pepsi", "Coca-Cola", "Marlboro", "Sony", "Samsung", "Nokia"...

Believe me, this is what a marketing manager sees while playing Need for Speed. There's so much space that could be used for ads in games. Like on de_dust and q3dm6...

Ah, advertisement, such a sweet word for everyone involved in business, it means money, the progress, and the art. But why now there is so little advertisement in eSport???

In advertiser's jargon, there is a term "product placement" - it's an advertisement in media like movies. (Good example - James Bond drives BMW in last two episodes). We can see this almost everywhere. For movies, there's even a special department in Hollywood that's working exclusively on that sort of so-called "advertisement". It was created because the attention and interest from corporate business and general advertisers to the movies and other media constantly grows.

(Please note that this is a translation from Russian language - stylistic and grammar mistakes should be expected. -HMage)

So, I often ask myself - what stops game developers from doing this? Nowadays, when the virtual world adopts ever spreading audience, the appearance of advertisement in eSport and just games is profitable and is a thing that gives benefit to virtually everyone...

I will explain. A good, very awaited game has higher chances to get wider audience, than an average Hollywood movie. Besides, computer game will be seen more than just one or two times, unlike the movie. It will be memorized in very extensive detail, remembering precisely where and what is placed everywhere. Therefore, main concept of product placement in computer games has higher chances of having good profitability. The main point of putting ads into the games or movies is not just showing the description of the product and brand, but getting this product associated with the main character or storyline, in our case - in games. If we will be using an easy approach method of visual product placement, then the advertisement won't make people bothered, but actually might come out to be reverse.

We can notice small steps in this direction - Need for Speed 5: Porsche Unleashed... Isn't it a Porsche's promotion? Good and beautiful advertisement, it doesn't distract anyone. And, note that, aimed at the right audience. I've read somewhere, that in Counter-Strike there's a new map of a real US supermarket imaged on the map...

Of course, it's hard to tell when we will get golden 'Rolex' worn on god's hand in 'Black & White', but someday the virtual streets of NFS will glow in neon signs of Coca-Cola, the central arena of dm6 will get a red-blue 'Pepsi' circle and models in quake will run around with 'Nike' logo drawn on their backs. We have some advancement in the right direction now. 'Generation Next' chooses cyber sport, and, sooner or later, the well-known brands will close in. Therefore, appearance of ads in computer games is just a question of time.

And violence is the only thing that is really a huge obstacle for product placement in computer games. It's hard to design something new now -- in advertising strategy of most leading companies there is an orientation on healthful way of life and all of its implications.

Sponsoring in eSport

Today, the idea about sponsoring of eSport looks acceptable only for computer-related companies (Samsung, Intel...) but hey, even they, such big companies, get very little return from this instead of what they could have. Problem is that we don't have any quality company promotion amongst gamers. For example, here in Samara, Pentium-4 cup was held at place, where the computers were upgraded just for this event to... Athlons! From marketing point of view this is very, very, funny... Not. Sponsoring, by itself, requires a lot of feedback. But if there's no feedback, there will be no sponsors. And there will be no feedback until organizers of such events will start to pay attention and give sponsorship money to event promotion campaigns and to eSport as a whole (at least in their region).

Auto is not a luxury, it's a...

Sometime, long time ago, there was an announcer in front of every automobile in France, who was announcing to everyone about incoming monster on wheels. Today, now, it looks funny, isn't it? And it's just only one hundred years difference :) >From the moment, when the first car-racing tournament was held, auto sport became one of the most interesting events to watch and most sponsored sport ever. Bright-yellow beauties cutting the air at 300kmh do attract sponsors. And this is easily explainable: absolutely every manager from mid- and higher business class are owners of their own beauties on the wheels.

And we get the question: why eSport then doesn't seem to be such a good thing to put investment money for sponsoring? And that's the fact - in every company's personal computer there is an installed game. Worst case - solitaire, minesweeper. And even marketing leads and managers DO PLAY Quake 3, Starcraft and Counterstrike...

Answer is easy.

It happened that computer is not a luxury now, it has become a thing that teaches us, entertains us, it helps us at work, at home. Computers are taken as granted, the amount of PC owners and amount of car owners is almost equal, if not PCs having advantage in numbers. But cyber sport - it's a new thing, which was born in the middle of two centuries, and an opinion in the masses is not formed yet completely. Still now, there are articles about "harmful games", and the public opinion often stirs to the negative side for eSport as a whole.

Naturally, a person who wants to raise the status of computer games in public's eyes will have to organize a very good promo-campaign in favor of eSport. This isn't a hard thing for marketing and advertisement professionals. A series of free eSport tournaments and leagues where advertisement is put everywhere, with wide coverage in the media will do the trick. (Most people involved in advertisement have the opportunity of putting such advertisement for free or for little money). The media will respond quite happily to the held tournament and will write articles everywhere, this will attract more people interested in conducting business related to this. Chain reaction...

In fact, applying this popular amongst markethologists strategy will result in quite fast eSport establishment in the public opinion.

First and all, it's necessary to raise the importance of eSport and computer games in the public. And reaching this goal today is quite easy, by using the information about the fact, that eSport is accepted at government level. (In Russia. -HMage)

It's a good idea to show off some examples of associative marketing strategy. Several years ago dental protection wasn't related to chewing gums. Nowadays chewing gums are thought to be beneficial, thanks to Dirol and Orbit. Previously, before appearing of TV sets from Mitsubishi with "auto-turn" function, we couldn't think of "rotating" tv's; we couldn't think that chocolate can stay in our hands without melting before M&M's came up. And there are lots of other examples like this...
All of this is quite unusual information for an average person. Nobody couldn't think that, after the certification of order №449, computer games will be approved as an official sport. (Remember it's Russia. -HMage)

And if we bring this fact to the public, the eSport will be firmly sown into its conscience, as a good, massive, and necessary thing.

eSport needs advertisers

From everything I've spoken above we can do a conclusion, that at the current stage - we do need good marketing specialists and advertising people, which are playing and loving the game, and advance cyber sport to public conscience. More than we need pro-gamers now. If we'll have advertisement - we'll have a public approval, and we'll get sponsors... And we'll get cyberathletes, who will be having good money for their participation.

There's a situation in Russia, where a formal typical standard sport is decaying. Therefore eSport is taking popularity very fast by occupying the vacuum formed, attracting more and more lads by its progressiveness and attractiveness. And this is exactly why eSport has the future!

(Translated by HMage)

                                                      To be continued...