How FaZe Ethically Finessed 92,000 Twitter Users, the $7,000,000 NRG Thoom House, Another OpTic Rebrand, and MORE
It's been a busy week in esports, with lots of marketing consequences.
Happy Sunday everyone,
It's been a busy week in the gaming and esports marketing world. Lot's to cover and lot's to learn.
To be honest, each of these topics deserves it's own in-depth case study (one of which drops Wednesday 👀).
Before we get into it, if you're new around here be sure to subscribe so this hits your inbox on time every week:
Today at a glance:
FaZe finessed the entirety of Twitter on Friday with a viral campaign, and everyone happily followed along with it. Why'd that happen?
NRG announced the signings of major streamers Daequan and Hamlinz, along with the founding of the "Thoomin" House — which is taking quite a different approach to most content houses we see today.
eUnited hinting at a possible CDL return with their newest campaign "Project Rebirth?" Let's take a closer look at how they're leveraging social media to build hype.
How did FaZe trick Twitter users into marketing for them?
On Thursday, FaZe Clan officially signed close to 92,000 new members — well, kind of.
They allowed Twitter users who liked a specific tweet to join FaZe for 24 hours.
Now, this campaign deserves a full case study, but in short, why would they do this? And why did it work?
Here's my take. In the book Contagious, the author highlights how one of the key drivers of virality is creating something that people want to share.
One way to create the desire to share is to make sure that sharing makes the sharer look good.
Giving fans the opportunity to "join" FaZe clan for the day does exactly that. It taps into the audience's desire for status, and in return FaZe generated massive amounts of visibility.
Adding to the visibility of the campaign, several brands also hopped on the opportunity to joined the team for a day — McDonald's being the most notable.
Did you join FaZe for the day? Let me know in the replies.
NRG dropped $7,000,000 on a new content house, and brought on streamers Daequan and Hamlinz
Perhaps the biggest story of the week was the return of high-profile streamers, Daequan and Hamlinz.
The reveal was initiated with mysterious posters around LA, followed by a billboard in Vegas promoting the reveal stream.
On Thursday at 1pm, NRG revealed that they were the new home for Daequan and Hamlinz. And speaking of homes, they also unveiled the $7M Thoom House located in Los Angeles.
What makes this content house different, though?
Well, rather than bringing together a group of already established creators, Daequan and Hamlinz decided to have a group of their close friends join them in the Thoom House. These friends are starting their content creation journey without a massive audience, with the goal to launch their careers while in the Thoom House.
The approach seems to be well received. I think it has great potential for more organic-feeling content, similar to that of content houses from a few years back (i.e. OpTic at 6050).
Of course, only time will tell if the approach has legs or not. What do you think?
(Oh, and there will definitely be a more in depth case study coming soon on this topic)
A closer look at eUnited's "Project: Rebirth" social media campaign.
Let me preface this by saying, at the time of writing this, I still don't know the outcome of this campaign. Many are speculating that it's a return to CoD, with Cloud 9 also stirring the pot on possible CDL expansion, but there's no way to know for sure.
Regardless of the outcome, I think it's worth taking a look at how they've built hype on Twitter over the past week or so.
On August 25, they tweeted: “Access is denied. Purge initiated. System OFFLINE. [ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED (0x55186)]” and shut their Twitter down for the day.
The next day, they tweeted out another message announcing the name "Project:Rebirth" and directing fans to go the the URL teabags.gg.
The site was a mock landing page for a fictional tea company, with the call-to-action on the page taking visitors to another page with 3 images — one of which teased the reveal for the announcement on Sunday. So, by the time you're reading this, we may already know with Project Rebirth is referring to.
Overall, this approach is more creative than your typical one-tweet announcement video. In an esports industry where copying is commonplace, innovative campaigns help your brand to stand out. Applies to brands in any industry, really.
The mystery created by the campaign keeps fans engaged over the course of the week with the promise of a big payoff at the end of the journey. If the announcement is in fact a return to COD esports, I think the build up hype will have been worth it.
It'll be interesting to revisit this topic once we know what the official announcement is.
BONUS: OpTic to sell brand to Envy?
Still processing this one, and will probably cover it in next week’s newsletter.
But yes, this appears to happening in whatever alternate timeline we’re living in right now. From a marketing perspective, my initial thoughts go to how this will affect the perception of the OpTic brand. For it being one of the most storied brands in esports, it has gone through quite a lot in the past few years.
Another consequence of this is the introduction of 1-2 new teams into the CDL. As mentioned before, it looks like C9 and eUnited are the two frontrunners.
Do you think this is the right move for OG, and the league overall? Would love to hear your thoughts.
You can read the full story from Jacob Wolf and Cory Davis here.
Pull up a seat, stay a while
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Until Wednesday at 9am PST,
Tommy