2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Battle of the gamers is a 3 month Esports extravaganza presented by BMW that lived live and online bringing together top talent, influencers and content to the gaming community in the middle east. With competitions taking place in 9 different countries, involving both mobile games ( BMW Mobile cup) and Console/pc based games. BMW was able to create a platform through BOTG for gamers in these countries and establish BMW’s digital gaming ecosystem with brand-new social media channels dedicated to gaming and a bespoke website. BOTG positioned BMW at the forefront of gaming in the region and helped build affinity.

Background

BMW’s communication is highly dependent on global activity, and our goal is to find a way to resonate local audiences in different ways, including channel diversity. We wanted to take it one step further by creating a new pillar of communication through an exponentially growing scene, Esports. The global pandemic began to plague, changing the way people envisioned life, and impacting industries at scale. The main goal was to position the brand that has no affinity within the local MENA Esports community in the most genuine way possible, while achieving the following objectives to address the bottom line. • Drive mass participation to build an Esports CRM of 17,500 participants. • Become a leader in automotive Esports market share with a target KPI of 60%. • Maximize engagement rate & viewership across of 10% & 20 Million respectively. • Gather 6,000 participants who are in-market to buy a car

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Battle of the gamers embodied a gaming & esports tournament that was tailored to the region. With mobile gaming Mobile gaming driving casual play and new audiences given low barriers of entry we focused on launching the BMW Mobile cup part of the main tournament which saw gamers compete in 4 of the most popular games from different genres. The main tournament BOTG lived live and online bringing together top talent, influencers and content for 3 continuous months with the main focus to engage all type of gamers in the region with 4 main title games from different genres and a valued prize pool for the winners.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Our gaming strategy needs to address the lockdown situations as most countries in the region are coming in and out of lockdowns which means no physical event can take place, the economic standing and different gaming habits of each country. With mobile gaming being the most popular in terms of users we prioritized mobile gaming & injected trending titles such as Among Us, COC, COD to maximize the engagement and number of participants. BOTG focused on the main gaming markets in the Mena region with a main focus on the GCC as it holds a gaming penetration of 83%, which is a potential pool of 44M enthusiasts. Influencers were a key part of the engagement, and they not only joined that actual competition, but told their story on stream, led on giveaways, and delivered long, much-anticipated content that their fans wanted to see live on BMW’s stream.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Battle of the gamers took place over a period of 3 months full of gaming competitions in the 9 different markets. We created a bespoke BMW esports middle east website for participants to register and be able to participate in each tournament. BOTG had 2 phases one was local for each country and the country winners were qualified to regional finals in each respective game. Influencers and professional esports teams were at the core of driving registrations through different activations with BMW cars and social media placements and also participated with the casters live on the stream in a virtual BMW studio that showcased a VR version of the BMW M4. All the competitions were live streamed on the BMW esports ME twitch and Facebook channels, special discord servers were created for participants to communicate with each other.

List the results (30% of vote)

Established BMW’s digital gaming ecosystem with brand-new social media channels dedicated to gaming and a bespoke website which allowed us to tighten the consumer journey towards test-drives. We achieved our goal of becoming the dominant automotive Esports player, with more than 10 000 players participated across both BMW mobile cup and BOTG. The tournament achieved a reach of 11 Million with 15 million views across all channels. With the establishment of the BMW esports ME social media accounts, the pages saw a rise in following that reached 41 00 social media fans, a 5% ad recall rate. On the BMW esports ME website we recorded a 2m 9s dwell time as well as 360 000 unique visits. On the business side of things the tournament generated around 4500 leads from the different targeted markets.