Lessons game companies can learn from Unilever’s brand marketing strategies

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There are more than 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, and the market will surpass $200 billion by 2023. Unilever, the global company with some truly iconic brands, is gunning for it. Last year, Hellmann’s and Animal Crossing: New Horizons joined forces for a charity event; Venus, the women’s razor brand, also spent some time with Animal Crossing, creating realistic, inclusive skins for player characters, a campaign that measured nearly 1 billion impressions. Across the pond, Axe sponsored some top gamers, and in China, they’re sponsoring wildly popular e-sport celebrities  and leagues — and there’s more.

Willem Dinger, global sponsorship director for Unilever, joined Brian Colbert, head of gaming Americas for Meta, at the 2nd Annual GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit to talk about what they’ve learned from their foray into the gaming space, and why brand building is so important for gaming companies.

Gaming is critical for their brands’ marketing strategies, Dinger said. It’s so mission critical that they created their UPLAY division, which is an expertise division within their media team to help demystify the gaming ecosystem for their brand portfolio, offering them outside inspiration in terms of master classes, broadcasters, streamers, creators, influencers.

“We’re helping them co-create briefs, and also helping them with their implementation and activation strategies,” he said. “You would have seen the amazing activation we did with Hellmann’s and Animal Crossing. That was purpose-driven. It was about turning