Influencers rule the games world

Influencers rule the games world

Here we are! One of the yearly milestones in the growing world of gaming is finally here: FIFA 20 is finally out. However, no need to be a hardcore football fan to read this post, as my intention is to address the public relations – and communication strategies elaborated by the editor Electronic Arts (EA) prior to the release date which was the 24^th of September – midnight.

How big, you say?

To set the scene with a few numbers, Statista evaluated the games industry to surpass 138 billion dollars in revenue by 2021. Moreover, the games content industry happening via streaming on video platforms as YouTube and Twitch are supposed to reach 6 billion dollars this year (2019). More concretely, gaming is now bigger than Hollywood and keeps growing every year. Video games now have their own awards show, professional leagues, streaming networks, and much more. For the anecdote, the gaming sphere reached a peak in the past year when rapper Drake played with the streamer “Ninja” live on Twitch, gathering an audience of 600 000 viewers enjoying the live gameplay.

On the public relations perspective much can be observed and linked with established PR theories and the latest findings on PR strategies for promoting video games. The aim of this blog post is to identify the best practices in this particular field by looking more closely at all the fuzz around FIFA 20, who’s public relations were managed by the Los Angeles based company “fortyseven communications”.

 How should I promote a video game?

Whereas AAA video games dedicate millions of dollars for traditional mass advertising channels, new efficient ways of organizing your communication strategies are at the heart of current researches.

Today’s best practice when it comes to granting visibility to a new video game wants you to approach influencers. A study from 2019 pinpointed the fact that 200 million individuals were regular viewers on the live streaming platform “Twitch.tv”. Furthermore, the consumption of content appeared to be much more dynamic and based on engagement and response between viewers communities and streamer compared to traditional media, which elevates this channel to an important platform in today’s media landscape.

-       Requirements for a good relationship with an influencer

As the PR teams at EA for did massively for FIFA 20, reach out to the influencers who match your values and for which your game would fit the editorial line and the viewers community.

As a games PR practitioner, you must be able to manage mutually beneficial relationships with prominent games influencers. The game you are pitching to an influencer to play on Livestream must match the type of game the influencer’s audience comes to expect from him or her. Know the influencer and know the audience. If it’s not genuine, it’s not going to work.

Relationships with influencers have their chances to start at conferences like the E3, Gamescom, the DICE Summit, the Game Awards,… These are the times where you can actually talk to the streamers about games and build relations. Furthermore, presenting games at such events will be beneficial as gaming media all cover those events. To give you an idea, 25 out of the 40 staff members from fortyseven communications are deployed at the E3 conference.

-       Be true and go for it

Influencers rule. For whatever type of game you want to promote there will be a bunch of streamers who already gathered communities that are part of the audience you intend to reach. Make use of it! I was personally impressed to see how much more compared to previous years EA used this method. Besides having huge visibility in tram stops, television commercials or gaming media, EA’s PR teams reached out to the biggest FIFA streamers in most countries of the planet, gave them the game prior to release and let them share gameplay content. If the game is good and fits the audience, magic will happen.

Gaspar de Bellefroid is an Entertainment communication master student at the University of Amsterdam. He discovered his first academic interests in the research of potential positive effects of media on individuals.

Literature inspirations:

Gillin, P. (2008). New media, new influencers and implications for the public relations profession. Journal of New Communications Research, 2(2), 1-10.

Koch, T., & Obermaier, M. (2014). Blurred lines: German freelance journalists with secondary employment in public relations. Public relations review, 40(3), 473-482.

Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. (2019). Live Streamers on Twitch. tv as Social Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13(4), 321-335.

How (not) to respond to a crisis: the case Barilla

Cecilia Badano

“Where there is Barilla, there is home” … but not everyone is welcome

Barilla’s advertisement with its most famous slogan: 

“Where there is Barilla, there is home” ©Barilla

In 2013, the Italian food company Barilla found itself in the middle of a lively global debate and, sadly for them, that time, it was not about pasta being the best thing in the world.

On September 25^th,  Guido Barilla, the chairperson of the brand, made some spontaneous comments against same-sex families during an interview on an Italian radio program. Not only he made clear to be personally against LGBTQ+ adoptions but also declared that Barilla, as a historical brand, has an idea of “traditional family” that does not include the LGBTQ+ ones and, as a consequence, it would never create advertising contents portraying them. Even worse, he stated that in case homosexual people did not like the brand’s communication they would be free to eat pasta from other brands.

The translated transcript of Guido Barilla’s comments.©Stefano Pace, Bernardo Balboni & Giacomo Gistri

Besides those statements, the first communication response from the company ignited the public dissent, threatening the corporate’s reputation. The LGBTQ+ community and a wider segment of the public were outraged, employees felt embarrassed and partners’ trust and confidence in the brand decreased.

In this debacle, social media played a central role: the hashtag #boycottbarilla was created and competitors started sharing teasing posts supporting the LGBT+ community.

Buitoni’s Facebook post: “In our home there is room for everyone”. 

Screenshot taken from Facebook

Garofalo’s Facebook post: 

“The only families that are not Garofalo’s are the ones that don’t love good pasta”.
Screenshot taken from Facebook

Never a failure (?), always a lesson… 3 in this case

Lesson n°1: respond quickly

Analysing the timeline of Barilla’s first response strategy, the principal thing we should learn is: be proactive.

As stated by Mats Eriksson (2018), timing on social media is a crucial element that PR practitioners should keep in mind because it significantly impacts the level of credibility among the public and help avoiding the spread of rumours. Barilla clearly failed in this since it reacted only the day after the interview was realised, when most news media were already covering the remarks and the debate on social media was already a firestorm.

The company shared an apology statement from Guido Barilla, first as a press release (you can have a look at the company’s 2013 archive here) and after few hours on its social media (Facebook and Twitter). The day after, a second press release was shared, in which the company apologized and made clear to be open to diversity and to support all human rights. Finally (three days after the interview!) a video apology of Guido Barilla was released on the brand’s YouTube channels. It is so bad to deserve a lesson on its own.

Make sure to watch it though!

Lesson n° 2: if you apologise, mean it

The best thing that the company did as part of its communication plan was apologizing. Since it was not an accident and no products or facilities were involved there was not much left to explain; for this reason, the best practice was the one adopted: apologizing and asking for forgiveness.

But you remember the video, right?

©Laura Beck

Research shows that PR practitioners shouldn’t focus only on “what to say” but also on “how to say it”. As you could see, Guido Barilla was clearly reading from a text from autocue that was written for him by a communication expert, which made the whole message sound flat and strategic. According to Yao and Lai (2018), when releasing a video apology, especially in case of a preventable crisis, it is very important that the public perceives the consistency between the actual content of the message and the emotional response (the emotions revealed by the facial expressions of the person apologizing).

This divergence and the fact that the video was posted three days later are surely the reasons why the apology was not welcomed among the public and perceived as insincere.

Can we blame the audience this time?

Lesson n° 3: Learn how to handle the pros and the cons of Social Media

We already discussed how the brand made use of several social media platforms to share its communications. What we still didn’t mention is the fact that the PR department decided to mute the comment section on the company’s social media platforms in order to avoid the flood of negative messages. This communication strategy turned out to be a big mistake since the public perceived it as a lack of transparency and willingness to confront over the issue.

As shown by Macnamara’s study (2014), some PR practitioners seem to understand the fact that social media are “double-edge sword”, which surely help delivering the corporate messages but also increase the level of transparency and dialogue expected by the public.

Apparently, Barilla’s communication experts were not among those.

To wrap up

When planning a crisis communication strategy, remember to:

• Be fast

• Be sincere

• Be transparent

And whether possible, train your managers to count to ten before talking.

©Libero Quotidiano Online

About the author

Cecilia Badano is an Italian student, currently approaching the end of the MSc in Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. After her bachelor in Milan, she decided to leave “la bella Italia” to start her new life in The Netherlands. Her interest in Media Relations and PR in general led her to undertake courses from both the Corporate Communication and Political Communication tracks in order to have a wider perspective on these topics.