Twitch can be explained as a gaming social media platform. Initially, this wasn’t so, because Justin Kan and Emmett Shear created the platform (then called Justintv) in 2007 to have other categories. It was renamed and subsequently became an only-game streaming platform when the gaming category attracted more visits and had more Twitch content. Twitch’s “powerspike” happened because of the then-growing interest in electronic sports (esports).
Have you ever wondered the miracle behind the thousands of Twitch advertising campaigns, the high Twitch influencer costs, and the unending and long-form Twitch content?
We have too, and this is what we’ve observed.
While a lot of praise should be given to the developers for coming up with this unique idea and sticking to it till the very end, you’ll agree with us that the work of growing the platform was done by its users and Twitch influencers. Unlike other social media platforms where product promotions were done in the form of posts and recorded video, it was live streaming or nothing for Twitch.
If you’ve been to a Twitch live streaming, you might get lost at first, due to the colorful emojis and words used by the life commenters and the fast and loud sound produced by the Twitchers while gaming. A Twitch influencer’s ability to master at least one game, keep his viewers engaged and even respond to life chats is what brands wish to tap into when doing a Twitch influencer marketing campaign.
One more notable trait of this platform is the length of its Twitch content. According to their broadcasting guidelines, Twitchers are allowed to do a live stream for up to 48hours, in contrast to the 12 seconds attention span rule for social media posting. Thankfully, all Twitch videos are deleted after 60 days. This also means that brands have limited time to achieve their Twitch marketing campaign goals before the videos are deleted.
Some brands have done some impressive Twitch influencer marketing campaigns, and we’d love to share them with you as a source of inspiration for your brand’s campaign on Twitch.
Top 8 Twitch influencer marketing examples.
- EA and Roryplays:
The gaming brand, EA, associated with a female Twitch influencer: Roryplays to promote their game: The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs. And this collaboration with a Twitch micro-influencer shows the power of nano and micro influencing in digital marketing.
RoryPlays has over 23k followers and is known for her less violent and colorful games like indie, AAA, etc. And although her follower count is nothing compared to those of the top Twitch influencers, her audience demographics perfectly suited EA’s campaign goal.
Her two hours live stream promotion video saw her playing The Sims 4 game, pointing out exciting features and teaching her audience how it is played.
- South Park and iiJeriichoii:
IIJeriichoII is a popular vlogger, gaming comedian, and Twitch influencer. He’s a master of PUBG and Fortnite, so, with his over 1 million followers, the 25 years old US Twitcher was the perfect Twitcher for South Park.
His popularity and high engagement rate were what attracted a game promotion from Ubisoft and South Park’s “The Fractured But Whole“. And as expected IIJeriichoII made a good promotion by intermittently reminding his audience to check out the game through the link he provided.
He heightened the engagement and interest of his viewers when he told them that he was playing the game for the first time. When he climbed steadily from beginner to intermediate level, he pointed out takeaway points on how to be good at the game. This, in turn, gained his viewers’ trust and a high conversion rate for his sponsors.
- Nissin’s collaboration with Pokimane and OMGitsfirefox:
Surprisingly (or not-so-surprisingly), non-gaming brands are also tapping into Twitch’s billion viewers to promote their products. One of them is Nissin, a popular Japanese noodles company.
They chose two popular female Twitch influencers Pokimane and OMDitsfirefoxx for this promotion but Pokimane’s live stream got the highest views and interaction. This might be because she has over 8million followers against OMgitsfirefoxx’s 745k followers, but if you watched their streams, you’ll see that her promotion was more engaging.
Pokimane’s live stream promotion saw her making and eating Nissing cup noodles after she played her favorite games for hours. She even went the extra mile to use a slurp meter to measure her noodle eating noise level. This fun and subtle promotion made her viewers buy Nissin cup noodles to check their noodle eating noise level.
- Ubisoft and Lirik:
Lirik is a popular Twitch influencer with over 2 million followers and a staple promotion deal with Discord. The anonymous gamer and cat lover worked with popular gaming brand: Ubisoft to promote Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege game.
Ubisoft picked this particular influencer for their campaign because of his history of being a pro battlefield and destruction player. This means that his 2 million followers and the 40k people that always watch his videos would be more inclined to download and play Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege as it’s a destruction and gadgetry game.
Perhaps it’s his anonymity that gained him his high engagement rate because Lirik never misses answering an important live comment no matter how intense his gaming gets.
For instance, at some point in his promotion game, a viewer asked if he recommended the game. Playfully he said, “if you’re asking sponsored Lirik, then the answer is yes, but if you’re asking unsponsored Lirik, then the answer is yes also. I think I love this game’s features”. This answer gained his viewers’ trust as they saw that he was giving an honest review of the game.
- CashApp and Trainwreckstv:
This is another example of a non-gaming brand Twitch influencer marketing app. CashApp is a 2ist mobile money transfer app that has established a reasonable Twitch following. In this campaign, Cashapp sponsored 100 Twitch podcast videos featuring a Twitch micro-influencer: Trainswreckstv as host, and many other Twitch influencers.
All Trainswreckstv had to do as the host was to invite Twitch influencers to discuss both relevant and irrelevant life matters and casually mention the features and benefits of the cash app intermittently. The stream was then aired on all the influencer’s channels which was a good brand awareness strategy.
Although this promotion format may seem out of focus and the benefits: not reassured, it helped that the show ran for 100 episodes which equaled consistent publicity at a low cost.
- KFC and DrLupo:
America’s popular fast food restaurant: KFC partnered with Twitch influencers DrLupo and Anthony Kongphan to promote their chicken wing dish plus some food giveaways.
Drlupo’s live stream got the highest view, because of his 4.4 million followers against Anthony Konphan’s 507k. The two influencers played PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds during their live stream where DrLupo recurrently repeated “Gotta get that chicken. KFC! KFC!” as a subtle reminder of the video’s sponsors.
To add some spice, the influencers urged their viewers to type “winner winner” when their favorite gamer wins a round to qualify for a KFC food giveaway.
- Zumiez and shroud:
Zumiez, an American clothing company partnered with the fourth most popular Twitch streamer, Shroud, to promote their brand.
Since Zumiez is a non-gaming brand whose target market was a mixture of the two genders (something that Twitch lacked), they organized for Shroud to wear their brand’s cloth while streaming on Twitch and to make a similar post on Twitter.
Because Shroud has over 9million followers and a reputation of driving up to a 10% conversion rate, this collaboration brought both brand awareness and direct sales to the clothing brand.
- Redbull and ninja:
In 2018, the popular energy drink company, RedBull did a brand collaboration with the number one Twitch streamer: Ninja and DrLupo. Although the brand isn’t directly related to gaming, they did a Twitch campaign because gamers need the energy boost to accomplish their long-hour gaming.
The live stream was scheduled to hold from 8:21 pm to 5:am in October 2018 and featured ninja and Drlupo playing side by side (virtually) and giving autographs. This collaboration was so successful that Redbull and Ninja did a re-collabo with the same theme on new year’s eve.
Final thoughts.
The examples above stand as proof that both gaming and non-gaming brand can launch an influencer campaign on any esports gaming platform, especially Twitch. All you need to do is to choose the best influencer and come up with clever ideas to make the campaign interesting.
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