Levelling Up: The Brands Winning in Gaming

Gaming has evolved into one of the most powerful cultural forces on the planet, with audiences larger than those of film and music combined. For brands, the opportunity is vast – but so are the risks.

Gamers can sniff out inauthenticity in a heartbeat, and heavy-handed advertising rarely survives with the community. The brands that are thriving in this space aren’t just showing up with logos; they’re speaking the language of gamers, building authentic relationships, and creating experiences that feel native to the world's players love.

From inventive in-game activations to fandom-driven partnerships, the playbook for brand success in gaming is being rewritten – and agencies at the forefront are helping shape the rules.

LBB spoke to a number of industry experts to understand the strategies behind gaming and how brands can tap into its powerful communities.

Tomasz Przeździecki, CEO at Game Changer, part of Serviceplan Group

The brands winning in gaming right now are the ones treating it as part of culture, not just another ad channel. One example from Poland is the Virtual Vibes music festival on ‘Roblox’, produced by Bank Millennium, which shows how powerful that shift can be.

Instead of dropping in ads, they built a live music event where 400,000 participants spent over 25 minutes exploring, playing, and co-creating. That’s rare in any paid media environment – you’re not renting attention, you have to earn it. What made it stand out was orchestration: the experience extended into cinema, radio, Twitch, and TikTok, multiplying reach far beyond ‘Roblox’. Add accessibility features like sign-language and audio description, and you have a blueprint: build inclusively, design for participation, and treat gaming worlds as core cultural stages.

Brien Holman, co-founder/chief creative officer, We Are Royale

It’s fitting that, in the past, when we crafted a marketing strategy, we discussed a target audience and became as specific as possible, sometimes breaking down individual game features into separate targets to address that niche audience.

Now, we can discuss how to appeal to the larger community and fandom of the game, and find ways to communicate with them, not at them. We tap into the culture of the game and market it from within.

Maybe it’s because consumers are more savvy than ever, or that gamers have simply grown up in a world where brands are constantly telling them to buy their products. Whatever the reason, gamers dislike big corporations telling them what to do, what to buy, and what to say. Instead, we’re heading into an age of transparency and communication, where the best brands will be those that geek out with their community.

Those doing it right will manage their own communities, taking notes and addressing feedback in their development cycles. For example, Hello Games turned public sentiment on its head with the ‘No Man’s Sky’ launch in 2016, by being honest and releasing updates that fundamentally improved the game – establishing itself as one of the greatest comebacks in gaming history. They had the community’s attention and marketed the updates with simple but cryptic emojis, posted by the studio’s founder, Sean Murray.

‘Final Fantasy XIV Online’ is also a decade old, but it is a massively popular multiplayer online game from Square Enix. To market last summer’s expansion, they crafted a mock-tourism site that was littered with fan Easter eggs, which featured in the images, copy, recipes, and even the legal lines at the bottom of the microsites.

Brands that speak directly to their audience are finding success by being open, transparent, and leaning the marketing spend into campaigns that actively rally their community’s fandom. Gamers want any excuse to share in the games they love. Marketing doesn't need to try hard; it needs to give fans a reason to ‘fan out.’

Marius Froehlich, associate director, engagement strategy at tms

One way for brands to engage the gaming community is by extending fandoms to their own products and services through limited-edition partnerships. A standout example is McDonald’s recent collaboration with Warner Bros. for ‘A Minecraft Movie’.

To appeal to both adult and younger fans, McDonald’s launched two parallel offerings: an adult ‘Minecraft Movie’ Meal and a kids’ Happy Meal. The Happy Meal featured six recognisable toy characters from the film and game, along with a ‘Minecraft’ book. The adult meal offered six blockified toy versions of iconic McDonald’s characters, each accompanied by a trading card that unlocked exclusive ‘Minecraft’ skins, blending physical collectables with in-game rewards.

The integration extended beyond the meals themselves. Packaging and in-restaurant signage adopted a blockified visual identity, with the adult meal resembling a golden treasure chest and the Happy Meal showcasing characters like the Sheep, Bee, and Creeper. A digital extension invited fans to scan QR codes on packaging to unlock a chest quest mini-game, where players collected resources to craft items tied to the film’s storyline.

The campaign succeeded by tapping into the cultural momentum of the movie’s release, while feeling authentic to the ‘Minecraft’ community. Fans had already recreated McDonald’s restaurants and menu items in-game, making the partnership a natural fit.

Thanh Dao, managing director/partner of Jung von Matt NERD

Forget the usual giveaways, influencers and glossy campaigns, real brand impact happens where young audiences actually spend their time gaming. In Germany, 89% of 16–29-year-olds play video games, making platforms like ‘Roblox’ and ‘Fortnite’ prime territory for engagement. Cosnova, the company behind the beauty brands, essence and Catrice, proved it with Kingdom of Essentia on ‘Roblox’. Packed with interactive storytelling and eye-catching design, the world has already pulled in 14.7 million visits, with players spending an average of 30 minutes exploring.

That’s with a TikTok-influenced target group that would otherwise, swipe through vast amounts of content within seconds. So, while the connection between beauty products and virtual gaming worlds may not be immediately apparent to many, it clearly offers enormous growth potential for brands.

Sparkasse, Germany’s largest network of savings banks, showed the same daring spirit, when it launched its horror game on ‘Fortnite’. With streamers amplifying fun piggybank mascot Berta, she became the star of the spooky escape adventure.
The takeaway? Brands that enter gaming authentically don’t just get noticed, they build loyalty. Be bold, play smart and win where the next generation already is.

Teddy Notari, group brand lead at GUT LA

Gaming may have just made the Big Game look tiny.

The Game Awards - the most-watched gaming event in the world - drew over 154 million global livestreams in 2024. That’s not just bigger than the Oscars or Grammys; it even outpaces the Super Bowl, if you look at total tune-in numbers.

The gaming community outdrawing Hollywood stars and supercharged athletes?

Nobody saw that coming.

Yet unlike the Super Bowl, brands haven’t flooded in. That’s the opportunity. Gaming’s biggest night is still an untapped arena for marketers — a place where showing up right could mean owning one of the fastest-growing, most influential audiences in culture.
We’ve seen what this kind of partnership can do — even when it isn’t connected to The Game Awards. Take ‘Heinz Hidden Spots’ campaign in ‘Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific’. Working with Gut São Paulo, Heinz mapped out safe-snacking zones on the Caldera map and partnered with Activision for an integrated campaign. Twitch and YouTube streamers revealed these ‘hidden spots’ during live play, showing how gamers could take small breaks (with burgers and Heinz ketchup in hand) without losing in the match. The campaign delivered strong engagement, valuable impressions, and real relevance — it wasn’t just about visibility; it was about meeting gamers where they are and solving a tiny pain point in their play.

So, with The Game Awards now rivalling the Super Bowl in cultural scale, the real question is: will it become the next battleground for brands, where ad competition is as fierce as the games themselves?

Hannah Mckeown, junior strategist at M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment

When brands want to enter gaming, their immediate question is ‘what game do we partner with?’ While a tried-and-true method for many, integrating a brand into a game, or creating one themselves in the likes of ‘Roblox’ or ‘Fortnite’, requires a high level of budget, extended timings, and long-term commitment that many new teams looking to find their voice in gaming are not set up for.

Gaming culture is no longer a niche. Now spanning across sport, music, TV and film – it is a true cross-passion space for brands to tap into and create deeper connections with gaming communities.

From sport games crossing over with real world players such as in EAFC, WWE, F1 and Skate, to going to the Royal Albert Hall for an orchestral performance of epic video game soundtracks like ‘Elden Ring’, or seeing ‘Minecraft’ recreated in live action on the big screen; gaming communities are looking for more ways to be immersed in their favourite pastime.

As many gaming conventions close down around the world, the gap that brands can fill is widening, creating new opportunities for nurturing gaming connections, previously lost by many fan communities.

Getting into gaming culture through passions and community engagement makes brands useful to gaming communities and fosters brand love. It also helps brands take a meaningful stance that stands out.

Gamers already love their games, whether indie gems or large-scale franchises, so, help them love them more.

Adam Bodfish, executive creative director at McCann Birmingham

Play the role of entertainer, not salesman.

If traditional advertising in gaming were a character, it’d be that guy who joins your squad, ignores the mission, and just shouts about how great his gear is. Technically, he’s in the game, but everyone wishes he wasn’t.

Gamers don’t want advertising – they want escape. And if brands want to join that escape, they need to play the role of entertainer, not salesman.

That’s exactly the thinking behind our work with Acer Predator. Predator isn’t just about fast processors or advanced cooling systems - that’s brochure talk. Instead, we turned those features into a squad of superhero-style characters. Suddenly, the dry tech specs became a cast of personalities on a rescue mission. And that’s the key - shifting from specs and slogans to storytelling and spectacle.

Because if you show up in gaming like a salesman at a party, you’ll be ignored. But show up with something that feels like it belongs – a world, a narrative, a character that could easily live inside the games people love – then you’re not an intruder, you’re part of the entertainment.