PEOPLE PASSIONS AND PR EFFECTIVENESS
PR is most effective when several key factors align, making it possible to maximize reach, engagement, and impact. Engagement is the key factor for making your communication land in any kind of PR outreach, and that’s why PR is most effective when it caters to topics people are passionate about.
There are several key reasons, such as:
- Connection: People are more likely to pay attention to and engage with content that resonates with their emotions and interests. Emotionally charged messages are more memorable and can lead to stronger recall and sharing.
- Relevance: PR efforts linked to specific interests are more relevant to the target audience, increasing the likelihood of positive reception.
- Authenticity: Addressing topics that people care about can make the PR message appear more authentic and genuine. If passionate individuals feel that the message is authentic, they are more likely to become advocates or ambassadors for the cause, product, or brand being promoted.
- Active Participation: When PR campaigns align with people’s passions, individuals are more likely to participate actively, whether through sharing content, commenting, or attending events.
That’s why entertainment is one of the industries where you can boost your PR by catering to the precise and pre-existing audience. By default, your offer as an entertainment producer aligns in its character with the audience’s interests, about which they are very passionate. Building an image in entertainment depends on ensuring that your communication aligns with those passions, so its reach will be expanded.
MODERN ENTERTAINMENT AND GAMING AS ITS EXAMPLE
Entertainment has undergone many crucial and game-breaking changes coinciding with the coming of Gen Z. The always-online world has created new forms of entertainment consumption – and a very individual approach to what our entertainment is.
Some trends in entertainment that were essential in shaping today’s audiences are:
- Social media dominance as the prime means of communication
- Streaming services as complex entertainment platforms
- Subscription-based access to entertainment
- Easy content creation and publishing, and User Generated Content
- Rise of influencer-centered entertainment
- Immersive entertainment (VR, AR, Metaverse, etc.)
- Strong communities form around their favorite content.
- Real-time engagement in entertainment
Gaming is a prime example of the evolution of entertainment. It encompasses at least several new models listed above – to a viable and measurable effect. It also rose to the prominence it has today – one of the largest and highest-grossing entertainment industries – in part with the rise of the new generations.
Today’s gaming differs highly from its not-so-mass-oriented beginnings, but also its modern face exemplifies changes to the world as a whole.
WHAT MATTERS IN REACHING PASSIONATE AUDIENCES?
- Craft relatable stories – to communicate with a certain group, you need to feel relatable to them – share their interests, and feelings, and see the world through the same lens. Your stories need to show that you are in essence at least in part one of them.
- Use influencers to leverage your comms – creative cooperation with influencers can do magic for your public image. Influencers are the main voice of the generation nowadays and can become a tube you use to speak to your audiences in their language.
- Deliver your message in slices – Gen Z is used to short-form content and has to share attention between hundreds of messages they see every day. Sparseness is king.
- Pinpoint targeting – there are millions of communities, groups of interests, and other potentially opinion-making groups of people, especially online. To reach them, you need to learn to accurately target very specific groups of various sizes.
- Be personal – User-generated content, tailored messaging, and other forms of reaching individuals are popular methods of catering to young audiences. Gen Z values their individuality even more than previous generations and identity is one of the most important things to them.
HOW DO YOU EMPLOY THOSE STRATEGIES IN GAMING?
Craft relatable stories
Being relatable to wide and different groups of players can help to build an image for a game, brand, or platform alike. This can be as simple as basing the brand stories around simple scenarios relatable for everyone, and then showing how the brand and its products can reinforce those scenarios’ positivity. Play Together campaign by Nintendo was particularly relatable because it tapped into the social and communal aspects of gaming, which are central to the appeal of the Nintendo Switch.
The campaign highlighted the Switch’s unique ability to be played both at home and on the go, emphasizing scenarios where people could enjoy gaming together in a variety of settings. Whether it was a family gathering, a road trip, or a casual meetup with friends, the ads depicted real-life situations where the Switch was a natural part of social interaction. This versatility mirrored the everyday lives of many gamers, making the brand feel more connected to their daily routines. Instead of focusing solely on the hardware’s capabilities, Nintendo chose to depict real-world scenarios where the Switch could enhance social interactions. The relatable situations, like playing on the train, competing in a friendly match at home, or bonding over games at a party, made the campaign resonate deeply with viewers who could see themselves in those same situations.
While launched before the pandemic, the campaign gained even more relatability during and after COVID-19, as people sought ways to stay connected with loved ones while physically apart. The Nintendo Switch became a tool for maintaining relationships and shared experiences during a time of isolation, further cementing the campaign’s relatability.
Use influencers to leverage your comms
Influencers can be engaged in PR as much as they are involved in the game’s marketing. Influencer coverage can boost communication in many scenarios, especially when gently curated by the brand. For example, CD Projekt Red (CDPR) effectively used influencers to help craft the redemption story of Cyberpunk 2077 after its troubled launch. The strategy involved leveraging the authenticity and reach of gaming influencers to rebuild trust with the gaming community and shift the narrative surrounding the game.
CDPR partnered with influencers who were known for their candid and critical takes on games. These influencers had previously been vocal about Cyberpunk 2077’s issues at launch, which gave their endorsements more weight when they later discussed the improvements. By allowing these influencers to honestly address the game’s past problems, CDPR ensured that the praise for the updates felt more genuine. Influencers were given early access to patches and updates, allowing them to play and showcase the improved version of Cyberpunk 2077. These influencers then streamed their experiences, created YouTube content, and shared their thoughts on social media, demonstrating the positive changes made to the game. This approach helped shift the focus from the game’s initial shortcomings to its ongoing improvements.
The campaign reached many well-known influencers and gaming personalities, which in turn helped to turn the narrative around. Among those influencers were such names as Alanah Pearce, TheQuartering, Angry Joe, xQc, JackSepticEye, and LegacyKillaHD. The involvement of these influencers was crucial in reshaping the public perception of Cyberpunk 2077. By showcasing the game’s improvements to their vast audiences, these influencers helped CDPR gradually restore player trust and interest in the game, contributing to its eventual resurgence in popularity.
Deliver your message in slices
A great example of brevity in PR is a self-performed brand awareness activity conducted by Poncle, a solo dev turned development studio responsible for a breakthrough indie hit Vampire Survivors. The game turned out to be ideal for short-form, funny promotion clips posted on TikTok. Bit-sized simple gameplay videos with funny text or using popular memes turned out to be a great promotional tool for a very small developer.
Vampire Survivors has a visually straightforward yet engaging design. The game’s pixel art style and the chaotic action on-screen are easily recognizable and stand out in TikTok’s fast-paced feed. This makes the game highly shareable, as users are drawn to visually captivating content. The gameplay of “Vampire Survivors” is well-suited for short video clips. The game features intense, fast-paced action that can be condensed into bite-sized moments perfect for TikTok. Additionally, TikTok thrives on memes and trends, and Poncle has been able to tap into this culture. Due to the character of the gameplay, it’s easy to create and share memes, funny moments, and trend-based content related to the game.
This method of promotion also leveraged TikTok’s algorithm, which favors content that garners quick engagement, and the exciting nature of Vampire Survivors clips likely resulted in higher engagement rates. This would cause the platform to promote the content more aggressively, leading to even broader exposure. Poncle has been active in engaging with the community, which includes responding to fan content, and updates, and even featuring some TikTok trends within the game. This kind of direct interaction helps build a loyal community that is more likely to promote the game on platforms like TikTok. Poncle strategically approached the platform’s strengths—short, engaging videos and a strong community focus. This resulted in a positive feedback loop of visibility, engagement, and growth – and thus helped to spread awareness of the game, but also build a fan-friendly and relatable image of the studio itself.
Pinpoint targeting
Pinpoint targeting in PR involves delivering tailored messages to specific segments of an audience with precision. This means that you have to employ very scrupulous segmentation in search of large and small groups that should be targeted with your messaging. In gaming, this would be first done by carefully researching the interests of your target group: the genres they play, the platforms they use, and the communities they create. Then you need to tailor the content to those specific groups and choose channels most likely to deliver the message to them.
An example of pinpointing targets in gaming can be found in our agency’s PR services for Albion Online, a very popular MMORPG game on the Steam platform. When Next Level Agency started to work on Albion Online, we planned an advertorial campaign for the launch of the European server for the game. That meant first identifying a very specific audience – the new players interested more in a sandbox than narrative-based experiences, as well as returning players who would be interested in restarting their adventures. Then came the identification of the channels fitting the audience.
In Poland, a large number of gamers read online gaming news media. We have decided to utilize two kinds of these. One was a trusted staple of the market with more than two decades of presence and being opinion-making media for gamers – Gry Online. Second was a globally recognized brand familiar to all gamers worldwide – IGN Poland. By mixing locally and globally trusted outlets and placing a useful, informative content piece on the game and its mechanics in both – so they felt authentic and gamer-oriented – we have created a considerable reach for Albion Online in the key moment of its history.
Be personal
Getting people to directly participate in your game is a strong PR tool if implemented properly. Users are passionate about the titles they play and sink hours and hours of time into them. They want to be part not only of the community but the game itself. User-generated content, tailored messaging to the players, user polls, and initiatives that allow the players to co-decide on important matters or shape the game individually to some degree – these methods may be technically and logistically hard to implement. Nevertheless, if implemented properly into a loving community, they can have a giant communications potential and can influence the image of the brand immensely.
A great example of User-Generated Content translating into great PR stories can be found in Digital Extreme’s mechanisms of implementing player-created content into their flagship MMO shooter, Warframe. Their Tennogen program encourages the talented fans of the game to create their own models of cosmetics, such as helmets, armor, or weapon skins, and upload them for internal voting. Then the best of those items as selected by developers are made available in the game to buy at its marketplace with premium currency. The creators of the cosmetics are participating in the revenue from their sales.
Tennogen immensely adds to the company’s image as a community-first, very open game developer, but also can generate great PR stories by itself. In 2021 gaming news outlets reported widely that Filipino artist Lendel Fajardo was able to fund his sister’s degree and support his parents thanks to the earnings from his Tennogen items – painting Warframe community and its creator projects in superbly positive light.
MODERN PR APPROACH IS EFFECTIVE IN PROMOTING ANY ENTERTAINMENT BRAND AND PRODUCTS
Modern PR approaches have proven to be highly effective in promoting entertainment brands and products by leveraging the power of passion-driven engagement. By aligning PR strategies with the interests and emotions of target audiences, brands can create authentic connections, foster active participation, and amplify their reach. The case studies in gaming, such as Nintendo’s Play Together campaign, CD Projekt Red’s influencer strategy for Cyberpunk 2077, Poncle’s viral TikTok promotions for Vampire Survivors, Albion Online’s new server launch campaign in Poland, and Digital Extremes’ Tennogen program for Warframe, demonstrate how targeted, relatable, and community-centered approaches can elevate a brand’s image and drive substantial engagement.
As entertainment continues to evolve with new technologies and platforms, the key to effective PR will be staying attuned to the passions of the audience. Whether through storytelling, influencer partnerships, precision targeting, or fostering user-generated content, the success of PR efforts will hinge on the ability to connect with people on a personal level. By embracing these modern strategies, entertainment brands can not only capture the attention of their audiences but also build lasting relationships that translate into long-term loyalty and advocacy. In a world where consumers are bombarded with countless messages daily, the brands that succeed will be those that speak directly to the heart of their audience’s passions.
Sources:
https://www.shacknews.com/article/108107/new-nintendo-switch-trailer-shows-people-coming-together-to-play-anytime-anywhere
https://www.eurogamer.pl/cyberpunk-2077-i-aktualizacja-20-oceniamy-najwazniejsze-nowosci-w-patchu
https://projectn.com.br/dlc-de-vampire-survivors-e-anunciada-para-maio/
https://www.warframe.com/pl/news/tennogen-101-pl