In March of 2020 during the height of quarantine, Reese’s and Universal McCann partnered with Ader, the leading Esports marketing agency in authenticity and executions founded BY Gamers FOR Gamers, to promote the Reese’s brand and its products within the gaming community.
Ader activates brands and publishers by integrating partners directly into the gaming communities they belong through high-impact campaigns, experiences, team sponsorships, and influencer activations. The Reese’s x Ader 2020 influencer campaign was designed to position Reese’s as the go-to-candy within the gaming community. Reese’s focus was on increasing brand awareness in the gaming community and to leverage the growing excitement surrounding Esports and challenged Ader to find the appropriate partners.The campaign was focused on Twitch and had extensions to Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram.
To execute this campaign, Ader strategically selected a variety of gaming stars including up-and-coming influencers as well as established gamers, with fast growing audiences across multiple genres, in order to achieve maximum brand awareness throughout each gaming community. Through a variety of custom content or “Reese’s Moments,” gamers got to experience the brand in a new way:
Influencers received customized Reese’s boxes to open during streams, generating a memorable “Reese’s Moment” with their community. These boxes contained a personalized letter, a jersey, a mug and mountains of Reese’s candy. To further connect the brand with gaming audiences, Reese’s gifted 40 subscriptions to each influencer’s channel, allowing the brand and talent to connect directly with their audience. Gaming influencers included Loeya (1.4M Twitch Followers), Aceu (1.3M Twitch Followers), TFBLade (1.1M Twitch followers), LuluLuvely (721K Twitch Followers), Nmplol (3M Twitch Followers), Symfuhny (3M Twitch Followers), SypherPK (4.4M Twitch Followers), DizzyKitten (642K Twitch Followers), Lord_Kebun (441K Twitch Followers), AdmiralBahroo (816K Twitch Followers), Yassuo (2M Twitch Followers), aDrive (505K Twitch Followers), itsHafu (1.3M Twitch Followers), nl_Kripp (1.4M Twitch Followers), UnknownxArmy (1.1M Twitch Followers), HusKerrs (661K Twitch Followers),and NumotTheNummy (108K Twitch Followers).
In an effort to promote “Reese’s Moments,” Ader created customized emotes for each influencer. The influencers encouraged their viewers to spam the custom emote during Reese’s shoutouts, taste tests, unboxings and general high-energy moments.
Audiences were ecstatic to see their favorite streamers sponsored by the iconic Reese’s brand. The overwhelming, positive reactions led to unexpected and organic “Reese’s Moments” that created a Reese’s community throughout the gaming world. These moments included submissions of Reese’s fan art, creation of custom Reese’s jingles, and social media images of fans locally purchasing the product. Nmplol’s audience even started a successful Reddit petition for him to make a giant Reese’s cup on stream!
The campaign ran through December of 2020 and delivered powerful results by engaging 143 Million unique live viewers across Twitch with 70 Million hours streamed. The participating talent’s Twitch following had an impressive overall growth percentage of 89.8% over the duration of the campaign demonstrating the mutually valuable design of the Talent and Brand partnership. Coverage was secured across multiple social platforms including Twitch, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
