People within the Twitch community lead prolific online lives.
So much so that sometimes they need a reminder to step away from their screens, brave the outdoors, and (if they’re feeling especially gutsy) touch grass.
As a community known for its unique brand of humor, it should come as no surprise that Twitch’s fans have popularized “Touch Grass” as a tongue-in-cheek term for their notorious indoor tendencies.
To help drive engagement around TwitchCon San Diego, we conceived and created a brand activation that built upon “Touch Grass” by bringing it to life as its own character. The result, Grass Lord, represents our strategy to create original content and brand programming for Twitch that engages its audience in more meaningful, impactful, and shareable ways.
We first leaned into the “Touch Grass” internet slang during the 2023 TwitchCon Las Vegas and Rotterdam. By carrying around a box of live grass onsite for attendees to literally touch, we created a lo-fi activation that became some of our best-performing content.
For TwitchCon San Diego, we felt the timing was ripe to evolve “Touch Grass” into something bigger for the event’s 60K attendees. Not just an unforgettable social and experiential moment but an activation that would translate into something ownable for Twitch–a character that could be leveraged well into the future.
Grass Lord was born. A 9 ft tall, larger-than-life, talking deity of nature–here to remind his loyal subjects to hit pause and take a step away from the digital abyss.
While “Touch Grass” was already a popular meme, we wanted to make sure Grass Lord’s formal introduction was befitting a king. He made his grand entrance during the TwitchCon opening ceremony live stream, where he knighted Mary Kish, Director of Community Marketing & Production at Twitch and emcee of the event.
This set the stage for Grass Lord’s primary role during the activation: The official knighting of anyone brave enough to bend a knee and solemnly swear to touch grass.
On the convention floor, fans lined up with their phones, clamoring to get knighted and share it across their live streams and socials. Many took the opportunity to get into character with Grass Lord, bowing and boldly proclaiming their fealty as soon as they saw him.
We didn’t stop there. We wove Grass Lord into the fabric of the event, validating his position within the Twitch community. Through the TwitchCon mobile app, fans joined grass-themed quests, winning exclusive Grass Lord swag, including the coveted Grass Amulet.
Grass Lord was a regular in the Twitch Rivals arena, interacting with the crowd and show hosts. Grass Lord brought the party to the Dino Dance Lounge, dancing with attendees, and even joining DJ Jessu on stage during her high-energy set.
We designed a global Grass Lord emote for the livestream and held meet & greets with Dan Clancy, the Twitch CEO, and other Twitch celebs. Popular streamer HasanAbi introduced Grass Lord to his millions of followers, rapper bbno$ sparked a playful social media feud, and Minecraft streamer Aimsey engaged in a lighthearted sword swap. Grass Lord even embraced his artistic side, joining the Bob Ross Paint Along.
The proof is in the pudding—or, in this case, the grass.
Grass Lord was among our top-performing content by AER, with three of our top six TwitchCon posts (by AER) focused on Grass Lord. In total, the content earned 1.4 million impressions, reaching 2.5 million people through a combination of owned and earned content.
On Instagram and X, Twitch’s largest social channels, Grass Lord content consistently exceeded AER benchmarks by +15%. In terms of sentiment, it performed very well, with conversations 44-47% positive and only 5-8% negative throughout TwitchCon San Diego.
Grass Lord showed up in key livestream moments like the TwitchCon opening ceremony with 642K viewers, Twitch Rivals with 2.5 million viewers, Hasanabi’s stream with 2.8 million viewers, and the iconic Bob Ross stream with 2.2 million viewers. Plus, there were countless fan streams every time Grass Lord walked the convention floor. All told, these efforts reached a combined livestream viewers of over 7 million.
The impact of Grass Lord was undeniable. His presence generated millions of impressions and livestream views, created iconic moments across platforms, and reignited a connection between digital culture and the natural world.
