Building Gaming Street Cred
HP's product team had been ramping up a performance-focused line of gaming PCs, laptops, and accessories under a new sub-brand called OMEN by HP. We were tasked with building up the brand's credibility with the competitive gaming community.
The Competitive Gaming Community
Games Are Tribes
The CS:GO community is very different than the League of Legends tribe. Messages need to adjust based on who we’re trying to reach.
All About Progress
Whether they’re playing with friends or ranked, they are always motivated to improve their skills. When they’re not playing, they’re absorbing hours of gameplay from their favorite streamers and pros.
They Live Online
Discord. Twitter. Twitch. YouTube. The competitive gaming community is highly outspoken on their preferred social platforms, making spicy memes and tweeting hot takes on gaming news.
Building a new kind of esports brand
We moved away from the awkward esports tropes of gamers wearing uncomfortable jerseys and into a space where all gamers were already crazy about: streetwear culture.
BRAND PROMISE
Play Better than Yesterday
After a brand workshop with the global gaming marketing team, we arrived at a brand platform built around self-improvement and progression. Play Better than Yesterday would drive everything from product development to brand partnerships, influencer relationships, content and events OMEN put out in the world.
The Work
Based on this brand platform, we set out to transform OMEN into a gaming content brand. Hundreds of assets and dozens of content ideas later, OMEN is a leading PC gaming hardware brand worldwide.
Driving Brand Consistency Worldwide
With a global brand platform established, we developed a set of guidelines that gave each marketing region a roadmap on driving consistency across the customer journey, branded content and experiences.
Brand System
We developed a set of guidelines that provided marketing teams with the brand platform, tone of voice, a flexible design system with clear brand elements, and photography guidelines. Our approach to esports was more inspired by the streetwear gamers flocked to than taking a page out of being a traditional athlete, which typically comes off as forced.
Social Playbook
We worked with the social team to develop a global social playbook. It included:
A social audience audit of key channels using Affinio
A content strategy that gave regions clear content pillars that laddered up to the audience & brand platform
A channel strategy that gave regions everything they needed to populate their editorial calendars,
Community management guidelines which included a social tone of voice