Acer first entered into a marketing partnership with Riot Games last September to establish its Predator brand as the official monitor of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS). The company signed a renewal of this marketing initiative this past April, which will take the company through December 31, 2018.
As part of this partnership, Acer has launched its second consecutive scavenger hunt with a grand prize that will send a winner to China to watch the League of Legends World tournament in November.
Rich Black, vice president of marketing at Acer, told AListDaily that the first contest reached millions of people and generated over 80,000 unique entries involving multiple puzzles. An ecosystem quickly evolved around the content through super users that created chat groups to help solve the puzzles. This year’s contest has been expanded from 21 days to a full month.
“Since the new contest kicked off, we’re seeing a similar approach with super users becoming influencers within this scavenger hunt program,” Black said. “Our research showed that this audience loves to solve puzzles and go on little virtual journeys on the internet that are intellectually challenging, and this program was designed for them.”
Acer is engaging with this fan base across Twitter, while promoting the scavenger hunt across paid and organic digital mediums.
Acer’s Predator gaming brand, which is relatively new to the gaming space when compared to Dell’s Alienware or Asus’ Republic of Gamers, received a major boost after its sponsorship of last year’s LCS.
“League of Legends has allowed us to grow our brand and increase brand awareness significantly,” Black explained. “We had an analysis done of our sponsorship of Worlds last year and ours was the No. 1 brand remembered coming out of all sponsors that participated, which validated what we’re doing. We now have a significant amount of awareness in the gaming market.”
One of the things Black quickly learned about esports sponsorship, especially with League of Legends, is that the fans really appreciate this type of support.
“This audience sees what you’re doing as legitimizing what they love,” Black said. “They understand that having sponsors like Acer putting dollars into LCS—it supports the players and teams and overall community.”
Acer is also a sponsor of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, and Black said esports offers a refreshing approach to marketing partners.
“Riot is a fantastic partner,” Black said. “They came to us with an open book and asked how they could work with us more closely beyond the contract to help our brand succeed with their audience. They’re incredibly flexible to work with.”
Black pointed to the recent LCS event in Boston, where Riot gave Acer additional booth space for free to better maximize the brand’s reach with the traffic at the location.
“With traditional sports, you get a preset menu of what you can and cannot do, and you have to color within the lines at all times with them,” Black explained. “Esports is still a relatively new phenomenon, and they want to ensure you’re successful so that brands continue to invest and help them grow.”
And there’s no bigger League of Legends competition than the upcoming November Finals, which will pack 100,000 people into the Bird’s Nest in Beijing.
“This is the Super Bowl of esports,” Black said. “Last year the results for the Worlds had more people tuning in than watched the NBA Finals. For us, it’s about maximizing the market and our brand and making sure more people are exposed to it. The true value is to the millions of people watching with the digital transmission of the event.”
Black said sponsorships of esports teams are important, but they’re way more involved and more dependent on the teams performing well.
“By working directly with Riot, no matter what team is involved, our brand gets exposure at every event from the opening match to the finals,” Black said.
Acer is promoting its Predator brand’s performance through its esports activation. Black said the company’s thermal technology allows internal aeroblade fans and a liquid cooling system to overclock the machine and boost performance for games like League of Legends.
“All of the PC gaming brands are working with the same GPUs and CPUs, but it’s our thermal technology that differentiates us from the competition,” Black said. “We’re on the third generation of aeroblade technology and it’s important to keep evolving this technology.”
