ReKTGlobal, Inc. is a marketing services and brand consulting company for the esports industry founded in 2016. Under their competitive games division, they own the pro team Rogue which includes a League of Legends European Championship franchise and the London Call of Duty franchise. With their recent acquisition of Greenlit Content, ReKT has produced content for or represented dozens of clients in the gaming industry, including State Farm, HyperX, NBC Sports, and more.

State Farm, a top marketer in North America, has long been a significant sponsor of traditional sports leagues and their teams. With esports, ReKTGlobal helped to craft an activation strategy that helped to mirror the most successful aspects of their partnerships in traditional sports and also create campaigns that engage and educate fans, not just sell products. State Farm embarked on this journey after reading a Nielsen report that stated that “Insurance Services” and “Financial Services” were the two industries that fans wanted the least in esports. With that in mind, ReKTGlobal worked with State Farm to develop an approach that, at first, ran no traditional media spots and instead developed educational and entertaining programs to engage core audiences.

The strategy and campaign started with a marquee position in the League of Legends North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) including a position on the State Farm Analyst Desk; three different in-broadcast segments including use of their popular Assist of the Week spot from traditional sports, in-broadcast signage, and several live event activations during the LCS split finals. Along with the NA LCS, State Farm is a sponsor of the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) and the NBA2k League. The focus of the approach in all of these leagues was to reject traditional ad roll, in favor of short form in-broadcast programs that resulted in positive or neutral brand sentiment given how sensitive fans are to new brands entering the space.

The target audience for State Farm’s esports initiatives were younger fans who were core esports viewers. The strategy was created to gain real credibility from fans and show the core audience that State Farm was not here to just run a few ads, but actually create programs that resonated with the audience from the get-go and allowed State Farm to more aggressively market to this demographic in the future. Once credibility is gained from core fans, they evangelize the brand and segments to casual fans.

In 2018, insurance and financial services were the least wanted by esports fans, but by the end of the year we, through direct survey and Nielsen measurement, had as high as 90% explicitly positive approval ratings for our league sponsorship activations. In addition, State Farm was selected as Brand of the Year at the Tempest Esports Awards for their efforts in the industry.