Games, Players and Sponsors – The World Cyber Games in Cologne
By Markus Kohlstock, Consultant at Fink & Fuchs Public Relations
For eight years, International Cyber Marketing (ICM), supported by the Samsung Group has been conducting the annual World Cyber Games (WCG). Similar to the Olympic Games, the by now world's largest and most prestigious e-sports event is always held in a host city. In the year 2008, Cologne was able to prevail in the international competition and bring the games to Germany for the first time.
In March 2008, Fink&Fuchs PR received the assignment via e-mail from South Korea to handle the PR support of the World Cyber Games Grand Final 2008. This was a very interesting and at the same time challenging task. On the one hand, the local vicinity and unique nature of the event provided the opportunity for strong and positive reporting on the topic of gaming in general and e-sports in specific. On the other hand, however, there was also the imminent danger that it would feed the established clichés of nerdy computer and video game freaks and be presented accordingly by Frontal21 and similar news shows. Upon initial consideration we decided that 800 gamers gathered in Cologne in rainy November weather did not generate much positive image material.
The communication goals were therefore clearly defined – it was the qualitative aim to convey a positive image of the players, games and sponsors and, in terms the venue of the GAMESCom in Cologne, to position the city as a center of interactive entertainment in the next year. We focused our attention on large circulation general interest media in the daily newspaper and TV sectors. Quantitatively, a gross reach of 25 million contacts was defined.
e-Sports are Sports
The communication strategy focused on a clear positioning of the event as a sports event. The choice of words, visualization and topics were intended to present all the positive attributes of (soccer) World Cups and Olympic Games – e-athletes are not antisocial nerds but talented young people who have turned their hobby into a lucrative profession in which the will to succeed, training, and team spirit are required for success. Consequently, the main carrier of this message should not be the Korean organizer but the players themselves who can authentically convey this positioning. The PR activities focused specifically on the German national e-sports team.
Preparation Phase with Strong Partners
The pre-event phase from March to August was used to establish a strong partnership network of sponsors and institutions with the aim of preparing all involved for the target definition of WCG as a sports event and to coordinate the actions of the individual communication participants and partners. This communicative approach was highlighted by an adidas sponsorship, which was initiated by the local WCG agency ACE and supported by the city of Cologne. In addition to generous contributions in kind, the Cologne administrators organized the computer game Campus Cologne (CCC), an accompanying congress with various forums and podium discussions in which the topic of gaming in Germany was controversially discussed.
Media-based preparation
After the members of the e-sports national team were announced, the external communication commenced in mid-September. A total of 16 key media outlets such as Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, MTV and BILD-Zeitung (Cologne) received personal first-hand information during a four-day editorial tour including the ICM Vice President through Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne and Munich. The aim of the editorial tour was not primarily to generate immediate reporting but rather to gain the interest of key media representatives in the significance and relevance of this event and to encourage editors to visit Cologne in early November.
Within the scope of a personalization strategy under the project name "Present the stars," the regional daily papers of the respective home towns of all 40 players were contacted. A total of 17 of the selected 36 newspapers subsequently prepared, in part half-page, portraits of their local potential medal winning champs. This partial project alone achieved a total circulation of 1.5 million. In addition, WDR TV and radio station and the local Center TV were offered players from the extended Cologne region for portraits and interviews.
Five Days of Pure Action
The preliminary work of eight months reached its media height in a two-week time-span prior to and during the event. To gain a large enough audience for the large event, advertisements and radio spots were placed in local media and a poster campaign initiated on areas provided by the city of Cologne. In addition, promotion teams distributed information flyers in bars and pubs not featuring gamers or screenshots but sports images such as a soccer ball or a helmet in line with the defined communication strategy. The language of the claims was also based on that of the world of sports such as "Finally Cologne hosts a world championship again" or "Hall 8? Such a boring name for the most exciting arena in the world."
A six-person team of Fink & Fuchs PR staffers and two additional promoters were on location to support the total of 668 accredited journalists from 51 nations who were given optimal working conditions. These were ensured by 40 PCs and 60 LAN work places in the press center as well as daily newsletters, press releases, a blog, a photo service that was updated every two hours, as well as beta tapes with TV editing material from the previous day.
The Result: Magic Fingers and Strategic Geniuses
In addition to the desired extensive local reporting in the Kölner Express und Stadtanzeiger, almost all key media such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ/FAS and Spiegel Online also covered the event. In addition, there was extensive television reporting (e.g. ARD Morgenmagazin, RTL aktuell, ZDF heute) with a total of 45 minutes and reaching roughly 20 million viewers. Reporting in print, online und TV generated a gross reach of 106.2 million.
The qualitative evaluation with the aim of positioning the games as a sports event was the recurring central theme of the reporting, see Bild.de and Stern.de. The few critical voices focused on the choice of games selected by sponsors, not on the format of the event as such. The editors of the German TV news program 'heute' talked about "Playing computer games as a professional sport", while 'RTL aktuell' reported "... that everything was handled very professionally almost like a soccer world cup," and Express ran the headline "Magic fingers and strategic geniuses." The results far exceeded the set expectation both in terms of quality and quantity and presented Cologne and Germany to the world as an innovative host for interactive entertainment. All this was coupled with beautiful weather with a pleasant 12 degrees Celsius and occasional sunshine.
Over the past few months, gaming in general and e-sports in particular have the received the media attention they deserve. This strongly visible status needs to be extended now to keep the ball rolling, as they say in the world of sports. Currently there is a cooperation project in the USA with WCG to produce a real-live show with gamers who accompany their protagonists through their everyday life.
