The Pinnacle: Launching The Biggest Local Esports Tournament In BC
Blue Meta collaborated with The Gaming Stadium and Vancouver Street Battle to launch The Pinnacle, the biggest local Esports event in BC history. We needed to build awareness and hype to get both gamers and spectators pre-registered for the event, which drew professional gamers from Alberta and Washington (USA) – all competing for a prize pool worth $10,000.
The digital team knew that – similar to the Olympics – it was important to remember that Esports was the “banner” under which individual games were the real events. For example, with the Olympics, how one would attract figure skaters and people who like to watch this sport would be fundamentally different from how one would attract hockey players and hockey fans. The same principle applied for for Esports. Some of the individual games at The Pinnacle included Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, Street Fighter V, Hearthstone, FIFA 2019, and NHL 2019.
Once the digital team at Blue Meta had identified each audience per individual game, we got down to business creating tailored campaigns based on the different interests of each audience.
When you’re working with discerning audiences likes gamers, the nuances of communication matter. Through continuous A/B testing, we were able to build significant buzz through social sharing and tagging. Prize giveaways and a tiered system of pricing were created and launched to incentivize community engagement outside the identified primary ad set. Online registrations were captured by Vancouver Street Battle through the tournament organizing platform Smash.gg. (See the event page here: https://smash.gg/tournament/the-pinnacle-2018/details)
Videography & Production Credit: Moon Ghost Productions
The entire campaign achieved ROI in the first 24 hours. Between 12 ads, six audiences and multiple rounds of A/B testing, Blue Meta’s digital team was able to encourage significantly strong engagement. With those high engagement levels, we then brought the total CPM down to $4.38, much lower than current Facebook benchmarks. And with a lower CPM, the more people we were able to reach within the budget. (A lower cost means the ads could be seen by a larger audience.)
The campaign hit just shy of 500,000 impressions with 1,298 unique clicks on the ads for a total cost of $2,186.52 – which was well below budget.
In 2017, online registrations for The Pinnacle (previously known as the Vancouver Battle Royale) totaled 353 players & spectators. In 2018, we were able to increase the number of online registrations by 39% to 492. Total event attendance including offline registrations came in at 580 people. After an electric two days at The Pinnacle, community support for The Gaming Stadium continue to flourish.
