Connecting Brands with Gamers: Insights from LiveWire

Greg (00:01.295)
What's going on, gamers? Welcome back to another week of the GZ Chop Shop Gaming Podcast. I am your host, Greg. And as always, I have an amazing episode lined up for you. This week, I am joined by a renowned global thought leader in digital marketing with over 15 years of experience in strategy, data, technology, and the ever-evolving field of gaming. He's become a pivotal figure in shaping the future of global digital marketing and gaming landscapes. Let's welcome the co-founder of LiveWire, Indy.

Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. It's an honor to have you.

Indy Khabra (00:35.182)
Greg, thanks a lot. really appreciate it. I'm excited about being here.

Greg (00:39.237)
So digital marketing, gaming, that's like a huge landscape. And I know a lot of people are like, okay, yeah, what does that have to do with like anything in the gaming sphere? And it's actually a very important factor as I've been learning in this year, I've been getting a lot of education in how important gaming marketing is. But before we dive into the meat and potatoes of it, can you tell me a little bit about...

LiveWire, how you guys got started and how you got where you are today.

Indy Khabra (01:11.81)
Yeah, so LiveWire is built to connect brands with gaming audiences at scale globally. We started in 2021 out of Australia. We are just under five years old now. We operate globally. We work with some of the largest brands, everyone from a Samsung to a L'Oreal and across all different verticals.

And our role is to understand what a brand is trying to achieve through their marketing strategy and then use our game tech solutions to help them connect to that audience at scale. Five years ago or just under five years ago, we were just coming out of COVID and the global pandemic and we saw so many

players go back to playing during the pandemic as a social outlet, as a way to connect with family and friends around the world. And so, post COVID, I think that there was quite a lot of consumer behavior shift when brands were trying to figure out where that audience moved to and gaming was that center of that answer.

Greg (02:36.207)
Now, you mentioned, you know, brands like Glorial and some other brands. And, you know, even with games like, from my experience, like Fortnite, who like do pretty much everything, you know, it's like a new movie comes out. They've they've got to connect with it. How do you guys. Figure out what brands work with certain games like is there genres that work a little bit better or game types like how do you guys, you know, navigate that?

Indy Khabra (02:50.424)
Yeah.

Indy Khabra (03:01.218)
Mm-mm.

Indy Khabra (03:06.328)
You know, it's a large spectrum and it covers, to your point, genres, but also different player behavior and interests and likes. For example, you might have a hyper casual player or gamer who loves specific types of games. You might be looking at those who are

PC gaming or really focused on that e-sports fandom and everything in between. And even from an age perspective, you can age down, but you can also see now there's a growing older demo that is playing with their grandkids or younger kids in the family. So it's quite broad. And for us, real focus area is just to understand

who is that audience that they're trying to connect with. So a L'Oreal, for example, may want to connect with a hyper-casual female audience. And so, you know, we may skew toward, you know, those types of, that type of audience and the games that those, that audience plays. So it always starts with a true understanding of who the player is that they're wanting to connect with.

And then, to your point, Greg, there are so many different games across all the different genres, whether it's the sports games or the RPG type of games or the casual games.

Greg (04:45.807)
Now, how do you guys find like that healthy balance where, you know, I know a lot of brands, they in racing games, they might have their product put in billboards and games. And I know there was some pushback from gamers that are like, hey, this isn't what we want. You know, this is like advertising a game. So how do you guys find that happy medium where it's not too invasive into, you know, the casual gamers?

I guess you could say enjoyment, still getting those brands where they want to go.

Indy Khabra (05:18.7)
Yeah, you know I love I love that point there around You know, how do we? Show up in the in that environment without without in disruptive gameplay and that is really the core part of that right you're either Adding value or you're creating a value exchange, right or you're showing up in a non-intrusive way now billboards in a racing game You know you can you can

you can argue that's not intrusive, right? That is adding a level of virtual reality into your gameplay. Now, you may see a Bob's Burgers or you might see a Wendy's. Now, the stats or kind of the feedback that we're getting from the community, we did a recent survey and 76 % of players

stated that they preferred real brands in their games because it gives that sense of reality and I can see that myself. play a lot of sports games. Growing up playing sports and video games, played a lot of Madden, EA, FC, F1, and I want to see real ads on the field. I want to see real ads in the stadium because it feels realistic to me.

Greg (06:46.703)
Yeah, and yet I'm glad you say that because, you know, even though I'm kind of like, you know, don't add like blatant ads, I too don't mind seeing like on a billboard a product that I use, like, you know, if it's Pepsi or something like in racing games and it's like a brand of Pepsi, I'm like, OK, this this is kind of cool. I kind of like that. It's nice to see that these brands want to interact with me and.

You know, it sometimes it works. Sometimes I find myself going to the corner store and getting a Pepsi. And it's like, you know, the subtlety of it. So.

Indy Khabra (07:15.436)
Yeah. And Greg, to that point, the equation that we at LiveWare really want to achieve is it's great for the game developer, the owner of the game, so they feel like it's adding to that game. The user is feeling like it's non-intrusive. It's actually improving their...

Experience and then you know for a brand, you know, one of the things we spend a lot of time ensuring is that there is a You need to own the right to be in that space. You know the the community is is you know, it's It's built on a level of trust and you know being able to bring in a brand in a way where they show up

they build relationships with the player base and continually grow that relationship, that's where we see the greatest success.

Greg (08:22.065)
So for those of us who don't know the intricacies that go on between connecting a brand to the game developer before it reaches us, the consumer, can you walk us through a little bit of the steps of how those two meet? Because I'm sure like me, I thought originally it was like Pepsi sees a game and they go straight to the gamer and they're like, they're like, we want to be in the game. And it develops like, okay, cool. X amount of dollars, boom. But there's so much.

steps in between that we're not aware of. So can you walk us through that process a little bit?

Indy Khabra (08:54.168)
Yeah, I can. And don't get me wrong, sometimes those types of conversations are still going about. If there's an opportunity, sometimes it's very straightforward and linear, and sometimes there's multiple steps. And the way that LiveWire operates, we have several solutions that allow brands to connect into games.

An example of that is integrating into a virtual world. So where we see those opportunities are on two of the biggest platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. Now, different opportunities for brands. And as we integrate into Roblox,

there is a level of development that needs to occur, whether it's with an existing experience or whether you're creating an experience from scratch. think of Roblox as a platform where anybody can build an experience. that's definitely, there's time put into that creative planning.

and then building out with developers and ensuring that we have a product that is great for the brand and for consumers. And we're seeing almost every single day a level of a new Roblox activation popping up. it's an exciting platform that's growing. Now, Fortnite, it's also very different, right? So where you start to think about Fortnite is,

you can create branded experiences through either a map or potentially you can bring in character skins. And so you can drop very different types of brand integrations into that experience. And what we do is we have those relationships directly with the platforms and it allows us to bring those features to the brand and work through those steps to get to the end result.

Indy Khabra (11:18.51)
I believe last year we had five epic picks at Livewire, which is the best of the best integrations into Fortnite selected by Epic, is a great achievement by our business. one of our integrations, which was the Red One movie over Christmas, I think it was The Rock who was in that movie, we integrated that into Roblox and it's one of the biggest

if not biggest integrations ever into a Roblox experience.

Greg (11:52.786)
That is amazing. And you know, when you were mentioning Fortnite, and Fortnite is a great example for a lot of things in gaming. What do you think it is about Fortnite that makes so many brands want to work with it? You know, as compared to other games that are of the same genre, even in its predecessors. I mean, you you had PUBG before you had Fortnite, but Fortnite has become the staple of Battle Royales and

Indy Khabra (12:19.565)
Yeah.

Greg (12:22.457)
everything they want to work with Fortnite. So what do you think it is that draws the brands and consumers to a game like Fortnite?

Indy Khabra (12:22.765)
Yeah.

Indy Khabra (12:31.672)
Well, look, I think that there's a few things there. One is it is a relatively closed ecosystem. so, you can't just do whatever you want in a platform like Fortnite. There's strict guidelines and that really makes it

attractive for brands, but also at the same time, you know, there's the ability to have a creative format where you can build and grow and, you know, take your brand into that ecosystem. Now, you know, from a competitive perspective, the content and entertainment that comes with Fortnite, you know, they're rolling out new chapters on a regular basis.

rolling out new integrations and now bringing back into live stream events post the pandemic. So we're seeing that it is just a level of momentum that every single brand wants to get involved in. But it's our job to ensure that the brand understands if it's right for them or not.

Greg (13:59.73)
Okay, so in the same vein of, you know, games and holding attention of the audience, why do you think post COVID that gaming is now and still on the rise of being the most dominant media for, you know, a younger audience?

Indy Khabra (14:10.456)
Yeah.

Indy Khabra (14:23.778)
Well, think, you know,

Where you see the difference between gaming media and gaming marketing to other mediums is that, you know, a lot of media consumption is very passive, right? It's, you know, you're sitting, you're watching TV, you're sitting or, you know, you're doing something, but you're listening to audio radio, right? Like it is a very passive, you don't necessarily have to interact with it. Whereas gaming is 100 % participation.

Right? It is, you you might be, you know, optimizing your avatar in an experience. You might be, you know, participating with the community. You might be, you know, could be on Discord, right? You know, there's, there is a, there is, or, you know, you've got your hands on a controller and, you know, the rest of the world is gone silent and you are one-to-one with your console. So, you know, there's, there is a level of,

participation that you cannot find in any other media consumption environments. And so that value of that one-to-one attention is really very difficult to replicate. The other part is it's very immersive. Now, you think of what type of media that is garnishing dwell time or time spent. You're seeing

time of 15, 20, 30 minutes in a virtual environment. You're seeing console players dropping two hours in a session. The time spent in these, I know you can guarantee that when GTA comes out, the world's going to stop for a couple, couple. So these types of things are very immersive and you can't, you don't necessarily.

Greg (16:12.472)
Yeah.

Indy Khabra (16:19.948)
get that level of interaction in other media formats. you know, those things, and then under that, you have scale, right? You have a huge population of players in all parts of the world. And those kind of three things really drive gaming, media, and marketing as...

you know, sometimes I call, you know, the gravity of marketing. It's becoming the center of how marketing is being played.

Greg (16:56.433)
So once again, talking about the marketing and just how impactful it is. And one of the first things that comes to mind back when, back when they were at the top of their game, Call of Duty, and they used to have those trailers back in the day, those live action trailers, and then they have the game trailer thrown in. And it was like, those were amazing. I was like, that's what drew me to Call of Duty. I, know, personally, I feel they've lost quite a few steps along the way.

So, you know, in your opinion with game marketing and how it's handled, what could make or break a game's success from a marketing standpoint?

Indy Khabra (17:42.543)
Greg, you know, I think the success of a game... mean, marketing definitely supports the awareness of a game, but I think it's really gameplay. think it's very much the game itself versus the marketing that comes around it. Now...

That would be my opinion on what is the make or break or success of a game. From a marketing perspective, you're seeing data led approaches becoming more prevalent in how games are launched, how marketing campaigns are run. And what that allows you to do is you start to become more efficient and effective with some of that marketing budget.

And so, you know, a new game comes out, you you may go out and try to understand who the fan base is or who the LAPS players are or what state is indexing higher to that game or that genre. And so you start to take in more of those insights around what makes that game genre or that game special to previous players or to that franchise.

and start to use that insights and data in your marketing campaign versus, you know, let's a new game comes out and you just, you know, throw up some billboards and, you know, hope for the best. you know, I really see a shift now, especially within gaming media, utilizing the capabilities of data.

Greg (19:29.221)
So speaking of shifts, saying like, where do you think the gaming and brand marketing will be in the next five years?

Indy Khabra (19:40.559)
Well You know, think you're gonna see You're gonna see I Would say more brands have would have leaned in You know, I see a world where IP whether it's brand led IP or Cultural IP and what I mean by that or you know the

the cultural pillars across gaming like sports, and we're doing something with the NFL, music, fashion, entertainment. These really buckets of culture that continue to cross over in gaming, the IP that comes from that is going to become the next transmedia IP, IP that you can start to bring to life in different ways.

And I was talking to a friend of mine last week and we were discussing this and you know, it's like comic books, right? You know comic books Became movies, you know, then you had you know TV shows that you know start to become you know popping that IP popped up in different Different places and then you know, you had you know video games, you know, like The Last of Us, know becoming you know a series and you know that that

Evolution is now moving to gaming IP from even from a character perspective and how that is gonna evolve. so over the next five years, I see more IP being monetized. I guess I can't leave this podcast without using the words AI. So I guess I'll drop that in here now. there'll be...

Greg (21:34.289)
You

Indy Khabra (21:37.167)
The ability to create content at scale at speed and at the quality that we're already seeing You know is is not going to change the next five years is going to change the next two years. So you know, are kind of the things that we'll see top pick up and and you know something that I think is not being discussed as much as What is what I think

Could it should be is cloud gaming, right? You have a lot of now, you you go into your Best Buy, you take your TV, you come home, you pull it out of your box and you've got Xbox on your TV, right? You don't need, you know, so like the capabilities are starting to become, you know, seamless in that, you know, internet of things environment where you have, you know, connected devices and from a cloud perspective, you know, I see a world in the future where you're in your electric.

Greg (22:07.665)
Mm-hmm.

Indy Khabra (22:34.754)
Vehicle in in your in in the backseat playing a video game you pause your video game You walk in your house you pick up your controller and you just pick up where you left off on your TV So that's kind of seamless Interaction with gaming content or games is I think not that far away

Greg (22:54.415)
And I do love that, you know, the idea, the concept of that seamless being able to just pick up and play, you know, you're on your computer, you could play, then you switch to your TV, you can play, you go to your phone, you can play. But it also does scare me because, you know, a huge essence, and granted, because the technology wasn't there, huge essence of video games was physical media. You know, that collector value. So it's kind of like you can...

Indy Khabra (23:20.024)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg (23:25.157)
I know we can't have both going into the future.

Indy Khabra (23:27.438)
Yeah, oh man, you're touching, you're hitting a soft spot for me too. I grew up collecting hockey cards and baseball cards and those are collectors. I love seeing who's gonna be on the cover of the next DAFC because if it's your player, you gotta get that box, right? So I think that...

Greg (23:51.419)
Yeah.

Indy Khabra (23:54.767)
I think that level of fandom and the ability to collect those items that are having emotional attachment, I think that's not gonna change. And the really interesting thing is it actually kind of is coming back in the next gen from what I've seen as well is that the collectibles are kind of coming back and that's also great to see.

I recently went to a concert, Oasis, great concert by the way. they have vinyls, they're vinyls for their albums. And I had a relative that was, young teens was like, man, can you get me a vinyl? And I was kind of put back for a minute, but I realize, vinyls are kind of cool again, but to your point,

Greg (24:49.038)
out.

Indy Khabra (24:53.268)
even future facing, you we go into cloud gaming, know, that collectible piece is not going to go away.

Greg (25:01.221)
Yeah, that's my hope is that, you know, that we're able to, even if it's just down to the gamers, we're able to somehow still keep it alive, you know, keep it in circulation. I know there's people that I think there's a guy out there, he has the entire Nintendo e-store and he donated it to the video game archive so that that stuff just stays in circulation and we always have access to it. But once again,

Indy Khabra (25:16.206)
Yeah.

Greg (25:27.205)
coming back to brands and marketing, and since you have extensive experience in this, was there ever a campaign that you took part in or that you saw where you were like, they got it right. That's how you do it. Like, I guess you could say, what's a good template that...

people in your industry should strive for.

Indy Khabra (26:01.025)
I loved our Clash of Community campaign with Samsung out of Australia. It's an award-winning campaign. It took the basis of a new product launch that Samsung was coming out with. It put the spotlight on the

on the everyday commuter. the way that the campaign rolled out was following commuters off from their trek across Australia. And the ability to do that in a way that was just so, it was great interactive, it was immersive, it brought the brand to life in that commute. And the user base had an incredible

Feedback and experience, you know, it did win, you know several awards But also, you know what we did with that was we also brought that into a bit of a crossover in real world as well know, we wrapped that campaign with a bit of out of home You know a bit of awareness and really brought not only what we were doing with that campaign but also the brand and so, know it crossed over from

not only in game but in real world settings. But yeah, overall I think that's probably one of my favorites.

Greg (27:37.554)
I gotta say, personally, I like when things have those crossovers. you know, it's like part of your game comes to life. You have an experience outside of your screen and you get a little hands on. And that's something, you know, even as a kid, I wish there had been more of, you know, and I'm glad it's there now because I'm like, I still get to be a kid at heart. I'm like, man, I wish this was.

Indy Khabra (27:50.018)
Yeah.

Greg (28:03.269)
you back in the Nintendo 64 days, if this was a thing or, you know, like I'm still waiting for someone to give me an official crossover of Mario Kart for real life. If you guys can do that, I would, I'll be there. I would love that. I would, I would love that so much.

Indy Khabra (28:07.959)
Indy Khabra (28:12.926)
Hahaha, haha Yeah, I don't know I don't know how you know how many laser tag events I've gone to that I thought I was in golden eyes So like you know, I hear what you're saying

Greg (28:27.865)
Well, a little bit, you know, speaking of going, what are some of your personal favorite games?

Indy Khabra (28:33.42)
Well, I mean, GoldenEye is one of my favorites for sure. You know, I love the NHL franchise, you know, being Canadian, I'm a big hockey fan. So I can't get past the EA NHL franchise. You know, we're currently working with the NFL. So, you know, there's a bit more Madden happening. And obviously the season just started.

Greg (28:36.497)
Classic.

Indy Khabra (29:03.022)
So, so, you know, those are those are some of my favorites. You know, I, I loved I loved.

right now playing F1 mobile. The reason why is because I'm on the move a lot and so I kind of don't always have the opportunity to sit on console but I love the F1 game.

Greg (29:20.315)
Mm-hmm.

Greg (29:38.002)
know, I'm glad you mentioned about being on the move a lot. I have come to accept mobile gaming as gaming because, you know, I was in the military and there was a lot of times that I couldn't just be on my console and I couldn't have a gaming PC. And mobile gaming did fill in that gap. also, once again,

you know, in the vein of marketing, mobile gaming is very great for marketing because they have so many crossovers. They have so many brand crossovers, movie crossovers. You name it, know, mobile game has it covered and it's accessible to everybody.

Indy Khabra (30:24.408)
That's the key, right? The accessibility and the barrier of entry and the costs of console is not the same entry point as playing mobile games. And so you see that quite a bit in Asia Pacific where you have very mobile first.

countries and so, you know, naturally just by way of device, you see mobile gaming, you know, just continuing to grow and to your point, there's a lot of different formats in mobile gaming from a marketer's perspective that you can try to leverage and you try to wrap that into, you know, all types of categories and

And we do that at LiveWire. We work a lot with mobile campaigns as well as PC. And we're starting to see more opportunities around console as well.

Greg (31:36.517)
Well, Indy, I know you're an extremely busy man and I don't want to keep you and take up any more of your time. But how could developers and brands reach out to LiveWire? Because obviously you guys, they do an amazing job, guys. And I highly, highly recommend checking them out. So how can they get in contact with you guys?

Indy Khabra (31:57.186)
Look, you can check out the website. It's www.livewire.group. And if you have any questions, you can drop us an email at hello at livewire.group.

Greg (32:12.465)
Once again, thank you so much. That's all the time we have for this episode. Be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms. You can also visit our website at gzchopchoppodcast.com for the latest gaming updates, blogs, and join our press play newsletter. Once again, Andy, thank you. was such an honor to have you on the podcast. Hopefully we can talk again in the future, because I know we barely scratched the surface.

Indy Khabra (32:39.694)
I love it, Greg. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

Greg (32:43.772)
Thank you. And as always, take care of yourself and each other. We will catch all you wonderful people on the next podcast. Later.