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A 2024 study from YPulse reveals teens in the US and Canada are spending more time gaming than watching TV – and 68% agreed they find video games more entertaining than TV shows or movies.
Newzoo’s 2023 report backs up this trend, reporting that Gen Z audiences spend an average of just over 12 hours a week on video games, more than the time they spend watching TV, and catching up fast on the 13.9 hours they spend on social media.
It’s clear that the consumers of the future are drawn to the immersive entertainment that gaming offers. And its reach is far broader than you might expect.
According to a study from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the age of the average US gamer has jumped from 29 in 2004 to 36 in 2024, and the 2023 Global Gamer Study reveals 45% of gamers are women. With gaming now reaching a third of the global population, it’s estimated that there will be 3.1 billion gamers worldwide by 2027.
We have a long history of investing in diverse marketing integrations because for marketing to make an impact, we need to make sure our brands continue to show up where consumers play.
Gaming will be a vital gateway to reach them. That’s why at Unilever we’ve tripled our investment in the growing gaming sector over the past three years – and our Personal Care brands are taking the lead.
Marketing deodorants, shower gels or toothpastes via video games might seem an unconventional approach, but it’s rooted in compelling consumer insights.
Unilever research shows that 70% of gamers are actively interested in personal care products, and 45% buy premium deodorants and body sprays, compared with 35% of non-gamers.
“Gaming is the new social playground,” explains Willem Dinger, Unilever’s Global Head of Sport & Entertainment Partnerships & Personal Care Media Lead.
“We’re making the most of gaming’s growing appeal – particularly among Gen Z and women – to get our brands in front of new consumers. And as engagement in gaming continues to rocket, we’re deepening our relationships with those consumers through new marketing approaches and channels,” he adds.
In 2020, we launched UPLAY to get our brands on the frontline of gaming culture and built a community of more than 30 gamers within Unilever, to support marketing teams in working with streamers, creators, broadcasters and influencers in the gaming world.
Since then, our Personal Care brands have worked in partnership with leading platforms, creating authentic custom content that captures gamers’ attention – and it’s not just brand names popping up mid-play. We’re generating engaging content that adds value, tells a story and makes our brands an unmissable part of the game.
Here are a few examples…
Unilever’s Personal Care brands sponsored the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup™, and we worked with FIFA World X Roblox to launch an obstacle course game, Rexona Obby, during the tournament.
In the game, player ambassadors such as USA’s Trinity Rodman, England’s Lauren James and Germany’s Melanie Leupolz were turned into digital avatars so fans could interact with them, sparking almost 5 million impressions and over 1 million engagements across 54 Instagram Stories.
Our brands also sponsored the FIFAe Finals 2023™, with Axe launching the ‘Power Up Your Game with Axe’ campaign, a viral marketing initiative focused on improving gamers’ confidence. It generated 2.9 million impressions, 105,000 interactions and 1.1 million video views.
In 2022, Axe co-created a branded map in Fortnite where players received a power-up every time they sprayed a special Axe can.
The campaign sparked over 100 million media impressions and quickly became one of the top 100 most popular maps played on Fortnite, generating 18 minutes of average play and 75,000+ plays in its first few weeks.
Minecraft is played by more than 20 million children in India, and in 2023, Lifebuoy worked with Minecraft creators and influencers to co-create a playable world where gamers were encouraged to collect plastic from a virtual River Ganges.
In ‘Gift of the Ganga’, Lifebuoy pledged to collect as much plastic waste in real life as was collected virtually through the game. This will be repurposed to create branded handwashing stations across the country.
And there’s much more to come. EAFC is the biggest sporting simulation franchise in the world, with 50 million players across platforms, and 31% of its users are women.
In June 2024, Unilever Personal Care signed a partnership deal with EAFC that will see us co-create new ways of engaging with the game through Power Brands including Rexona and Axe.
Both brands activated media sponsorships with EAFC during the 2024 UEFA EUROs™, with brand placements in EAFC Ultimate Team mode (played by 34 million players worldwide), attracting 3.48 billion impressions.
We are seeing great success with our gaming strategy, and that’s why our commitment to the gaming space has expanded so significantly in recent years, driven by the recognition of esports as a key cultural engine.
Willem Dinger, Unilever’s Global Head of Sport & Entertainment Partnerships & Personal Care Media Lead
“Gaming is on the cusp of shifting to a central source of entertainment and technological advancements will continue to propel that progress. We believe there’s so much more we can achieve in gaming – and we’re just getting started,” he adds.
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