Gaming in South Africa is a niche pastime, and one that has, until now, been dominated by white males.
OMEN by HP has helped contribute towards changing that with its Q3 marketing initiatives, by partnering up with two exceptional gaming influencers who are anything but the dominant demographic: Samantha Wright and Super Dave.
Samantha is a female blogger/streamer/gamer, and Super Dave is a young up-and-coming black gaming influencer whose specialty is relatable, relaxed, and fun gaming content.
Both influencers work with a good mixture of traditional and social media platforms, which we can maximise the use of.
Tech Girl
Samantha Wright, also known as Tech Girl, has done something that, even just a few years back, was unthinkable: she broke into the international esports scene as an event host, commentator, and player.
Sam has hosted ESL stage at Gamescom 2017, Overwatch Contenders Europe, the Samsung Galaxy CSGO Championship and even the 2017 Crossfire Grand Finals in China.
She is well-known on the local esports trail, too, having hosted various local tournaments and local gaming events, and is a regular at the country’s biggest gaming exhibition, rAge.
Samantha regularly posts videos to YouTube, streams games on Facebook and Twitch, and has her own blog in which she explores new gadgets, games, and other technology topics from a woman’s perspective.
Super Dave
Super Dave runs a blog called “The Idiot’s Guide to Gaming“, and he has a weekly radio show on YFM in which he talks about all things gaming. He was also recently featured on the Mail & Guardian as a “cool new voice in gaming”.
He is also not yet affiliated with any other brands, and as such, was the perfect influencer for OMEN by HP to partner with to show off the brand’s gaming chops. His audience is still quite small, but we anticipate him growing it significantly, and chose to get in on the “ground floor”, so to speak.
In addition to playing games on it, Super Dave has been using his OMEN by HP gaming notebook to create all of his content.
Super Dave speaks directly to our target audience of casual gamers with his less-serious gaming content, and having him do so on an OMEN gaming notebook is a big win in our book.
The Value
OMEN by HP is seen by each of these influencers’ audiences as their equipment brand of choice as it features prominently in their social media content, and is the device they appear at various events with.
The marketing content we’ve created out of this showcases both influencers as they go about their daily routines, just “doing life”. The idea was to document their lives and show just how well OMEN by HP slots in with what they do.
Target Audiences
Our target audience for our OMEN by HP activities is as follows:
- Gamers – both casual and professional
- 18 – 35 years old
- All races
- Passionate, discerning, determined
- Sees their gaming equipment as an extension of themselves