The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (GEMA) is reviving the Game Marketing Awards, which was once a staple for recognizing the work of game marketers.
Stacy La Cotera, president and CEO of GEMA, said in an interview with GamesBeat that there hasn’t been a game marketing awards event since 2018. But good game marketing is still happening, as you can see with the Gears of War videos below.
The nonprofit group, which has been around in various forms since 1965, created the MI6 game marketing awards when it was known as Promax. It migrated to IDG as the Game Marketing Awards. The awards took a pause during the pandemic and then Promax and GEMA combined and got the rights back and this year’s show will be the first under the GEMA banner.
I went to those awards shows back in the day. I recall Ubisoft won 27 awards at the event for its contributions to game marketing at the 2014 show.
“A lot of consumers aren’t aware that there’s this group of people behind the scenes strategically sitting there trying to tell a story to get you engaged in the world,” Cotera said. “And it’s just so fascinating. And so as an organization, that’s a big part of what we want to do. We want to help put those marketers in the end credits. It’s those pop culture moments they’re creating and are resonating with people.”
GEMA said the organization repositioned itself last year, rebranded to welcome all of entertainment marketing.
“With GEMA, we’re really just all about celebrating the incredible impact that the strategic and creative marketing have on entertainment. We are here to support and empower the people and the companies who are really bringing these stories to life, shaping culture, and who are responsible for engaging audiences around the world,” Cotera said. “As a nonprofit, our focus is really on helping the entertainment marketing community grow, connect and really inspire the future of storytelling and innovation.”
The game industry has had a tough time with more than 35,000 layoffs in the past 32 months or so. There are consolidations and studio closures. Cotera said it’s important to reinforce the commitment to celebrating creativity and hard work at this time.
“We’re here to celebrate, we’re here to support, and we’re a nonprofit,” she said.
The group has gathered a board of directors of diverse game industry people from a variety of companies. GEMA is developing programs and events for the future, with an award show coming later in the year. The group has special interest groups to support women and build membership.
“Our focus this year is to deeply reconnect the industry,” she said.
As for marketing, Cotera said, “You really can’t talk about marketing anymore, especially in entertainment, without talking about IP in a transmedia landscape. And so in today’s entertainment landscape, IP is more than just the brand. It’s really the foundation of cross-media storytelling and fan engagement. Gaming has become such a powerful driver in transmedia storytelling, really showing the narratives and how they can seamlessly extend across movies and TV shows and music, and then also into life experiences.”
She said entertainment verticals are evolving together, fans seeking out richer and more interactive worlds to explore.
By the way, I think that Tears for Fears’ Mad World song, played to the trailer of the destroyed landscape of Gears of War, was an example of great game marketing. That debuted back in 2007. When Microsoft launched a new trailer recently for Gears of War: E-Day, it used some of the same music.
Both of these videos are powerful game marketing that resonated through the years. I also liked the Dead Island 2 trailer that was everything the game was not. This reminds Cotera that marketing is an art and science, with data analytics, that is like the study of human behavior which helps inform storytelling, design and engagement.
“Everything you said has supported the importance of what marketers do,” Cotera said. “That’s why it was really important, when we were going through the naming convention of the organization, that arts and sciences was on there.”
The Los Angeles group is a trade organization for professionals, but it’s not a lobbying organization per se.
The group’s gaming board members include Todd Licthen, head of entertainment partnerships at Roblox; Chris Kramer, head of communications North America at Tencent Games; Remi Sklar, SVP of communications and public relations at Warner Bros. Games; Matt Edelman, COO of Super League Enterprise; Sundance DiGiovanni, chief innovation officer of ESL FaceIt Group; Melissa Bell, EVP of global marketing at Warner Bros. Games; and Rishi Chadha, head of scaled partnerships at Meta Reality Labs.
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