Rewind 2022: Celebrity push spurred on Gaming brands - Amit Kushwaha

It’s time to review the most significant industry developments as the year 2022 draws to a close. Adgully is reviewing the year 2022 for the M&E, advertising, digital, marketing, PR, and communications, along with leading names in the industry as part of our annual Rewind series.

Recapping the year 2022, Amit Kushwaha, Head - Brand & PR, at RummyCulture, speaks about the overall Media & Advertising industry in the year gone by, key trends and developments in the Gaming industry, as well as RummyCulture’s performance in 2022.

The Media, Marketing & Advertising ecosystem in 2022

2022 has been a good year for the overall Media & Advertising industry. Since the pandemic, this has been the first time that most performance parameters have reached levels comparable to pre-Covid times. As per the ‘This Year, Next Year 2022 Global End of Year Forecast’ report by GroupM, India’s advertising revenue growth forecast for 2022 is 15.8%, with that figure further rising to 16.8% in 2023. This year has seen the industry bounce back well. We expect this trend to continue in 2023 too. The biggest validation for this enthusiasm was seen during Diwali when all the major sectors and brands came to advertise heavily. Many brands who didn’t advertise during the pandemic have returned to advertising. We also believe that digital advertising will continue to grow as we had witnessed in the pre-pandemic era.

Key trends & developments in Gaming

A critical trend in online skill-based gaming revolves around engaging with celebrities like SRK, Dhoni, and other cricketing stars with massive star power. Since the sector is still trying to penetrate audiences, celebrity push has historically performed well in both helping new sectors build awareness and gain acceptability. Additionally, RummyCulture signed celebrities such as Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh to promote our brand message.

Another trend that picked steam in this sector was the rising partnerships with regional celebrities and digital influencers. These new-age celebrities have dedicated fan followings and high engagement rates which is what brands are looking for.

Gaming brands will continue to incorporate this trend into their marketing campaigns.

Rummy Culture’s performance in 2022

We have seen healthy growth in terms of user acquisition and a major jump in brand awareness owing to the campaign we launched featuring Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, and Abhinav Bindra during IPL 2022. We had seen a high jump in searches on Google for our brand during IPL and saw further encouragement in the fact that the search traffic sustained even beyond the IPL season. This reassured us that the campaign had succeeded in increasing saliency for us.

Along with this, partnering with Vijay Deverakonda’s Hindi debut movie ‘Liger’ was another highlight. We had one of the best CTRs on our campaigns and notifications via this partnership.

For engagement during IPL, as part of our then ongoing campaign, we organised a meet-and-greet for our top players with 9 cricketing stars, including the likes of Yazuvendra Chahal and Dinesh Karthik, which saw great success in terms of creating deeper engagement with consumers.

Lastly, our associations with regional celebs and influencers garnered positive responses and good results. With RummyCulture, we will continue to cultivate a “Culture of Champions ”.