Originally Posted by New York Times
GETTING the attention of the so-called millennial generation is no easy feat for many advertisers. Try as they might to break through on television, social media and other digital platforms, their sales pitches are often ignored in favor of Netflix, Snapchat, Twitter and video games.
Executives at American Express say they think they may have found a way around that by becoming part of a digital game experience. On Wednesday, the company is to announce a sponsorship program that takes aim at the millions of people who play the online video game League of Legends by Riot Games.
The centerpiece of the partnership is a line of prepaid debit cards that are illustrated with images and characters from the game and that allow cardholders to get so-called Riot Points that can be used to buy characters and other extras in the game.
Users receive 1,000 points when they sign up for the card and an additional 1,000 points after loading $20 onto the card. Additional points can be earned for the first 10 purchases made with the card, and 10,000 points are awarded the first time a card is linked to a direct deposit account.
Additional points can be earned for every dollar spent after that. The card requires no credit check, activation fee or minimum balance. Instead, like most prepaid cards, it is loaded with a cardholder’s own money and used in lieu of cash to make purchases.
Stefan Happ, general manager for online and mobile at American Express in the United States, said the partnership was intended to “expand our traditional reach beyond the mass affluent.” Mr. Happ cited the game’s 32 million players worldwide and the “staggering one billion hours of game play a month” as primary reasons for the partnership.
“It gives you a sense of how deeply engaged the players are in playing this game,” Mr. Happ said. “We are about loyalty, we are about contact and long-lasting engagement. This is an ideal fit from an audience perspective.” That audience is largely male and largely millennial, made up of players 18 to 24 years old, said Dustin Beck, vice president of electronic sports at Riot Games.
Riot Games released League of Legends in 2009. It is part of a video game subgenre sometimes called “multiplayer online battle arena,” where the players compete against each other in tournaments that are streamed online. The game can be played free online, but to gain access to specific characters or features, players need to buy Riot Points.
American Express has created a 30-second video to explain the prepaid card’s benefits. Digital banner ads are to begin appearing on Wednesday on the League of Legends Championship Series Web site, na.lolesports.com, where aficionados can watch live streams of games in progress. An American Express Web site explaining the card will also be available on Wednesday.
Sponsorships like the one with American Express help pay for the increasing costs associated with taking the game to a wider, more professional audience, Mr. Beck said, adding that Riot Games was in talks with other blue-chip companies for additional sponsorship opportunities.
“There is a great opportunity for brands here, particularly brands that make sense for our players,” he said, referring to the 18- to 24-year-old men who make up the bulk of the company’s player base. That group, he added, “is becoming harder to reach on TV and other mediums.”
Executives at American Express declined to say what the campaign would cost, but according to data from Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, in 2012 the company spent $36 million advertising its prepaid cards on television, in magazines and online.
Norma P. Garcia, a senior lawyer and the manager of the financial services program for Consumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports, said linking game incentives like points with the use of a prepaid card could intensify the “addictive quality of games.”
The prepaid card market in the United States has been growing in the last few years as more people forgo a relationship with a bank or try to control their spending, although consumer advocates are critical of the cards’ myriad fees for things like A.T.M. withdrawals, inactivity and balance inquiries. As the cards become more popular, they are increasingly being marketed at niche demographic segments, Ms. Garcia said.
“Everybody is getting into this game,” she said. “It’s really a question of how the marketer wants to wrap their card to appeal to a particular audience.”
