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Creator Partnership / Branded Entertainment

LACS 5

How a redesigned Prius ended up sponsoring a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament.

CLIENT

Toyota

MY ROLE

Creative strategy, creator partnership, live production

YEAR

2023

CHALLENGE

Toyota needed awareness and purchase intent for the all-new Prius Prime, and a change in how younger buyers saw it, since a lot of them still thought of the Prius as ugly and only popular with older generations. The audience was older Gen Z and younger Millennials, many of them first-time car buyers or starting families, so a practical, economical car like the Prius Prime was a real fit if we could get them to give it another look.

INSIGHT

I saw that same audience in the Melee and Ludwig Ahgren fanbases. These communities are quick to support the brands that actually show up for them. The scene had also just lost a well-loved tournament organizer, which left a hole where the biggest event of the year used to be, so a brand that helped fill it had a real chance of being welcomed.

Red Toyota Prius parked on the LACS 5 lawn among tents and food trucks

1 / 10

APPROACH

Toyota had already worked with Blizzard and the Overwatch League, so a tournament was familiar ground internally. I used that as a starting point and pushed it toward something more grassroots: Toyota became the partner that made another edition of the Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series possible, so the people running the tournaments and broadcasts could keep working and the community kept its biggest event. It was roughly 30 hours of live content over three days, plus custom long and short-form videos, including Ludwig’s own take on Cash Cab, so the car showed up in content people actually chose to watch.

RESULTS

47M+

Total impressions

69.3%

Driven by Ludwig

22%

Live broadcast engagement

466K+

Watch hours

100+

Live attendees

TALENT PARTNERS

Ludwig Ahgren

VIDEO

Sizzle reel

Fans rallied behind Toyota as the brand that kept the Melee community going, and working with a creator directly, rather than through a big developer’s esports league, took Toyota further into grassroots gaming than it had gone before.

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