Cybersport, or eSport, has been rapidly developing in the past several years, and analysts believe that by 2018, it will outdo football in terms of sports betting. Its audience piques the interest of a wide range of advertisers, and the gaming industry responds to that by offering a multitude of different advertising opportunities of most different formats. This year, Vzlet’s participants were offered a chance to learn more about the tendencies of eSport's development, as well as get some real experience by working on a case for the Megafon company. In the course of the four days, they were to come up with a platform that would help Megafon enter the eSport market and attract a potential audience.
Before entering the hackathon’s finals, the participants had to complete an online round. Those who succeeded were split in teams of five. In order for them to better understand the eSport industry, the teams were given the help of mentors and speakers, who taught them about the eSport market, its main players, and explained the most interesting cases. The participants were also taught to design new products for existing brands by integrating them with game mechanics. The experts also explained to them such things as how to set meaningful KPI, define a brand’s target audience, make use of effective communication channels, and what can be considered a successful campaign. Apart from training with representatives of gaming, eSport and digital industries, the participants also solved a case on bringing a new product to the market.
Best projects
Team One
The winning team proposed an idea of an eSport platform that would become a means of communication between young people who are interested in computer games. Its primary function is managing and organizing eSport events, as well as creating a unique community affiliated with the Megafon brand. The platform’s distinctive feature is its multifunctionality: the platform has a social function (a meeting place for fans), provides education (supposedly, the platform’s target audience is a family interested in eSport which is represented by both children and adults; in this case, the platform can provide education in the basics of eSport, computer literacy, and business in eSport), can be used for making payments, and a lot more.
The team also offered a unique sales pitch – a limited series of cellphones by Megafon; upon buying one, the clients get to use the platform free of charge, and for any purchase done with this cell phone they get cashback in a special currency which can then be used to pay for the provider’s products and services (this currency is yet another novelty proposed by the team). The students also came up with the idea of a new “Cybersport” service plan for Megafon that offers an unlimited access to such entertainment platforms as Youtube and Instagram, as well as optimal SMS and minute bundles.
The users will also get access to a premium account and private tournaments. Also, the students’ plan implies launching Megafon’s own eSport league with prizes and awards for its users only. The project won the main 300,000 rubles cash prize.
Cybergxds
The second place went to the team that proposed the new Megafon Gaming platform which offers a comprehensive approach to users from different generations. For kids, for instance, that would be a gaming platform that offers an opportunity to participate in competitions on a local scale (in the spirit of street football and such). Also, the team proposed to introduce a social ranking system that will reflect the skills of every player. For parents, this will come as an opportunity to better understand their children, follow their progress in online gaming, assess their social growth, and monitor their activities via parental control functions. For the Megafon company, this will also be an opportunity to provide new services, such as unlimited Internet for online gaming, and promoting their current services like Megafon-games or the already mentioned parental control functions.
Hight Five
The team that was placed third focused on the idea of making Megafon a leading company in the eyes of digital users. eSport's target audience are active people who take interest in technology and appreciate usability, comfort and emotions in gaming. The team members stressed that the issue of insufficient equipment is quite pressing: every second gamer can’t play top-tier games due to the lacking capacity of their devices, and proposed to provide the opportunity to play most games anywhere and on any kind of equipment. To do that, they came up with a new Play 2.0 service plan, which can offer unlimited access to messengers, social networks, video hostings and streaming platforms to every user of a mobile device. The campaign’s core idea is a game database that is to be updated on a monthly basis and the use of Cloud Gaming technology. The users will get an opportunity to play games from their cellphones, as most of the computing workload be done on the company’s servers.
