The Challenge
Over 155 million Americans play video games on a regular basis; the growing consumer enthusiasm for all things gaming was a clear signal to IBT Media that it was time to invest in a redesign and rebranding of its legacy iDigital Times gaming news network. A brand, platform, and content transformation were planned with the goal of reaching new market segments while remaining culturally relevant to the existing core audiences. The final goal was to deliver the kind of dynamic, rich media and video content that captures the attention of gaming enthusiasts while simultaneously integrating highly contextual ad products that would enhance (versus disrupt) the user experience.
The Approach
Strategic insights and data collected in the strategy phase enabled us to identify specific areas of interest for our core gaming audience. By examining and understanding barriers to entry, cost, the competitive environments and ability to scale we decided to focus on consumer tech, news & product reviews, game reviews, tech business and how-to content areas. In the process, we also identified that a new brand and positioning would be best suited to generate cultural interest in these newly identified content areas.
Working in a truly agile process while driving our branding, user experience design, content development and new advertising models we were able to create efficiencies, validate concepts and develop platform technology innovations. Our core focus was on seamless content delivery and content relevance. The faster we could get our users to relevant content the more we could drive in category engagement.
The Results
The legacy iDigital Times is slated for relaunch in Spring 2017 as Player.One , a new gaming culture publication that hosts gaming news, walkthroughs, product reviews, hacks, and the latest gaming trends. The new brand positioning and visual system created to speak to our gaming core in a more direct and culturally relevant way.
The entire Player.One ecosystem (Web, mobile and social) is driven by a single platform of dynamic content modules driven by machine learning algorithms. This platform was architected and designed around a robust database that links hardware and software products to contextual content such as news, movies, comics, events and much more. For example, users that search for Star Wars wouldn’t just get Star Wars game reviews, they would get products, comics, and movie information driving awareness and sales through e-commerce partners.
The user experience for Player.One allows seamless browsing of relevant content across multiple devices and platforms and leverages a mix of programmatic and branded content to generate higher dollar and more targeted advertising for our users.
What we did
New business and brand strategy, identity design, user experience design, platform strategy, marketing, and advertising collateral.