The State Farm Gamerhood Challenge 2023

State Farm saw an opportunity to expand beyond its standard esports sponsorships with a game- changing shift in strategy into original content – building brand relevance and relatability while educating Gen Z and Millennial audiences about insurance. The Gamerhood Challenge 2023 was a five- episode all-things-gaming series where reality show met live gaming tournament. Gamerhood seamlessly integrated the brand’s good neighbor ethos in the world’s first Gamerhood, a 50,000-square- foot gaming ‘neighborhood’ with eight custom-designed tiny homes, and its own park. In the Gamerhood, a superstar lineup of content creators competed in a variety of games amidst insurance- themed mishaps, a play-at-home interactive experience, and yard games with Jake from State Farm and a special guest each episode.
For a stage unlike any other, it would need a singularly star-studded cast to shine. State Farm strategically worked with 15 of Twitch and YouTube’s most followed gaming content creators (206M collective reach), creating a cast of 8 gamers, 2 series hosts, and 5 surprise special guests. Gamers included Ninja (Twitch’s 2022 most-followed channel — 18.2M followers), Ludwig (2022 Content Creator of the Year), and Typical Gamer (13.6M YouTube followers) who connected with audiences through social channels and custom Gamerhood YouTube videos-on-demand (VOD), while special guests posted their respective episodes after their appearance, leading to millions of additional views.
Connecting with Gen Z and Millennials’ passion for social good while reinforcing State Farm’s “good neighbor” authenticity, teams competed for the giant Key to the Gamerhood and a $100,000 donation to their chosen nonprofit (Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, and Junior Achievement).
Gamerhood Challenge 2023 blew past State Farm and the industry’s expectations. An amazing 20M+ viewers watched on State Farm’s Twitch and YouTube channels, and players’ and streamers’ individual channels — more than doubling the massive starting goal of 10M viewers. It ultimately reached an incredible 534.5M people on social media — surpassing the 251M goal by 113% — and won more than 1 billion earned media impressions. Combined impressions from players, hosts, the live show, VODs, social media and earned media totaled an astounding 2+ billion.