Breaking the Marketing Mold: Iryna Chuhai of WePlay Studios On 5 Innovative & Non-Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
There is no way to ensure that everything will work 100%. Research is the key to getting better results and taking calculated risks. For every marketing professional, the most essential part of planning is understanding the audiences’ interests, psychology, and feedback on previous campaigns, products, or competitors.
Traditional marketing methods are no longer sufficient in today’s dynamic and fast-evolving market. To truly engage and captivate audiences, businesses need to think outside the box and adopt innovative and non-traditional marketing strategies. What are these strategies, and how can they transform audience engagement? I had the pleasure of interviewing Iryna Chuhai, chief marketing officer at WePlay Studios.
Based on her extensive work experience in esports and gaming, Iryna is responsible for the marketing strategy for WePlay Studios’ development, launching campaigns to promote the studio’s products, increasing awareness of the business in the market, as well as developing creative integrations for partners.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! To start, could you share when and how you got started in marketing?
While studying at the University, I worked as a journalist at a local newspaper in my native country, Ukraine. That job gave me connections to local businesses and people. After graduation, I knew I wanted to work in communications to form the meanings and perceptions of things. In 2012, I joined a marketing agency, Fresh Studio, with clients in HoReCa, retail, and consumer electronics. This is when it all started, which brought me to being Chief Marketing Officer of WePlay Studios, a content production company based in Los Angeles, California.
What has been the biggest shift in the marketing industry and can you give us an example of how it impacted you?
The first shift I observed was probably everything going digital. Honestly, it was a change for good because digital tools help you dive deeper into the analytics of your audience’s behavior, and you can get feedback on anything you do almost instantly, whether good or bad. I am an advocate of lifelong learning. The marketing industry has constantly been changing so fast that to be relevant and perform for your clients and company, you need to learn continually. However, I still remember the resistance of some clients to being on social media, creating an app, or investing time and effort in SEO. I am happy that those times are long gone. Another situation I remember clearly is when I was studying at a business school and told my professor about Twitch and that this is the future; he was saying: “Nah, those bunch of nerds won’t ever work out.” Funny enough, I joined WePlay Studios right after and started working in gaming and esports, broadcasting shows on Twitch.
Can you explain why it’s essential for businesses to break away from traditional marketing and embrace new strategies?
I don’t think breaking away from traditional marketing is a winning strategy. I prefer a combination of both conventional and new approaches because marketing efforts and channels should follow the consumer. If a brand’s consumers are still watching TV, driving along freeways with billboards, or listening to the radio, why not use these channels as points of contact? Traditional marketing still brings brand awareness and results. However, one can achieve better results with a combination of traditional and innovative strategies. Traditional ads bring coverage, digital-first efforts bring measurable results and engagement, influencer campaigns form perception and brand image faster, and so on — you always need to experiment and find a combination that performs better for a particular product.
Could you share and briefly explain the first major change you made to break the trend of traditional marketing that was not so common?
I want to go back to Twitch here. In 2017, while working for WePlay Studios, I collaborated with Lenovo on their gaming laptop launch. It was also the year when Blizzard released Overwatch. Lenovo could do everything they did for any other laptop or device at that time: music influencers in the video ad, great printed ads everywhere, lots of PR materials, and so on. However, their target audience was gamers. What can show the capabilities of a gaming laptop to a gamer if not the newly released game?
Therefore, we hosted an Overwatch tournament named the Lenovo Cup and broadcasted it on Twitch. Analysts in the studio, casters, and observers showcased Lenovo Legion laptops while casting the teams’ matches on different maps. That was a good solution, both content-wise and marketing-wise because the company had used the tournament highlights and audience feedback for months on its social media channels, public relations, and industry cases.
What specific results did you see after implementing this change?
Apart from the apparent viewership stats, social media engagement, and numerous earned endemic mentions on gaming media, we saw the interest to continue from the client’s perspective. This was a targeted activation with numerous endemic mentions, user-generated clips, and social media posts. I know that gaming has become an experimental marketing channel for years to come for Lenovo.
How do you ensure that these new marketing strategies resonate with your target audience?
There is no way to ensure that everything will work 100%. Research is the key to getting better results and taking calculated risks. For every marketing professional, the most essential part of planning is understanding the audiences’ interests, psychology, and feedback on previous campaigns, products, or competitors.
Can you share an example of something you tried that didn’t deliver expected results or ended up ended up becoming a financial burden, and what you learned from that experience?
Three or four years ago, we at WePlay Studios wanted to create not just a blog but a gaming media covering different esports events, gaming news, game patches, and so on. However, maintaining a media requires quite an investment. We were okay with that for some time, but very soon, we faced the reality that when you are a tournament organizer, you are biased by definition. Our management didn’t want us to cover the competitors’ events, nor were the competitors happy to provide us with press access. Covering events and competitions is not evergreen content that will help your strategy long-term because the news loses value the day after a competition is finished.
Another thing is consumption habits: people read gaming news from independent media they are used to, and it’s not simple to make them switch. It’s almost the case with people watching streams on Twitch: no matter how many streamers were signed by Microsoft’s Mixer, people were still watching Twitch.
We were getting some traffic to our website, with up to 15k views per article at best. However, our main monetization streams came from creating video content, not from covering news and esports events. After a couple of years of fighting for readers’ attention while maintaining a biased attitude, we closed the media department and editorial team.
It was a pretty expensive way for us to learn that building content verticals for different consumer types requires more time researching the business models of similar projects. If it’s not working, make decisions faster. There is no need to kick a can down the road, waiting for it to finally work out one day. Again, with almost everything being digital, you can track the results almost instantly, get feedback almost instantly, and make changes much faster.
Great. Now, let’s dive into the heart of our interview. Could you list “5 Innovative & Non-Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before”?
1 . Gaming. Marketers not getting into gaming are missing a lot in attracting younger audiences. I see an interest from many brands and see good cases of doing marketing activations for gaming audiences. Therefore, this trend will only get bigger. According to NewZoo, ever since Generation X, the number of people interacting with gaming content (playing, watching, etc.) has been around 90% in every generation, reaching 96% for Gen Alpha. Creating a content strategy, where a brand is represented in different interests of the audience, like music, gaming, film, lifestyle, etc., is the new way of building a 360 marketing campaign. I assume that the model:
Ad Coverage → Interest → Revenue
Has changed to
Great content → Global attention → Revenue
Because the younger the generation, the less traditional advertising methods influence them. However, they still enjoy good content and follow people and brands who create good content in the spheres they love.
2 . Co-creation. This is another thing about interest in content: people no longer want just to watch; they want to co-create with their favorite brands. In terms of gaming, for example, many enthusiasts are no longer just playing a game but also streaming it on Twitch, creating highlights, posting memes on Reddit, and creating a whole community around a particular brand, lore, or topic. Those communities united around a specific theme, led by micro or nano-influencers, can create engaging, endemic content that will drive more conversion than regular influencer marketing.
3 . Experiential marketing. People want to be passive observers; they want to be a part of something they love. Branded immersive experiences can help with that. Experiential marketing gives more opportunities for engagement and builds emotional connections. The more a customer is emotionally connected to a brand and its experiences, the better their loyalty will be, the more likely they will share the brand-related content, etc. There are already good cases of activations like that. We will see a lot more of those in the future. In many ways, Augmented and Mixed Reality, themed pop-ups, and interactive installations can be extraordinarily engaging.
4 . AI-driven personalized experiences. Everyone predicts AI’s use to create personalized ads, videos, and experiences because those technologies are already partially here. Imagine AI-generated product recommendations that instantly adapt to your emotions, preferences, and real-world surroundings using AR glasses or smart lenses. It could be pretty entertaining and disturbing at the same time.
5 . Community-based marketing. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have felt the necessity of being a part of a community much harder. Brands and experiences that help people be a part of something bigger and understand their role in a community will build a long-lasting connection and meaning. The more we dive into the digital world, the more real-time and in-person experiences will have more impact and engagement.
What challenges might companies face when transitioning away from traditional marketing strategies, and how can they overcome them?
The biggest challenge we all face is the correlation of marketing efforts to sales. It is always easier to invest in targeted ads, for example, because they are measurable, you see the conversion rate, and you can calculate the ROI easier. Suppose your task is aimed at brand awareness, and all your new efforts in marketing are aimed at audience engagement and general knowledge about the company. In that case, you won’t see the results of these efforts instantly. A marketer will conduct audience research at least once a year to see how the brand image changes. Is their brand among the first lines of associations when people think about a product category?
Nevertheless, at the moment, it is harder to argue against investments in new and innovative strategies when their effects will show up long term. The argument I hear often is, “So what?” We went viral, so what? Our event was successful, and audience feedback was great, so what? Where are the sales?
How do you measure the success and ROI of these new marketing strategies?
Earned media and user-generated content are definitely success criteria for those marketing efforts. All emotional engagements and hashtags will serve to enhance brand awareness. However, suppose we are not talking about direct sales from influencer integrations, which can be tracked and analyzed more easily. The ROI of those new strategies can be tracked over time via brand awareness and brand loyalty surveys, cost per engagement for new and existing users, and customer lifetime value. If, over time, the advocacy and loyalty levels among your customers are increasing, then engagement strategies are working.
Looking forward, how do you see the role of innovative marketing evolving in the next 5–10 years?
To me, marketing is more about empathy than just selling. I hope that we will see more of this kind of attitude in the future: grassroots habits, forming of attitudes and communities, and creating meaningful interactions that feel natural, endemic, and rewarding. This is what I want innovative marketing to be in the next 5–10 years.
What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitant to move away from traditional marketing methods?
- Start small, with small budgets, track everything, and experiment. Measure KPIs like engagement, conversions, and customer feedback to see what works. Nothing starts at the very moment or overnight, but the more you try to experiment, the more diverse your channels and activations will be. When it comes to the digital world, sometimes all you need is to dedicate your own time rather than budget.
- Focus on your audience’s presence and interests. Be where they are. If these are small communities, be there, be on socials, don’t be too serious, be authentic, be trustworthy, and be ready for an open dialogue.
- Analyze what your industry is doing and implement the best practices to work.
Can you share any upcoming initiatives or plans you have for further innovating your marketing strategies?
At WePlay Studios, we are constantly experimenting with making our content more interactive and engaging. Therefore, we still plan to move in that direction and develop more viewers’ engagement tools, experiment with Augmented Reality and Virtual Production, and invest in experiential events for our viewers and partners alike. We want to help our clients and partners be where their audiences are, within their interests like music, gaming and entertainment. Stay tuned for the new experiences. We are just getting started.
How can our readers follow your work and learn more about your approaches to modern marketing?
Via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irynachuhai
This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
Breaking the Marketing Mold: Iryna Chuhai of WePlay Studios On 5 Innovative & Non-Traditional… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.