Brands Getting in the Game: Content, Creators and Community
Dylan Roddy
SXSX 2025 - SJMC Student Media Coverage
(The following content is a preview of a SXSW 2025 panel from a member of the SXSW Content Team, a group of 26 SJMC students who will partner with SXSW marketing professionals to cover the event from March 7-15. This is the 10th year of this collaboration between SJMC students and SXSW.)
At SXSW 2025, the Brands Getting in the Game: Content, Creators, and Community panel will offer a great opportunity for attendees to connect with leaders in gaming and content marketing. In recent years, gaming has grown from a niche hobby into mainstream entertainment, making it an important space for community engagement.
The panel will be moderated by Colin Daniels, the digital editor at Adweek, and Nadia Tseng, the senior vice president at Loaded’s Open World Solutions, a consulting firm that works with brand looking to get into gaming. The two plan to cover how to use gaming content, communities and platforms to build and connect with audiences.
“Gone are the days of thinking of gaming and gamers as a homogeneous thing,” Tseng said.
Tseng plans to give the SXSW audience an educational discussion on how brands can succeed in the game industry as well as connect with gamers. According to Tseng, tapping into the gaming community and how you speak their language is different than ever before.
“I love the term digital campfire,” Tseng said, referring to smaller, more intimate communities in online environments.
Through gaming, brands can identify which digital campfire aligns best with their identity and target audience. More importantly, however, they must find ways to communicate authentically, respecting the culture of these communities as they create content and marketing campaigns.
“If you have aspirations or goals as a company to reach Gen Z, you have to figure out a gaming strategy,” Tseng said. “I think gamers today are so much more than just gamers.”
To highlight the growing importance of the gaming market for brands, Tseng and Daniels will explore key strategies for building stronger, more authentic connections with target consumers through effective communication.
Join the discussion on Sunday, March 9, from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in the Manchester GG room at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Austin.
Register for SXSW 2025 to be part of this exciting creative event. For more information on this panel and other SXSW programming, go to the SXSW website.