Lexus, a Boomer brand known for partnerships in traditional spaces like golf, culinary, and travel, needed to find a way to capture the attention of the next generation of luxury consumers. We wanted to do so by finding a suitable brand partner that would help cement our brand in youth culture. And almost no cultural space has exploded in popularity like Esports. 100 Thieves, the second-most valuable Esports company in the world, was also looking for a partner to elevate and expand their presence as a lifestyle brand. While the opportunity was immense, the risk was clear: how can a traditionally Boomer brand find an authentic, non-cringe way to participate in this space? Our objective was to increase familiarity, consideration, and desirability for Lexus not by attaching ourselves to the gaming community but by becoming a part of it, gaining real traction with a young, hard-to-impress crowd.

We didn't do just one thing. We put gamers in cars. Cars in games. Game data *on* cars. We even made a controller to play a game that had a co-branded car in the game. Creating an expansive collection of co-branded initiatives that went wide and deep into gaming culture.

For example, we became the official sponsor of the 100 Thieves Content House. We used data from a 100T Esports championship to create a unique piece of art to put on a Lexus vehicle, turning it into a drivable highlight reel of their success. We worked with streamers to create a special edition Lexus car in Forza Horizon 5. And we made a matching controller. Every piece was made to feel like it came from the fans themselves. And these are just a few highlights from the hundreds of videos, posts and activations we created together this year.

When Esports was in its infancy, its audience was a small, dedicated group of hardcore gamers. The growth of Twitch fundamentally changed the Esports audience, turning gaming culture into pop culture. While Esports went from subculture to monoculture, advertisers struggled to engage meaningfully with those in this world. Lexus found our dream Esports partner in 100 Thieves, the second-most valuable Esports company in the US. Our strategy was to go deep and wide in the gaming world to create a true collaborative partnership, versus a one-off project or superficial sponsorship. To do so, we had to take on the characteristics of gaming, not advertising.

Objective 1: increase familiarity and consideration with consumers <40. We saw 5-point gains in both metrics in the Lexus brand and advertising tracker among consumers <40, which represented the biggest lift with young consumers since the brand’s early days.

Objective 2: increase brand desire and reputation for innovation. First, Lexus’s reputation for innovation received a 7-points gain with <40 consumers, the largest bump across any of our brand metrics. Lexus was also the #1 brand making gains (+11.1% gain in equity with Gen Z) in the first wave of AdAge and Harris’s Gen Z tracker.

Objective 3: exceed 10 million views of Lexus x 100 Thieves content. We had 15.2M video views, over 50% above objective.

100 Thieves also saw a 25% lift in social following and a 53% increase in YouTube subscribers.

And to cap it off, Lexus was nominated for Esports partner of the year.