Twitch Sub Brands
Brand Identity, Creative Strategy, Creative Direction, Copywriting, Video Production
Twitch is constantly evolving and with an audiences growing year after year, the kinds of stuff they wanted to watch was growing with them. To reach new fans and deepen existing connections, we created distinct sub-brands focused on popular and emerging content verticals. Each featured a distinct look, voice, and tone to differentiate them from the core Twitch brand and speak directly to key fandoms. This page features three of my favorite sub brands that I led the development of as CD.
The first is Thursday Night Football on Twitch, a key component of Twitch’s broader effort to reach sports fans.
The second is /twitchgaming, a gaming news and lifestyle channel whose goal was to deepen our connection with hardcore gamers by giving them a voice in the industry.
And the third is Twitch Rivals, Twitch’s homegrown esports universe which threw gas onto the quickly growing esports fire.
Thursday Night Football on Twitch
What happens when you combine the intensity of Thursday Night Football with the unpredictability of Twitch? You get football’s most evolved, entertaining, powerful, and complete experience with three scoops of fandom, hype, and hilarity. It’s TNF’s final form.
When Twitch secured the rights to broadcast Thursday Night Football, we knew it couldn’t be just like every other traditional sports broadcast, so we made sure it had a unique identity that could never be mistaken for legacy TV. The traditional broadcast was streamed on Twitch, but with special extensions that allowed fans to make predictions in real-time, and chat provided a way for trash to be talked and reactions to flood in as the action happened. Co-streaming allowed Twitch streamers to broadcast the games to their communities with their live commentary and play-by-play.
For our weekly tune-in marketing, we pit two co-streamers against each other to hype viewers up for the game. Maybe one was an expert and the other a well-known gamer. Maybe they’re both die-hard fans repping the two competing teams. Each week, the streamers faced off to drive tune-in, intercut with highlight clips from the scheduled teams.
/twitchgaming
With /twitchgaming, we created a network where gamers don't just watch the news, they can make it. Where gamers decide the games that matter, what's worth debating, and where the industry goes next. This would be entertainment democratized, where any gamer that wanted a mic could grab one to spark debate, conversation, or controversy.
To give this new channel an identity all it’s own, we developed a unique visual direction using sprites and other pieces of flair to show how gamers can leave their mark on game titles and even the industry itself. A voice was created that was aggressively opinionated, in your face, loud, and just the right amount of sarcastic.
When you add that all up, /twitchgaming is where everything gamers love about gaming is back in the hands of those that love it most.
Twitch Rivals
Esports was a category ripe for disruption. Twitch Rivals would provide it.
A revolutionary take on esports, Rivals combines compelling narratives, Twitch creators, and competitive (or not so competitive) gaming. Rivals pulls esports into the weird and wonderful world of Twitch. And like Twitch, Rivals isn’t one thing, one show, or one style, because here, anything can be worth fighting over. The Rivals identity and brand voice was created to work for just about any kind of competition, with tournaments taking place throughout the year and around the globe, both online and in-person.
