As the League Championship Series (LCS) matures, participating organizations continue to find ways to stand out. Gaining fans for an esports organization that transcends the roster of players and the trophy case requires powerful branding. FlyQuest recently unveiled its TreeQuest initiative for 2020, alongside their commitment to going green, representing the newest branding push seen in the LCS.
Successful Branding
The LCS community quickly attached to this new look for FlyQuest – the greenhouse training facility, floral 2020 jerseys and planting trees based on what happens in-game. Fans anticipate each Ocean Drake and dismiss their favorite teams’ losses to FlyQuest as helping the environment. All of this engagement is exactly what branding should look like within esports.
Steve Forton is the Director of Social Media and PR for FlyQuest. When asked about the importance of branding in esports, he responded:
“For branding to be successful, it needs to resonate with your audience. We’re very excited to see our Go Green initiative resonate, but Showcase Greatness isn’t something new to us. It’s something we’ve always believed. Everyone at FlyQuest knows this and believes in it. Admittedly, we haven’t done as good a job externally as we have internally when it comes to amplifying this message, but we are committed to changing that.
Branding is important because it gives us the opportunity to share our values with the community and fans. Branding gives fans who share those values a reason to support us. TreeQuest is resonating with people not just because it reflects what we believe in, but because it invites others to participate. We want fans who want to pursue greatness, and we plan on continuing to do activations that reflect the values we believe in and resonate with our community.”
Then and Now
FlyQuest’s vision of Showcasing Greatness has not really resonated with fans since joining the LCS. They started as “Cloud9 Lite,” due to buying Cloud9’s Challenger team that promoted into the LCS. They turned into “the Wildturtle team” after that. Last year, FlyQuest unveiled the first female-specific apparel line in esports, which gained some attention. However, this 2020 Go Green initiative is definitely their strongest branding move yet. If the Go Green initiative was born out of FlyQuest’s mission statement, then they should definitely continue building from it.
“The one thing about FlyQuest that will never change is our vision: Showcase Greatness. We believe that greatness already exists within everyone, and we want to help them find and showcase it. To kick off the year, we launched our initiative – Go Green. We believe everyone has the ability to effect real change for our planet, and we want to facilitate ways for us to address important environmental issues together. Everything we do this split stems from our Go Green initiative. We want to lead by example and do our part to make the Rift and the world a greener place.” – Steve Forton
CREDITS
Images from FlyQuest.
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