Why gaming is becoming a key marketing tool for feminine-focused brands

Gamers might start to notice feminine hygiene products and eyeshadow ads appearing at esports tournaments, or getting shoutouts in the streams of their favorite casual streamers.

While female-leaning brands in the beauty or feminine care categories don’t seem like they have a direct connection to gaming at first glance, marketers such as OPI, Tampax, Benefit Cosmetics, American Eagle and Hally Hair are turning to gaming to connect with the younger women that the gaming industry has traditionally overlooked. 

Brands are finding that gaming is evolving beyond the perceived audience of teenage boys drinking soda in their parents’ basements to include a much larger female audience. This has led brands like Hally Hair, an at-home hair dye company, to experiment with “quirky activations that weren’t a big lift” in an effort to get to know the next generation of female gamers, said Kathryn Winokur, CEO and founder of Hally Hair. “They don’t have to be the enormity you think,” she said regarding the lift it takes to pull off a gaming activation.

Hally Hair found initial success with in-game ads in mobile apps, which led the brand to further explore gaming through a partnership with a female gamer and a Roblox activation. It introduced a Gamer Girl semi-permanent hair dye set, along with five virtual hairstyles for Roblox avatars. It’s also partnering with MeganPlays, a Roblox player with 3.5 million YouTube followers. MeganPlays’ Roblox avatar wore the new hairstyles from July 13 to 17.

Several other female-leaning brands have stepped up their gaming strategies by partnering with female streamers or sponsoring esports competitions. Just this month, e.l.f Cosmetics launched Game Up, an eight-piece skincare and makeup collection focused on gaming. Tampax and Always are sponsoring an esports tournament called Astral Clash, in partnership with Gen.G and Galorants, a community of female-identifying and non-binary players of the game Valorant. 

“Gaming is largely a community-driven pastime, and any brand who shows up authentically can earn a huge amount of goodwill and loyalty from swathes of consumers at once,” Bryanna Goecke, VP of brand partnerships at 3BlackDot, wrote in an email. “This is an efficiency that is rare in marketing.”

Undoing stereotypes

Gaming hasn’t historically been a safe place for women, who have had to deal with sexism, harassment, misogyny and stereotyping. Female gamers, non-binary gamers and gamers of color have been the targets of hate raids on Twitch, resulting in calls for the platform to do more to curb harassment. 

“In order for the space to become more inclusive and safe for females and female-focused brands it will need reforming,” Benjamin Arnold, CEO of We Are Social, a social media agency with a gaming arm, wrote in an email. “It will be up to brands and advertisers to undo the male-dominated stereotypes that they initially created.”

Despite this, brands say that knowing the number of female gamers encouraged them to step into the space and connect with a wider audience. According to a 2020 report by the Entertainment Software Association, a trade association for the video game industry, 41% of gamers identify as women.

“Rather than shying away from a space that has traditionally been a toxic space for women, we wanted to celebrate and empower the femininity of ‘gamer girls,’” said Hally Hair’s Winokur.

Tampax and Always have a similar view, Melissa Suk, VP of North America for both brands recently told Ad Age. “We have a passion for getting into the space really around the notion that almost half of U.S. gamers are female,” she said. “Yet the community is kind of discouraged from talking about stigmatized topics, especially periods, as we’ve learned is true of most of society, but in particular gaming because it’s historically been seen as this male-dominated space.”

In April, American Eagle tapped gamers the Botez Sisters and Sydeon to be part of a Twitch docuseries. The apparel retailer started leaning into Twitch after seeing gaming show up more in consumer insight data. In June, L’Oréal’s Garnier Fructis signed a two-year sponsorship deal with esports organization Team Vitality. And earlier this year, OPI partnered with Xbox to create a line of gaming-inspired nail polishes, with names like “You Had Me at Halo,” a reference to the popular sci-fi video game franchise, and “Heart and Con-sol.” Polish purchases unlocked in-game content as well as a chance to win a colorful Xbox controller. 

For Benefit Cosmetics, the connection to gaming comes in helping gamers prepare for live streams. “Everyone has their ritual, be it a favorite meal, pump up music, or putting on makeup,” said Toto Haba, senior VP of marketing and communications at Benefit Cosmetics. “That camera prep felt like a natural place for us.” Haba adds that female gaming and Benefit have overlapping values when it comes to female empowerment and equality.

Benefit Cosmetics recently hosted an esports tournament for female gamers, the latest step in the beauty brand’s gaming strategy. The company started its Game Face campaign in 2020 after doing extensive social listening and finding that there were more women watching gaming than women watching makeup videos.

“That piqued our interest because we knew our audience was there,” said Haba. Benefit even set up a website where Twitch streamers can reach out for potential collaborations. The cosmetics brand has also done activations in video games like Animal Crossing and Beat Saber.

Research from Anzu, which does in-game advertising, found that around two in five gamers in the U.S. identify as female, equating to around 91 million women. It also found that 57% of U.S. female gamers spent much more time gaming during the pandemic, with almost a third saying they have continued to game at that level.

“The intersection of beauty and gaming is still an open space,” said Benefit Cosmetics’ Haba. “Usually in other spaces we want to be more competitive and stand out, but this is a space for more brands to support female gamers."