NewsWire: 11/19/2020
- Honda is debuting its next Civic not at an auto show, but on Twitch. The all-digital event will be a first among automakers, with Honda showcasing top-ranked streamers and a rap performance in hopes of attracting first-time car buyers. (Advertising Age)
- NH: For the last couple of years, Honda has recognized Twitch and esports as its preferred means of reaching consumers. In 2019, they became the first autobrand to sponsor an esports team. And later that year, they also became sponsors of the League of Legends Champion Series. Premiering the Civic on Twitch is just another example of their esports marketing strategy.
- Why Twitch? Well, for starters, Twitch has an average audience of 17.5 million unique visitors every day. That's a monstrous number of viewers. (Primetime network TV, where ad time is much more expensive, gets maybe 7 or 8 million average viewers per show.) Second, 67% of Twitch visitors are under age 35, which is Honda's core customer base. Millennials are menu-driven optimizers, and the Civic checks all the boxes: affordable, reliable, and fuel efficient.
- Most Millennials, to be sure, are not especially into "car culture." The last big cadre of dedicated car hobbyists were probably first-wave Xers who can recall growing up with Starsky & Hutch. But to the extent that a Millennial "car tuner" community does exist, it has always prized the Honda Civic. An older generation of car collectors now reports, with disbelief, that today's Millennials now consider those tame and featureless early-90s Hondas to be "classic cars."
- As for all the millions of tail-end Millennials and tween-age Homelanders who hang out on Twitch but aren't yet buying cars, Honda welcomes them as well. In marketing-speak, this is called shaping brand recognition for the next generation of auto customers.
- Of course, the pandemic was another key consideration in deciding not to host an in-person auto show. With social distancing, large gatherings just aren’t an option. For the NASCAR crowd, maybe, but not for today's cautious generation of urban and young-adult professionals. Moving the Civic unveiling to Twitch takes advantage of a virtual venue that has been thriving during Covid-19. As we have written, esports and Twitch have soared since March. Tencent (TECHY), the world's largest video game producer, has seen its stock rise by over 75% YoY. (See "Esports Continues to Skyrocket" and "It’s Game on For Esports.")
