When players think back to their favorite League of Legends alternate universes Star Guardian is usually in the top 5. It was the first major skin line to reach beyond the confines of the PC game. Star Guardians helped kickstart what we now think of as the “League Ecosystem,” the myriad of different cultures that make up the fandom of League of Legends.

And I ran into that particular burning building screaming a war cry.

Okay, hear me out; Riot Games is a great company, they are the pinnacle of creativity for game as a service companies. However, to this day, they only like to operate in their comfort zone. They have adopted a very ridged marketing playbook, one that had served them very well but that was starting to show its age. This is where I rolled in with a fist full of research and a determination to get stakeholders in the company to recognize that our players spend more time on their phones than playing our games.

Long story short, I got them to let me try some big ideas in formats that were completely new to the company. We built our standard CG trailers in vertical format so they would play better on Instagram and Tiktok. We invested into a long form Instagram filter that included a card collection mechanic. We also partnered with some of the most popular manga artists on Tiktok to create one of a kind art of our characters.

We took a big swing and it paid off, the views on our social posts easily outpaced our normal YouTube numbers and we saw a massive increate in followers of our accounts. We opened the door for Riot to finally catch up to our fans and have a much more direct relationship with them going forward,.