Honda drives deeper into gaming, esports with Twitch Rivals sponsorship

Dive Brief:

Honda is now the first-ever, exclusive automotive partner of Twitch Rivals, the streaming platform's tournament series, per a press release.
Central to the effort is "Chat's Civic Mods," an interactive segment that will be featured in multiple episodes of the series beginning July 18 during which users will be able to digitally customize a 2025 Civic hybrid sedan through chat polls.
The resulting crowdsourced Civic will debut at TwitchCon 2024 and will be given away to a member of the platform's gaming community. The automaker was a first-mover in gaming and esports and continues to engage with "GenZennial" consumers in the space.

Dive Insight:

Honda is expanding its long-running relationship with Amazon-owned Twitch as it looks to further integrate its brand into gaming and esports. Such efforts have allowed the automaker engage with what it calls "GenZennial gaming fans," helping the Civic to become the most popular vehicle with Gen Z buyers, first-time new car buyers and multicultural customers, per a Strategic Vision study cited by the brand.

“This partnership will enable Honda to support creators and connect with the passionate Twitch Rivals community to deliver memorable and personalized moments,” said Lou Garate, head of properties at Amazon Ads, in the press release. “The partnership also positions Honda to reach the millions of people who come together on Twitch to connect, engage and create live entertainment experiences together.”

Beyond its branded channels, including the lifestyle-focused DreamLab, the partnership will allow Honda to reach gamers and esports fans throughout episodes of Twitch Rivals with the "Chat's Civic Mods" segment. Users will be able to customize a new Civic that will debut and be given away at TwitchCon in San Diego on Sept. 20-22, bringing the URL experience to an IRL space.

The partnership gives Honda its latest "first" in Twitch marketing. The automaker debuted the first-ever auto-branded gaming channel on the service in 2019 and has since debuted a vehicle and launched a fully immersive virtual world in Fortnite on Twitch called Hondaverse.

The sponsorship of Twitch Rivals is part of a larger campaign around the 2025 Civic hybrid that will run via 15-second ads on YouTube, Reddit and other platforms. Agencies RPA, Quantasy, ORCI and Kissd worked on the campaign, per details from the brand.