Harbin beer and Starcom join hands to push China’s e-Sports

ABinBev’s Harbin beer has launched Harbin beer e-Sports League in Shanghai, serving as a warm-up to the upcoming International 7th (TI7) DOTA2 Championships to take place in Seattle, USA over the summer.At the opening event, five of the top DOTA2 teams in China (iG, iG.V, LGD, Newbee and VG) had the chance to compete against each other as well as meet and play with their fans.The brand began supporting e-Sports in 2016 running a test campaign during TI6 (The International Tournament 2016), planned and executed by the Starcom and Publicis Media Content teams.Publicis Media’s Content division were responsible for the strategic development and implementation for the campaign since last year. This has included talent management from identifying through to negotiating and signing deals with the DOTA2 teams, leading on creative and production for all social and digital content, as well as taking lead agency responsibility in managing the process with all other partners.To celebrate this milestone event, Harbin released a limited edition aluminum bottle and packages for TI7 players. Harbin will also be accompaning the Harbin e-Sports Legion during the TI7 and will be live-reporting from the games in Seattle.Bruno Cosentino, VP of ABInBev north Asia-Pacific, said, “These young talents here today are demonstrating Chinese players’ capacity in the world stage. They are also encouraging other young Chinese to stick together and to fight for their dreams together. For me, they are the best examples of Harbin beer’s brand slogan: Yiqi hapi [happy together, "一起哈啤"]. We’ve come a long way in a very short time and much of this has been made possible through the excellent partnership with Starcom.”“I am very proud of our partnership with ABinBev and the way we continue to push boundaries and develop ground-breaking campaigns together” commented Bertilla Teo, CEO of Publicis Media Greater China. “The success of this event and the wider campaign is testament to the strong and collaborative nature of our relationship and I am confident that we will continue to drive further business growth for ABinBev in China.”Harbin has been able to capitalise on being one of the first brands to support and integrate into the fast expanding e-sports market in China which now boasts over 170 Million players and is worth an estimated RMB 70 billion.