Australia’s home of games culture, Fortress, knows that gaming has become Australia’s largest cultural interest with 82% of Australians now engaging with games, overtaking traditional passions like the AFL as the country’s preferred entertainment. 

Despite how enormous games culture is, many brands struggle to find an authentic voice within it. Not fully understanding its place. It is now emphatically part of the mainstream, creating demand for a different approach to strategy, creativity and activation.

So Fortress has launched Fortress Creative Studio launched to meet that demand. The creative and broadcast production agency aims to help brands, publishers and rights holders win new fans through games culture. Evolving from the in-house team behind Fortress’ venues and studios, it now delivers games-led campaigns, content and experiences for some of the world’s biggest brands and IP owners.

“When we founded Fortress in 2018, our mission was to become the world’s #1 games culture company. Having made enormous headway with that ambition via our two flagship venues in Melbourne and Sydney, the timing couldn’t be better for us to launch our games culture-led agency to capitalise on the deep understanding we’ve developed connecting brands with audiences through games culture,” stated Jon Satterley, co-founder & CEO, Fortress.

Fortress Creative Studio transforms years of audience intelligence into a culture-first strategic offering, combining deep games understanding, a highly engaged community, and end-to-end expertise across creative, content, production and activation. That approach has already delivered results, helping sporting codes connect with gaming communities, major brands create experiential campaigns around gaming IP, and Australian publishers activate internationally through games-led experiences, proving games culture can engage audiences far beyond traditional gamers.

“Marketers have spent the past decade optimising for social media, but today, consumers want more than one-way, passive entertainment,” stated Gavin McDonough, chief commercial officer, Fortress Creative Studio. “Games provide active entertainment, and a thriving community where audiences can create, socialise, discover and connect online, and in the real world. This is not a media and entertainment consumption fad; it’s an entire platform shift, and it’s already happened.”

The team is led by McDonough, a five-time AdNews, B&T and Mumbrella Experiential Agency of the Year winner whose credits include brand experiences for Airbnb, EA, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Netflix and Telstra across APAC and the US. “The team behind the work is the real story,” noted Chris Stewart, head of games strategy & broadcast, Fortress Creative Studio. “It’s a unique combination of expertise and passion for games culture that sets us apart, and makes our approach distinctly different.”