influencers sportsbiz

General Mills Partners The Aphetor Games To Strengthen Engagement With Gen-Z

July 14, 2021

Snack bar brand Nature Valley from General Mills has announced a pan-European partnership with The Aphetor Games, a new content-first sports event for influencers and content creators, as part of its bold strategy to strengthen its engagement with Gen-Z.

Thirty-five of the world’s best content creators, with a combined audience reach of over 70 million followers, will meet in Rhodes, Greece are going head-to-head in 6 epic challenges across 5 days since 11th July till 16th July.

The Aphetor Games is making a lot of noise in the sports and marketing sectors through its disruptive, non-exclusive approach to content creation and distribution. Aphetor’s open-source model enables the influencers themselves to create and publish content on their own channels and is designed to be an antidote to the declining audience figures for traditional sport driven by the born digital generation’s changing media consumption patterns.

Nature Valley is working with Aphetor to inspire the audience to build on their European “Get Out More” campaign by co-creating the Nature Valley Splash and Dash, one of Aphetor’s main challenges, as well as working with a hand-selected, pan-European squad of competing Creators, including Nife Agunbiade to create a wide range of content from the event. In addition, Nature Valley and Aphetor will develop a unique A/R Filter Game on Instagram, which will allow the audience to ‘Get Out More’ themselves and compete as virtual Aphetors against the participating creators and win Nature Valley prizes as rewards for being active.

The event is content-creator heaven, with production crews, cameras, editors, designers, publishers, and talent managers already on-site – enabling the delivery of world class content at pace. The authentic integration of Nature Valley’s products and brand into the resulting content ecosystem delivers efficiencies in pan-european scale, reach and engagement that more traditional media can’t match.

Aphetor co-founder, Carsten Thode, said: “Nature Valley and Aphetor share a bold vision to be restlessly innovative and culturally relevant to target the born digital generation. Our model is revolutionising how audiences consume sports and entertainment content, Aphetor providing a blank canvas for the biggest content creators in the world to capture and distribute content across their channels. Rhodes, Greece, will provide a stunning backdrop for Aphetor Rising, and the opportunity for Nature Valley to reach new audiences.”

Arjoon Bose, Europe-Australasia Head of Culture & Brand Experience for parent company General Mills said: “With our organisational focus on bold brand building and modern marketing leaning into the culture capital of today, Aphetor Games with their disruptive model and vision of creating ‘the outdoor Olympics of content creators’ grabbed our attention.

“The partnership will genuinely enable us to inspire the digital native to ‘’get out more’’ which is our ethos of Nature Valley and reach younger audiences, through the lens of their creator heroes with the positive uplifting content they crave on their go-to social destination with everyday outdoor challenges which is different from traditional sports. Working with the pan-European creator squad will also serve as a future-forward experimentation to drive relevance and reach as a regional digital ecosystem for the brand for the first time.’’

influencers sportsbiz