Brawl Stars’ First Awards Show… for the Entire Community

Introducing the Brawlies

Rather than an overall thank you to the community, this time we wanted to say thank you to the individuals who made it what it was.

So, together with virtual production studio Fireframe and production company Balansia Films, we partnered with Supercell to create something that will cause a stir.

We conceptualised and named the 'Brawlies' as Brawl Stars’ very own community awards, set up to celebrate and reward their awesome online community. We wanted it to be an end of year celebration - an awards night with some big prizes.

The categories ranged from Best Meme and Best Angry Comment through to Funniest GamePlay and Most Cursed Video.

It's like winning an Oscar... for a Tweet.

But this event was going to be bigger than even the players. We wanted to celebrate the general Brawl Stars community as well as thinking about other stakeholders, such as content creators. This was going to be a BIG event!

What’s the big idea?

We didn’t want to just set up an event to say thanks and call it a day. We wanted to throw a huge award party where everyone would feel seen.

Guided by the overall theme of positivity, we wanted to highlight the people who make the Brawl Stars community so wonderful – from the creative individuals to the funny ones, from the elite ones to the kind ones.

And we wanted to do it all in true Brawl Stars fashion.

Okay, but make it Gen Z 💁🏽‍♀️

The main insight was: award shows are long. Too long. Our audience’s attention spans are too short to stick with hours of medium-paced content.

The Brawl Stars audience is predominantly made up of Gen Z - and, as we all know, they process information incredibly quickly and can decide if content is worth sticking with in seconds.

That’s why the Brawlies ceremony was conceptualised as the craziest, fastest, funniest, most dynamic, self-interrupting award show ever.

Supercell wanted to have it look like a normal award show, but make the pacing feel Brawl. With clever editing to make the ‘live’ broadcast as fun, crazy, and action-packed as the game, focusing only on the really good bits.

No fluff.

Adding flavour

So, how did we keep it spicy? 🌶

The Brawlies ceremony was presented on a virtual stage, produced by Waste in Unreal Engine, making the team look like they’re presenting the awards from inside the Brawl Stars universe.

With eye-catching graphical overlays and nomination scripts that the community could tweet about, we kept their interest throughout the awards.

And to add a little something, the Supercell team decided to add a fun device... that made the whole show change every 30-40 seconds.

But how, you ask? We had a special prop that featured throughout the show  - and it allowed our squad to keep the action moving!

It was a fun, real, oversized remote that allowed us to fast forward, rewind, slo-mo, pause; play sounds and applause, and even glitch our team into random costume changes.

The problem was, it broke after the intro, interrupting and moving the sections on, seemingly randomly…

Oops.

Every section changed the look and feel in lots of fun ways, from the costumes, to the backdrop, to the music.

And there was a real sense of urgency to get through it all really quickly because the next section is coming, whether Dani (Community Manager) and the squad like it or not… Going from community awards, to fan art awards, to gameplay, esports, and content creator awards…

Resulting in 18 minutes of absolute mayhem. Just how we like it.

So what?

The community sentiment throughout the channels was heartwarming. They felt valued, seen, and were invested in the content - paying attention and reacting to their favourite moments on social.

With over 8.8 million views to date, the first-ever Brawl Stars live awards show was a success. Overall, the campaign got us 36.6 million impressions and 40 k comments, engaging core subscribers and generating lots of love for the game, the team, and the community.